Midway at Seventy Five

Seventy five years ago in the seas near Midway Island in the Pacific  the United States navy fought and won the most important and decisive naval battle since Trafalgar.  American forces with three carriers and their escort ships (including one carrier which had been patched up in short order after being damaged  heavily in an earlier battle)  defeated a far  larger Japanese force led by  four large and two small carriers – sinking all four of the large Japanese carriers and deciding the war in the Pacific.  In the six months before Midway the Japanese had enjoyed a remarkable series of victories and conquests over American, British, Dutch, and other forces in the Pacific. After Midway the Japanese never launched a successful offensive operation against American forces.  Only a few weeks after the battle American forces went on the offensive with the invasion of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and remained on the strategic offensive until the end of the war.

Most of the men who fought at Midway are now gone.  Soon all of them will be. While Americans rightly remember and celebrate the great deeds of their army  at Normandy in early June of 1944, they should equally remember and honor the great deeds of their navy in early June 1942.