Warbird Information Exchange

Just finishing it now. It is a very in depth look at the battle and how everything from Pear Harbor, Battle of the Coral Sea and the early American counter offensives played a role in what happened at Midway. it also looks at the political situation in both Japan and the U.S. and how the cultures played into the end result. the good thing is that I never felt like it was a "textbook" in terms of an enjoyable read - in fact I stayed up waaay to late reading it several times.

It is all good but one thing that blew me away was the "war gaming" the Japanese did leading up to Midway. They did a big red vs. blue battle and everytime the officers playing the U.S. did something that they referee did not like they would overrule and say, "the Americans have no fighting spirit to do such a thing" and they would have to take the move back. One thing I did not know was that the Japanese "rescued" a few fliers and after interrogating them, tied weights around thier legs and threw them back in the ocean.

Great book - check out your library and enjoy!

Tom P.

I read the book, and found nothing in it that I hadn't already read elsewhere. Far and away the best book about the Battle of Midway, in my opinion, is Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully.

I agree, Shattered Sword was the game-changer in terms of Battle of Midway history. This book has the state-of-the-art of modern understanding of the battle, from radar capabilities, packing of aircraft (and placement of bombs) on the Japanese decks and individual histories and fates of the pilots.

What I have never seen adequately presented is the FAILURE at Midaw - Stanhope Ring's command from the Hornet. Apparently, he would not accept the caclulatons from his units commanders of the location of the Japanese fleet, using instead his own understanding to lead his command on a wild goose chase, loosing more aircraft in the process than other units that did silly things like bomb Japanese carriers. There was so much written about the successful commanders, but what ultimately happened to Ring?

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Kevin McCartney

Symonds has a whole chapter about the "flight to nowhere" by Ring. He points out that part of the problem is that neither Ring or Mitscher ever wrote or spoke about the mission and it seems that in fact Mitscher's reports are almost contradictory at times. Also, none of the four mission commanders 'after action' reports survive.

To me it sounds like Ring was pretty arrogant and strikes me a bit like Lt. Sobel in 'Band of Brothers'. But, then again having been in a little boat in the Pacific ocean that would be a daunting place to navigate accurately without a GPS. Obviously Waldron was able to get VT-8 to the target though.

I was very interested to learn so much about how the construction of the U.S. and Japanese carriers and the cultural attitudes made a big difference. Specifically, the U.S. carriere were far more robust and had better damage control systems because the Japanese value of (to paraphrase) 'never surrender' led them to not worry as much about how to handle serious damage.

Anyway, sounds like I should pick up Shattered Sword and read that one to!

Tom P.

I think we may be in the wrong hangar for this discussion, but "Shattered Sword" is clearly the finest research on Midway in 50 years. Parschall and Tully actually simulated the deck loading of the IJN carriers rather than rely on Fuchida's book (he obviously had slightly biased viewpoint when he wrote his book!)as a primary source, and also researched a great deal.

Another excellent book is "A Dawn Like Thunder" by Bob Mrazek. It details Torpedo Squadron 8 -- there was more than one survivor --which totally surprised me. It discusses what happened to the squadron after the battle, and even after the war. (Stanhope Ring retired as a 3 star admiral, and passed in the 60's). Mitscher and Ring's post battle reports were so inaccurate that Nimitz basically said "disregard them". Highly recommend the book!

Mr. Mrazek spoke at the Military Aviation Museum in Va Beach a couple of summers ago, and brought one of the other survivors of VT-8 with him, retired USN Capt. Bert Ernest, who received a standing ovation from our 200 guests that day. TBM Avenger flew a demo, and it was an awesome day.

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"Thou shalt maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground reach up and smite thee."