At the same time, in the Pacific Theater, Japan had planned Midway as its next target just a month after the Battle of the Coral Sea.This would not only avenge the US Air Force's air raid on Tokyo, which some of the senior Japanese generals at the time believed that the planes that attacked Tokyo had taken off from Midway, but would also open the door to the Hawaiian Islands.Prevent U.S. troops from coming out from Hawaii and attacking Japan.The Japanese Navy wanted to take this opportunity to lure the remnants of the US Pacific Fleet to Midway and annihilate them in one fell swoop.In order to achieve this goal, the Japanese Navy almost poured out of the nest, devoting most of its strength, and the size of the fleet even surpassed that of the Combined Fleet at the time of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history.It was the largest strategic offensive of the Japanese Navy in World War II, but due to the containment of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Combined Fleet sent two fewer aircraft carriers, namely the injured "Shozuru" and the "Zuizuru", which lacked pilots, which had a very serious impact on the operation.The plan drawn up by the Japanese Combined Fleet Command was unusually grand and detailed, but it was inflexible.Almost the entire Japanese Navy was used in this operation.A total of almost 200 ships were used, including 8 aircraft carriers, 11 combat ships, 22 cruisers, 65 destroyers, and 21 submarines.They are also assisted by more than 600 aircraft.On the U.S. side, Admiral Nimitz barely concentrated a total of 76 ships, of which 13 belonged to the North Pacific and never participated in the battle at all.It was in this situation of great disparity in strength between Japan and the United States that the Japanese Navy and the U.S.
Navy launched a decisive battle in the Midway area.However, despite its strength, Japan made several fatal mistakes.First of all, the Japanese side was arrogant, since the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese army swept through the South Seas, almost never tasted defeat, even in the Battle of Coral Island, the Japanese army suffered the first loss, and finally achieved a tactical victory.It is precisely because of this that the Japanese arrogantly underestimated the enemy and laid the groundwork for their final defeat.Japan's second fatal mistake was the mistake of the intelligence station, because the war had already developed into a multidimensional space at that time, and intelligence warfare and information warfare had become one of the main factors restricting the victory of the war.However, the Japanese side attaches far less importance to information warfare than the US military.Before this naval battle, the US military successfully deciphered Japan's cipher code and successfully mastered the Japanese Navy's operational plan and strategic deployment, thus grasping the battlefield opportunity.The third fatal mistake of the Japanese side was the mistake of the battle plan.First of all, Japan made the mistake of dispersing its forces.Although Japan had a large number of ships, it was divided into six groups that could not directly support each other, and two aircraft carriers were used in the far north, so that in the direction of Midway, four aircraft carriers mainly relied on the Nagumo Fleet, and these four aircraft carriers had a total of 261 carrier-based aircraft.However, the U.S.
Navy concentrated its own forces to the greatest extent, and the number of planes that could be used in the Midway direction reached 354, which was superior in numbers.Secondly.The tasks given to the Nagumo fleet were two fundamentally contradictory tasks.One mission was to conduct an air raid on Midway Island in preparation for the landing operation.This severely restricts the freedom of action of the Nagumo fleet.However, the other task was to make contact with the enemy fleet and annihilate it, which in turn required the Nagumo fleet to be fully mobile according to the situation.Since no priority was specified, the Nagumo fleet was at a loss.Forced to load two waves of aircraft with ammunition for different tasks, later due to the delay in replacing the ammunition, delayed the fighter plane, and suffered a catastrophe.Third, they did not attach importance to intelligence work and to the means of gathering intelligence, so that the enemy situation could not be correctly identified.In addition, the backwardness of Japan's operational concept also had a crucial impact on the outcome of the naval battle.The United States sank all the battleships at Pearl Harbor, but instead made them free of their shackles and established a task force with aircraft carriers as the core, and other ships around protecting aircraft carriers.Although Japan won the victory in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor with carrier-based aircraft, there were still many supporters in the navy who insisted on using warships as the decisive force in the decisive naval battle, and the battlefleet, including the "Yamato," the largest battleship in the world at that time, was kept at the anchorage of Pillar Island for future decisive battles.They played no greater role than the American battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor.The Japanese Navy was reluctant to mix battleships and aircraft carriers into a fleet with aircraft carriers as the core, and let the battleships provide air cover for the aircraft carriers, so the Nagumo Fleet had to rely on its own patrol aircraft to protect itself.When attacked by Midway planes, the Japanese fleet had no choice but to take off the cover fighters in the second wave of planes to meet the fight, resulting in the fact that the dive bombers that had been prepared after receiving the intelligence of the US fleet had no fighter cover, and Nagumo witnessed the defeat of the US fighters without fighter cover, and did not want to repeat the mistake of the past, so he decided to reorganize his forces and attack the US fleet again, causing the fighters to be delayed.Moreover, the task of preparing firepower for the landing operation could be completely carried out by the battlefleet, so that the hands and feet of the Nagumo fleet could be freed.The fifth reason is the mistake of tactical command, first of all, the neglect of reconnaissance missions.The Nagumo Fleet did not have a special reconnaissance aircraft flying squadron, and due to the reluctance to disperse the offensive forces, the reconnaissance tasks of the Nagumo Fleet were mainly carried out by old seaplanes on battleships and cruisers in the formation.The Japanese fleet did not conduct a two-phase search that day, and two of the planes that conducted the single-phase search broke down, delaying the take-off time, causing a delay in discovering the US fleet and directly affecting the situation of the war.Second, when Nagumo received information from the U.S. fleet, he did not take Yamaguchi's suggestion and immediately dispatched dive bombers without fighter cover to attack, resulting in the sinking of ships and planes.Thirdly, Admiral Yamamoto personally led the battlefleet into battle, and in order to maintain radio silence, he voluntarily abandoned the guidance of the campaign.In addition, Japan was far inferior to the United States at that time in terms of scientific and technological level and industrial technology.A clear proof of this is the application of radar technology.At that time, the American fleet was already equipped with radar, which was detected and prepared in advance before the arrival of the Japanese aircraft group, while the Japanese fleet was not equipped with radar, and all vigilance was based on visual inspection, and when the American dive bombers attacked under the cover of the clouds, they could not respond in time.All of the above reasons ultimately led to the defeat of the Japanese army in the Battle of Midway, in which the Japanese lost 4 aircraft carriers "Akagi", "Kaga", "Soryu" and "Flying Dragon", 1 heavy cruiser "Mikuma", 332 aircraft including spare aircraft, about 280 aircraft carriers were blown up, only 42 were shot down, and 3,500 people were killed.However, the US military lost only one aircraft carrier "USS Yorktown" and one destroyer "Harman", most of the 147 aircraft were shot down, and 307 people were killed.After this war, the US military successfully grasped the initiative in the Pacific theater, and the Japanese navy, which had suffered heavy losses, had basically lost its offensive capability, while the US army, which had a strong industrial base as the support, rapidly expanded its strength in the Pacific region and began to launch a counteroffensive against the Japanese army, and this battle was also regarded as a turning point in the Pacific War.aa2705221: