Read The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Online
Authors: Craig L. Symonds
Tags: #PTO, #Naval, #USN, #WWII, #Battle of Midway, #Aviation, #Japan, #USMC, #Imperial Japanese Army, #eBook
NOTES
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Action Reports | U.S. Navy Action and Operational Reports from World War II, Pacific Theater, PART I: CINCPAC |
AHC | American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie |
BOMRT | “The Battle of Midway Roundtable,” a website for Midway veterans, at |
FDRL | Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Archives, Hyde Park, New York |
NHHC | Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. |
NMPW | National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas |
NWC | U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island |
UMD | Maryland Room, Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland |
USNA | U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland |
Introduction
1
. Several Midway veterans make the case for divine intervention, among them Bryan Crisman, who was the disbursing officer on the USS
Yorktown
, and Stanford Linzey, who wrote a book entitled
God Was at Midway: The Sinking of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) and the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway
(San Diego, CA: Black Forest, 1996). See also Ronald W. Russell,
No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway
(New York: iUniverse, 2006), 172.
2
. Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace
, trans. Anthony Briggs (London: Penguin, 2006), 1098.
Chapter 1
1
. Frank DeLorenzo, “Admiral Nimitz Arrives at Pearl Harbor,” BOMRT; E. B. Potter,
Nimitz
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 16.
2
. DeLorenzo, “Admiral Nimitz Arrives”; Potter,
Nimitz
, 16.
3
. Joseph Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 1:223; 1905
Lucky Bag
, USNA; Potter,
Nimitz
, 156.
4
. Potter,
Nimitz
, 16; John B. Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 45.
5
.
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1941
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1941), 1; Bruce Catton,
The War Lords of Washington
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948), 9–12.
6
. George H. Lobdell, “Frank Knox,” in
American Secretaries of the Navy
, ed. Paolo E. Coletta (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), 2:677–81; Harold L. Ickes,
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953–54), 2:718 (diary entry of Sept. 9, 1939); Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy,
On Active Service in Peace and War
(New York: Harper, 1948), 323–24.
7
. Lobdell, “Frank Knox,”682; Senate Committee on Naval Affairs,
Nomination of William Franklin Knox: Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs, United States Senate on the Nomination of William Franklin Knox to be Secretary of the Navy
, 76th Cong., 3rd sess., 1940, 42; Ickes,
Secret Diary
, 2:717; “Attack Upon Pearl Harbor,” 77th Cong., 2nd sess., 1942, S. Doc. 159, 20. See also Knox’s sycophantic letters to FDR in 1940 in President’s Secretary’s file, box 62, FDRL.
8
. Thomas B. Buell,
Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 111, Floyd Thorn interview (Aug. 14, 2000), NMPW.
9
. Eric Larrabee,
Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War
(New York: Harper & Row, 1987; reprint Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 171; Robert William Love, Jr., “Ernest Joseph King,” in
The Chiefs of Naval Operations
, ed. Robert William Love, Jr. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), 139–40, Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill,
Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record
(New York: Norton, 1952), 350–51.
10
. B. Mitchell Simpson, “Harold Raynsford Stark,” in Love,
Chiefs of Naval Operations
, 131, 119–20; Samuel Eliot Morison,
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
, vol. 1,
The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939–May 1943
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), 41. Stark’s memos to FDR, signed “Betty,” are in the President’s Secretary’s Files, FDRL, box 62. Stark subsequently went to England as commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe. The memo making King both CominCh and CNO is dated March 12, 1942, and is in the King Papers, Series I, box 1. It is also printed in Buell,
Master of Sea Power
as Appendix 4.
11
. Potter,
Nimitz
, 9; King’s comment about Nimitz is quoted in Larrabee,
Commander in Chief
, 356.
12
. A. T. Mahan,
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1890).
13
. Norman Jack (Dusty) Kleiss to the author, July 31, 2009.
14
. Potter, Nimitz, 62, 122–34.
15
. Ibid., 135–61.
16
. Kimmel’s plan for the employment of the carriers is in the “Briefed Estimate,” Dec. 10, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:13; Stark’s order is Stark to Kimmel, Dec. 15, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:49–50; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 23.
17
. Stark to Pye, and Pye to Stark, both Dec. 22, 1941, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 72; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 31; Edward Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 106.
18
. Stark to Pye, Dec. 27, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 120; Knox to Kimmel, Jan. 9, 1941, Kimmel Papers, AHC, box 2; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 39, 45. Circumstantial evidence suggests that that FDR may have subsequently blocked Pye’s appointment to command the South Pacific.
19
. The officer who likened Nimitz’s arrival to opening a window in a stuffy room was Raymond Spruance in an interview with Gordon Prange (Sept. 5, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
20
. Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 6.
21
. Edward P. Stafford,
The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise
(New York: Random House, 1962; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002), 23–24. Citations are to the Naval Institute Press edition.
22
. Edward S. Miller,
War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991);
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy
(1940), 27–33.
23
. Stark to Knox, Nov. 12, 1940, original in FDRL; also available online at
http://www.docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box4/a48b01.html
.
24
. Ibid.
25
. Ibid.
26
. Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack,
Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack
, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945, part 15, 1505. The text of Rainbow 5 is in Steven T. Ross, ed.,
American War Plans, 1919–1941
(New York: Garland, 1992), 5:100.
27
. Knox to ALNAV (all Navy personnel), Dec. 7, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, 5; Joel Ira Holwitt,
“Execute against Japan”: The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009).
28
. Buford Rowland and William B. Boyd,
U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II
(Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, 1953), 90; Thomas Wildenberg and Norman Polmar,
Ship Killer: A History of the American Torpedo
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 102 ff. See also Robert Gannon,
Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 75–76, 89.
29
. Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, Dec. 28, 1941, and Jan. 29, 1942, both in Nimitz Diary #1 (serial letters from Nimitz to his wife), NHHC.
Chapter 2
1
. The number of planes carried by the Kidō Butai is from Mark R. Peattie,
Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 152. John B. Lundstrom offers the slightly lower figure of 387 airplanes for the Kidō Butai in
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 151. A total of 360 aircraft were assigned to the Pearl Harbor strike, but there were ten aborts; in addition, the Japanese launched two “Jake” floatplanes, though they did not participate in the attack. I am grateful to Richard Frank, Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, and Lee Pennington for their help with this chapter.
2
. The “feminine delicacy” observation is from Matsunaga Keisuke, who is quoted by Hiroyuki Agawa in
The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy
, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 131, 139. The “recent scholar” is Sadao Adasa, in
From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 275. The American officer was Edwin T. Layton, from his oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully discuss Yamamoto’s personality in
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 22–23, Yamamoto’s involvement with carrier aircraft is from Asada,
From Mahan to Pearl Harbor
, 182–84.
3
. Agawa,
Reluctant Admiral
, 139.
4
. Ibid., 124.