THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
CONCLUSIONS
(Taken from "I gladiatori del mare" di Angelo Solmi, Rizzoli 1980)
On June 6 the heavy cruiser Mikuma sank and the Mogami went to strand to the island of Truk.
In that same 6 June a Japanese submersible definitely liquidated the Yorktown (really while he was by now sure to save her/it), together with the destroyer Hammann, that escorted her/it. It was the only positive result of the Japanese but the Yorktown, that it was really hard to be died, it didn't materially sink that to the 6 of the morning of June 7.
All of its ordeal as the complex of the operations of the Enterprise and the Hornet, were taken back by the director John Ford, the author of red Shades, in a splendid cinema documentary, perhaps the most famous example of documentary of war: 10 same Ford, in the battle, it came seriously wounded.
Later, in 1976, a director of a great deal smaller talent, Jack Smight, realized on the battle a film to great show, with famous actors, that you/he/she was successful of public.
But, well that it it is necessary to honestly recognize to the film a notable historical fidelity, also in the particular ones, it cannot compete with the exciting immediateness of the work of Ford. (From the finished studies, the scriptwriter and scriptwriter of the film, Donald Sandford, drew then a book also published in Italy.)
Therefore it finished this way the battle of the Midway, that, further to inflict a terrible hit to Japan, showed above all that the sea nipponica was surprisingly vulnerability, also from very inferior strengths, also, Radio Tokyō announced a glorious naval victory of the Rising Sol.
But these spacconates could not have any influence on the results of the great game that it played him in the Pacific and that, for how much still long and hard, it allowed by now to glimpse from what it departs the victory it hung. Rather, if we want to conclude our story, you/they must be put above all in relief three aspects.
At first the battle of the Sea of the Corals and then that of Midway they were the first naval battles in which the teams avversaries were not directly seen never and in which an alone hit of gun was not taut, if not for what it concerns the anti-aircraft artillery.
You treated, instead, of a great tactical duel through the use of those special artilleries constituted by the airplanes (bombardiers or aerosiluranti) with their bombs and their torpedos.
Of now in then, at least in the Pacific, it will be this the new prevailing aspect of the naval clash, that was begun to call, more correct - mind, " air-sea ".
The Midway it shown to that the material and the mechanical apparatuses of the Japanese ships were cheaper than those American generally: the aircraft carriers of Nagumo " went down " with relative facility and, to said of some American pilots, they seemed ships "made of can." Also with the proper reserves for this evident exaggeration, to retries must also be quoted the fact that the Yorktown, stricken seriously and to the more resumptions, resistette very better and much longer to the! offended hostile.
You/he/she was still shown to the Midway that the human material of the United States was superior to that Japanese, both in the commands, and in the crews, in the mechanics, in the pilots: there was in a whole alive share to the struggle, not fatalistic and formal as aside nipponica.
In as for the tall commands, apart the intuitions of Nimitz, we have already said some amazing ability shown by Spruance and, in smaller measure, from Fletcher, in comparison to the errors of: Yamamoto and of Nagumo.
A solo of the Japanese heads saved him: the rear-admiral Yamaguchi, expert on the Hiryu in way worthy of the great tradition of the harbor of Togo.
MIDWAY SEEN BY JAPANESES
MIDWAY: THE PROTAGONISTS OF THE BATTLE
BATTAGLIA DI MIDWAY: THE FINAL SENTENCE OF THE SHINANO