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'Except for the defeat of the Japanese fleet at Midway, Allied fortunes were at low ebb’ said General Dwight Eisenhower in his book “Crusade in Europe”.

Midway was the great naval battle of the Second World War and it had astounding consequences in the unfolding of this conflict. Midway had a defining influence on the lives of millions of people, yet most of them never even knew this battle was fought. It was also the second battle between carriers in history after Coral Sea. And just like at the Coral Sea, where Fletcher led his carriers outnumbered two against three, (Lexington and Yorktown against Shokaku, Zuikaku and Shoho), he did it again at Midway, outnumbered three against - eight! – (Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet against Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Junyo, Ruyjo, Zuiho and Hosho). But in both cases the Japanese squandered their majority by dividing their forces, especially the last one.

The Battle of Midway was fought in the first week of June 1942 between Japanese and Americans close to the island of that name, one thousand miles West of Hawaii. It started the decisive fragment of history that Churchill called: “The hinge of fate” because in the following thirteen months the “Axis” went from victorious advances to very severe retreats in all fronts.

Midway was the triumph of information and realism over speculation and omnipotence. But it was also the victory of chance over misfortune. Midway enthroned a rational school of thought beyond a culture of myth and prejudice, shared by people of two conflicting countries. But one of them had already abandoned this culture, due to an incident that shocked their spirit to the last strand: Pearl Harbor.

It was, strictly speaking, the continuation of Pearl Harbor and prepared by the Japanese to complete their deeds. It was dreamed by the Americans as a revenge for that morning of blood and astonishment, cradle of a hate never felt before, and directed primarily toward their own foolishness, and there is no hate more violent than that.

Midway was as important to the Allied victory in the Second World War as El Alamein, Dunkirk, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk or Normandy. It was as important as the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic, or as the severe and relentless bombing of the Allies on Hitler’s Germany.

The destruction of the Japanese carriers at Midway allowed US to continue with the weapon shipments that were needed around the rest of the world. The soldiers that in Churchill’s “ten thousand villages of Russia” “guarded the fields that their fathers had tilled from time immemorial” needed Roosevelt’s weapons. The “desert rats” facing Rommel’s genius and his Afrikakorps’ prestige needed them. The oppressed, humiliated and plundered countries needed them too. Henry Wallace's ‘free world’ , needed them to liberate the ‘slave world’. Roosevelt could send them because the metropolitan troops “there at home” didn’t need them desperately after the battle of Midway as they did before.

Without the victory at Midway, the Allies couldn’t land at Normandy, and Hitler could have faced his old enemy Stalin, in a better situation . If he had won, Europe would remain in Nazi’s hands, if he had lost, all Europe would fell in Stalin’s hands. An horrible option for the humankind.

 

The public starts to look towards Fletcher...

According to important search engines, there are more than 20,000 sites to which you arrive by searching for “Admiral Fletcher”. Not long ago, they were a few hundred.
There are more than 6.000 sites looking for “Midway Victory”
Not long ago, this was not possibly to be thought.

A lot will be said about Fletcher and a lot will be said about Midway.

 
"Have you ever heard of this battle?  Well, here is its story."

Why buy “Midway was his Fifth Star”?

To have the battle’s complete account, with a strategic analysis and the plan and orders for the battle from Nimitz to Fletcher.  An analysis of Spruance’s mistakes due to his lack of experience before Midway. An analysis of each of Fletcher’s decisions. A detailed analysis of the regrettable conclusions and many of Morison’s regrettable and malicious comments and his false chronicles.  And no less than Spruance’s recognition of his admiration for Fletcher and that he was the real winner at Midway, mentioned in letters to Nimitz and to Fletcher himself

 

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