Battle of Midway: The Decision of the Pacific War | Frontlines Ep. 01 | Documentary

the front line is combat at its most brutal drives people to extreme acts for many complex reasons they were fighting for each other not for patriotism but for their bodies we reveal the most decisive front lines in the second world war and take you deep into the heart of battle with the men who were there they were attacking with divisions and I had one rifle company with about a hundred men I was down to my last box of ammunition we had no food and we was hurting 1942 the Battle of Midway the most pivotal Naval engagement in the Pacific war between Japan and America a totally unpredictable event where a new type of combat redefines the front line you were in a plane looking down hanging from your shoulder straps going at 500 feet a second and it hit the target with tremendous impact and the cockpit becomes the decisive weapon and he did a beautiful job plugged his thousand pound bomb right where it would do the most damage Miss steaks and mutiny Define midway's front line as one of History's major turning points first strike in the battle goes to the Japanese [Music] June 1942 the Japanese Mount another surprise attack on the Americans in the Pacific this time on their remote base Midway atoll six months after the devastating strike on Pearl Harbor the U.S is still reeling from the shock and out for Revenge the Japanese saw an attack on Pearl Harbor as a way of crippling American power right from the beginning it also fit in with a long Japanese military tradition of using surprise attacks at the beginning of wars the outcome of Japan's shock assault on Midway will have a major impact on the wider conflict in the Pacific and revolutionize Naval Warfare the Japanese understood that attacking America was a huge gamble not least because of America's economic power but obviously they were willing to take that risk way itself is a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean barely six square kilometers of land it earned its name because of its position roughly halfway between North America and Asia 4100 kilometers east of Tokyo it started Life as a volcano and is now an atoll a ring-shaped coral reef surrounding a lagoon that includes two pieces of land [Music] Sand Island and eastern island home to a U.S Air Base [Music] it's a tiny little set of sand dunes sticking up above the water there's no fresh water there it's home mostly to migratory Birds and its main goal is to serve as a warning and outlying outpost for the Hawaiian Islands themselves it's actually strategically critical for the Americans even though there's not really anything there strategic importance makes it the perfect Target for The Mastermind of Japanese Imperial expansion Admiral Yamamoto he knows why the victory can only come if he can draw out and quickly destroy America's most powerful warships it's aircraft carriers Yamamoto thought that the only way to get the American aircraft carriers out of Hawaii was to go and take some American property the true destructive force of Carrier air power had been revealed on one Infamous day in 1941. the 7th of December when Japan shocked the world with its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii we heard a screaming aircraft and moments later a terrible explosion we ran outside the hangar about a hundred yards from me it was engulfed and smoked and Flame first thing we've seen was the circling aircraft overhead with the Rising Sun and Signal we immediately knew what happened and everything goes through Humana fear anger I was surprised I seen all the battleship Rule and fire the Arizona the West Virginia the Tennessee Nevada Oklahoma California there was a devastating fight site I'll never forget forget about how important that Pacific Fleet was to the American public they were a symbol of American might both military and Industrial that was our great Fleet that was invulnerable those were the best we could build and the Japanese wiped them out in a day the battleships are sunk or damaged but the U.S carriers are not there the great irony of the attack at Pearl Harbor was that although the Japanese used this radical new method of warfare these groups of aircraft carriers they actually failed to successfully catch any of the American aircraft carriers in Port while the U.S Navy had its carriers or flat tops it could stop Admiral yamamoto's ambitions Japan's Rampage across Asia stepped up a gear in 1937 with the brutal invasion of China that cost millions of lives its Imperial forces subjugated and terrorized the Chinese before it's set out to conquer more of Asia one of the consequences of this is that America has announced an embargo of oil which would hit the Japanese extremely hard this would have a crippling effect on not only the economic life but also their military expansion plans the Japanese response to the effective Oil Embargo was to attack Pearl Harbor by mid-1942 the Japanese empire occupies southeast Asia Malaya Singapore Hong Kong the Philippines and several Pacific Islands [Music] it now pushes into Burma and New Guinea in early May a U.S led Fleet engages them off Australia in the Coral Sea there's a naval battle between the major Capital ships of both sides but they never came into contact it's only their airplanes came into contact the warplanes do all the work as it's also the first carrier versus carrier battle a chaotic engagement that destroys or damages two Japanese carriers since one American flat top and leaves the USS Yorktown limping home trailing oil at both the Coral Sea and Midway the front line is defined by the strike range of a carrier's Air Wing around 250 to 300 kilometers well over four times the distance their biggest battleships guns can fire the plane is now the decisive weapon its Armament and endurance combined with the Pilot's observation and flying skills his instincts and luck are now the critical factors in determining victory at scene [Music] Carrier air power really revolutionized Naval Warfare at the beginning of World War II and so almost immediately as navies realize that they could put aircraft on warships they began thinking about the ways in which those aircraft could deliver bombs Torpedoes all sorts of Firepower at a much longer range than a battleship's guns could fire the Coral Sea leaves Admiral Yamamoto with four big Fleet carriers his plan depends on the U.S flat tops being in Pearl Harbor and only responding once Midway is occupied foreign we would strike their carriers in a pencil attack from Midway and our carriers we did not expect encounter enemy carriers that day at all it's now the morning of the 4th of June 1942. a day that will be decisive in the Pacific War the four Japanese carriers launch a perfectly coordinated strike on Midway with 108 aircraft I happen to be in the second aircraft to spot this Armada approaching Midway June the 4th they hit with the Scout plane's warnings Midway scrambles its bombers to counter-attack and fighters to intercept the incoming strike wave the Marines were equipped within an obsolete aircraft a Brewster Buffalo they sent 27 of them all off only seven of them returned and they were badly damaged the Marine interceptors are cut to Pieces by the highly maneuverable zero Fighters while the Japanese bombers start to set Midway Ablaze destroying the hangars and fuel dump mid-1942 Henderson Airfield Midway Island the U.S means that are defending it they've got machine guns and most of them are armed with one of these an M1 Garand rifle gas operated semi-automatic eight round clip first strike in the battle goes to the Japanese infantry hate aircraft that's a fact a weapon like this is excellent for fighting other infantry it is less good trying to hit an aircraft very very high in the air what the Marines have at Henderson Airfield that made the difference was machine guns and it's those machine guns that were the real aircraft killers on the day they shoot down or damage around 25 of the attackers and dispatch B-17 bombers to follow the planes already engaging the Japanese Fleet our people on the islands tried to reciprocate by going after the shipping but those people were not experienced in Naval bombardment it's been so far as they never got a single hit on the Japanese ships but what it did do was force the Japanese to maneuver and to defend their Fleet with their Fighters this ties up the carrier's decks with fighter operations stopping the launching of more bombers which are needed as the first Japanese strike fails to destroy all its targets the decision to launch a second attack to finish the job will have dramatic consequences the attack is carried out by Japan's veteran Pilots using their state-of-the-art aircraft the valve dive bomber a highly effective ship killer the cape torpedo bomber is seen as the biggest threat to the U.S forces with its powerful payload both are also highly effective ground assault bombers the zero fighter is light maneuverable and armed with powerful 20 millimeter cannons able to climb three times faster than its U.S Rivals it's unmatched at the time the second Japanese strike wave planned to [ __ ] Midway seems invincible however the three American flat tops they believe are in Pearl Harbor 1700 kilometers away are in fact now approaching them rapidly foreign two days earlier three U.S carriers and their escorts secretly rendezvoused at Point luck about 500 kilometers Northeast of Midway and apply for battle the Japanese know nothing about them the Japanese had 21 submarines available to them and the picket line which should have been surrounding Pearl Harbor was not in place in time it was two days late and thus by catching the Japanese by surprise the Americans now already have the upper hand and an awful of opportunities here in the Battle of Midway the American Fleet has evaded the enemy blockade around Pearl Harbor and is closing fast on Midway another U.S strike wave launched from Midway fails to score any hits on the Japanese Fleet at Great cost eight of 16 are shot down on the bridge of his Flagship Admiral Yamamoto believes his attack is running almost a plan what he doesn't know is that his enemies have in effect been reading his mind the Americans had another Advantage at Midway the code breaking effort at Pearl Harbor led by a naval officer by the name of Joseph roachford had actually managed to break a fair amount of the Japanese Naval codes workaholic rochevor is an eccentric genius with a simple philosophy if you desire to be a really great Crypt analyst being a little bit nuts helps an intelligence officer has one job to tell his Commander today with the Japanese are going to do tomorrow 's team can only break some of the Japanese radio signals and exactly what the Americans know has been exaggerated it's not like the Japanese were sending out detailed plans of exactly what they were going to do and so part of this code breaking effort is not just breaking the code it's then assembling the jigsaw puzzle of information you get out of it and so rochefort was able to give Nimitz something of a picture of what was about to happen the code breaking suggests that Japanese are planning a mass attack but the target is only referred to as AF Rush Force secretly orders Midway to radio that its water purification system had broken down there was a note that this target what the the Japanese referred to as AF was running short of fresh water because the distiller had broken this was for Nimitz was enough confirmation to decide that Midway was the Target that the Japanese were going after it seems AF is in fact Midway but by deciding to take the bait and defend the island Admiral Nimitz is gambling and the stakes are all his aircraft carriers if they've analyzed the wrong information if they have made the wrong decision based on information and intelligence they have analyzed then they will have a problem the odds against nimitz's Great gamble are worsened by the state of his ships and men after their losses at Coral Sea they all needed replenishment the air groups needed replacement pilots and planes for those that had been lost on the 27th of May the damaged Yorktown finally limps into Pearl Harbor still trailing oil it needs 90 days of repairs but Admiral Nimitz says they can only have three [Music] on the 30th of May she set sail for Midway with the repair team still on board filling the holes to face a completely undefeated and Powerful Japanese Fleet risking carriers for the children saying spits in the middle of the ocean the Enterprise and Hornet are departed for Midway two days earlier and then the Yorktown magically disappeared so there were now three of us we had heard that there were as many as six Japanese carriers so if it kind of evened up the odds just a little bit when the Yorktown came online no one then knew that in fact photo only commands four carriers but even today many still believe one of midway's biggest myths the legend are on midways that the Americans were underdogs that the uh the Plucky undermanned under equipped American Fleet somehow managed a miraculous upset over and overwhelmingly large Japanese Fleet it's true that Yamamoto commands many more warships including battleships but the crucial balance of power is in aircraft again the Japanese do have a slight Advantage at sea 248 aircraft on four carriers compared to around 230 on America's three flat tops and most importantly the Japanese have to worry not just about the American aircraft carriers but they had to worry about the airstrip on Midway itself midway's Airfield deploys over a hundred more combat aircraft it's idea that America was outnumbered outgunned is entirely mythical that morning the first Japanese strike leaves Midway burning but calls for a second wave to finish the job yamamoto's Deputy Admiral nagumo is in operational command of the four carriers he orders his Planes re-armed to bomb the island so their deadly anti-ship Torpedoes are removed nagumo still does not know the Americans are closing his scalp planes report nothing until just over an hour after the attack on Midway when they Glimpse enemy warships but cannot identify their time they should have flown law and lower until they were right on the deck even if it cost them their lives Admiral nagumo halts the realmi but who have they spotted nagumo dithered a couldn't quite decide what to do that hesitation actually turns into a fatal one for nagumo and for the Japanese aircraft carriers just to see his U.S warships are approaching bombs start to explode around the Japanese carriers unseen at a high altitude midway's B-17 bombers attack trying to hit an aircraft carrier from twenty thousand feet with a bomb Israel like dropping a marble on the scuttling cockroach the chances of the B-17 is actually causing any damage were pretty small but they do Force the carriers to turn violently to avoid the falling bombs just as admironagumo's Scout plane reports the news in most fears [Music] enemy Force accompanied by what appears to be an aircraft carrier bringing up the rear the gumo only has a very small force of dive bombers ready to go but all his Fighters are engaging the American bombers he now faces a critical decision launch a suicidal attack without fighter escorts or wait for a mass offensive First Strike Advantage is absolutely essential for the obvious reason if you can you can bury the the opposition aircraft carrier it can no longer send up planes to attack you but Admiral nagumo also faces another problem his strike wave is returning from Midway and must land as it is low on fuel it is feasible he could have got some planes off but it would have been at the cost of very large numbers of planes coming back from the first strike on Midway so nagumo is caught I think in in almost an impossible position he cannot launch any planes While others land in retrospect I think nagumo made the wrong decision the real threat was the American aircraft carriers those were the ones those are the ones that he had to deal with blame that nagumo here he doesn't know where the Americans have found the Japanese Fleet and have launched aircraft so he's really in the in the dark here but if the Japanese Admiral is in the dark the American aviators are clear on their mission attack of course the pilots dashed up here and revved up their engines and took off the Americans did not hesitate the Enterprise and hornet launched their mass strike Wings 90 minutes before they are even seen by the Japanese Scout plane I wanted to hit the Japanese carriers as early as possible with all the air strength I had available for this purpose but his bold move is followed by a shambles as the different squadrons struggle to form their attack formations in the air and sad to say the Hornet and Enterprise Pilots had the circle the task force helplessly so we lost some valuable time and very very valuable Aviation gas it is over an hour before Hornet's Strike Force finally departs when you look at the airstrike that the Americans had launched it was kind of chaotic and at least one unit of planes heading off in completely the wrong direction for the aircraft carriers oh all four squadrons of the Hornets air group led by Commander Stanhope ring head Due West rather than Southwest where the Japanese carriers had been spotted for reasons which have never been fully explained and possibly never will be explained they set off their pilots on the courses for his Due West which was never going to catch the Japanese Fleet far below Commander Rings dive bombers Hornets torpedo bombers are led by Lieutenant Commander John Waldron he breaks radio silence you're going the wrong direction for the Japanese carrier Force the hell with you I know where they are and I'm going to them Waldron disobeys orders and Banks to the Southwest followed by his whole torpedo Squadron to hunt for the Japanese carriers then the fighter escorts and dive bombers also abandoned Commander ring but now dangerously low on fuel 13 out of 24 are forced to ditch into the sea before they can reach Midway technically speaking this is this is Disobedience of a senior officer in combat could even be classified as a as a mutiny but no one is punished as it is covered up as long as you were successful you were pretty much excused after the battle was over by chance Waldron's men are filmed a few days earlier but what happened to them that morning within 45 minutes Waldron finds the Japanese carriers and without any fighter escorts or dive bomber support his Squadron drops to 60 meters and attacks flying into swarms of zero Fighters and then dense anti-aircraft fire in their agent Douglas Devastators which was only devastating in terms of how slow it was and how vulnerable it was as an airplane American radio operators hear some Transmissions from John Waldron watch those Fighters attack immediately my two wingmen are going in the water Zero's jumped on us and it was too late I figured that there was about 35 of them you just gotta fly up to the ship and then take whatever you get I dropped the torpedo and was fortunate enough to get away from the anti-aircraft fire although everything was shooting at me and son gay is the only Survivor from those 30 men his Squadron scores no hits they're armed with the Infamous Mark 13 torpedo already thought to be fatally flawed they did a test it was too slow the firing pins didn't work and it couldn't operate at the right level in the water to be able to hit a ship they ran erratically they ran deep and some of them just hit the hull of the ships that they were targeting and the tomatoes broke up and sank without exploding so effectively John Waldron with his Squadron of torpedo bombers went into attack with Duds the chances of any of them actually going off and sinking a Japanese aircraft carrier were practically zero Waldron's sacrifice a decision made by just a handful of Pilots redefines the front line in Naval Air Warfare the pilots the people sitting in the planes have got a very and fundamental different experience of warfare from what you would for example find in a land situation these individual Pilots can and the right circumstances determine the outcome of an entire battle and now transform Warfare this was completely new stuff new war machines and new tactics it was very early early days [Music] further proof of this comes on the second American Carrier the USS Enterprise whose squadrons also get totally split up like the Hornets her dive bombers and Fighters have also entirely lost track of the enemy carriers but somehow her torpedo bombers find them but will they share Waldron's fate [Music] Enterprises Devastator torpedo attack is led by Lieutenant Commander Eugene Lindsay their attack is almost as suicidal as waldrons most are shot down and killed causing no damage to yamamoto's carriers it really does look like the charges of Light Brigade into the cannon fodder but it had the crucial effect of bringing the Japanese air cover down to ground level it also made them short of fuel and ammunition so they needed to come back to their ships to be refueled and reloaded with ammunition and this setup the perfect opportunity for the one attack weapon that the Americans had which did work these are the dive bombers off the Enterprise but they still can't find the carriers arriving at the estimated point of contact the sea was empty not a [ __ ] vessel was in sight unlike the vulnerable Devastator the other American strike aircraft is more modern The Dauntless SBD dive bomber is affectionately known as slow but deadly with a good range decent payload and a rear firing Gunner for defense veteran Aviator Wade McCluskey leads Enterprises to squadrons of dauntless dive bombers more than two hours of searching bravely takes them way past the point of safe return in their determination to find and attack the enemy I knew and most everybody else knew that we didn't have enough fuel to get back warships have no radar it's now a deadly game of who will spot the enemy first McCloskey says we're going to press on just a little longer and just moments later he spotted the white wake of a fast-moving Japanese destroyer and he says that ship has to be racing to rejoin the main Fleet we'll follow it McCluskey gambles all his Planes Fate on a hunch but the enemy Destroyer is speeding back to the four carriers peering through my binoculars which were practically glued to my eyes I saw Dead Ahead about 35 miles distance the welcome side of the [ __ ] carrier striking Force [Music] I found the Japanese carriers and they were just ripe for the plucking no fighter defense up in the air there they were all down battling the torpedo planes so our our dive bombers had a just a beautiful shot that's beautiful as could be meanwhile the third American Carrier the damaged Yorktown launches its strike Wing well after the Enterprise but they're more experienced Crews quickly catch up with McCluskey the yorktown's planes Converge on the four Japanese carriers at the same time as McCluskey by pure chance foreign at high altitude the yorktown's dive bombers arrive from a different direction to McCluskey's planes while at sea level her 12 torpedo bombers start their attack but this time they go in with a fighter escort their Wildcats May climb much slower than the zero but can survive a real beating six Wildcat Fighters bravely battle more than three dozen attacking zeros we tore into the torpedo bombers flying low straight and true we felt to Torpedoes were the biggest threat since a single torpedo could sink a ship I was impressed at how bravely they pushed home their attacks outnumbered and outclassed the American torpedo bombers start to fall from the sky then I saw this glint in the sun and it just looked like a beautiful silver waterfall these dive bombers coming down I've never seen such superb dive bombing up at nearly 6 000 meters McCluskey leads his 30 planes into that terrifying vertical descent onto the nearest Japanese carrier the kaga I saw the top of the dive bomber as it flipped upside down it hung like a spider on the thread coming right down at us at 760 meters they dropped their 500 pound bombs the first three missed then four hit the kaga the ship turned into a Inferno who was left with little to fight the flames the deck was packed with the injured dying and those two exhausted to move foreign bombing is one of the least understood weapons that's ever existed you were in the plane looking down hanging from your shoulder straps in the Battle of midways Pilots were dropping about 2500 feet you're going at 500 feet a second and it hit the target with tremendous impact at least one bomb punches through the wooden flight deck and sets off the ordinance in the hangar you have all the conditions for an absolute catastrophe and the cargo just blows out its sides all the ammunition goes up and the the ship essentially is immediately completely written off and in within an instant but beside the cargo is another Japanese carrier in a terrible era all of the American dive bombers have attacked the cargo [Music] Lieutenant dick best spots McCluskey's mistake and orders his second Squadron to abort McCluskey apparently did not know the protocol called for him hitting the furthest away carrier so he attacked the nearest carrier most of our people hit the nearest carrier four minutes later Lieutenant best Dives on the second Japanese carrier the the akagi [Music] his bomb punches through the flight deck and explodes in the plain-filled hangar and he did a beautiful job on it or plunked his thousand pound bomb right where it would do the most damage [Music] out of his dive he sees a third Japanese carrier burst into flames yorktown's dive bombers have hit the sorry you three times starting fatal fires on the flight deck and in the hangars in the space of a few minutes strikes by just eight bombs devastate three of the Japanese carriers a little later in the day after three aircraft were sunk uh Admiral spruance called Admiral Nimitz and says uh we've had a good day Admiral we sunk three aircraft carriers do you think that's enough he said hell no I want the fourth one thank you but before the Americans can regroup the Japanese Strike Back their only unscathed carrier the hiriu launches a counter-attack the American strikes have proven how few hits can destroy three heavily defended carriers but another technological advantage now comes into play for the American Fleet radar they detect the enemy strike planes about 75 kilometers away allowing more U.S fighters to scramble as those on patrol affected to intercept Wildcats shoot down 10 of the attacking 18-val dive bombers two more fall to the barrage of anti-aircraft fire thrown up by the Yorktown and her escorts but the six surviving vowels execute a textbook diaper scoring three hits from just 150 meters when I took off the Yorktown was the fightness ship in the Navy and when I got back it was dead in the water I flew down close to take a look and all I could see were dead men on Deck there just wasn't anybody alive on board that was an eerie sight a second airstrike proves the potency of the Japanese Torpedoes over the American Duds as two hit the Yorktown stopping her and creating a severe list we saw the Yorktown being attacked and uh my feelings were that's our sister ship I don't like it Crews tackle the fires that break out on the Yorktown in the second world war few injuries are fared like Burns injury whether it's the metal tube of an aircraft or trapped below decks on a ship that's under attack fire can rip through catching everything from supplies to uniforms to human hair and do extraordinary damage that's very painful and very difficult to fix it isn't just about losing the skin suffering the burn from the fire itself the body's own response to the burn is the thing that will ultimately kill the patient you know when you have a small burn that you get a blister fluid from your system has gone to the site of the of the wound to replace the fluid lost by the high temperatures imagine that happening on not just a small burn on your finger but all over your body the body can't sustain the loss of that much fluid from major organs to external skin damage and it shuts down it goes into something that we call wound shock perhaps surprisingly what we're looking at on this table are the basic principles of good bones treatment this is The Cutting Edge in 1944. you need to dress it to keep it clean to keep it free of infection but we also need to bear in mind that that dressing will have to be removed every time you take a dressing off you're effectively removing the surface and exposing it to infection all over again so petroleum jelly really simple compound becomes a key component of burns treatment you slather petroleum jelly over the burn surface and then you apply the dressing and it means that the dressing can be removed atraumatically they're not taking away a layer of healing that's already started to happen and in addition to these two quite simple things saline salted water replacing the fluid lost at the burn site three really simple things but they're the foundation of saving the life of a badly burned patient there is still in the United States a tremendous reticence about letting the public see the consequences of the war so when service Personnel are returned particularly from the Far East whose sustained Burns injury who've got this kind of scarring that can be fairly difficult to look at to understand and to process they're generally hidden away they're taken into hospitals behind High walls and they continue their treatment and very little attention is paid to them publicly as having served their country as the damage control Crews battled to save the listing Yorktown are operational planes and Pilots fight on from the other U.S carriers and then locate the hiriu 10 of the yorktown's dive bombers now join 14 from the Enterprise to hit the hiriu again Lieutenant best scores making it two for two devastating the enemy four explosions leave her aflame and she sinks the next morning I was shot down and later rescued the ship's doctor said we treat the lightly injured and ignored the badly wounded they are a waste of resources this is the reality of War it is cruel and unforgiving [Music] foreign as the sun sets over the crippled Yorktown Admiral sprawns takes overall command on the Enterprise but Admiral Yamamoto still believes his fast ship-killing battleships can even the score the front line is now determined by the range of his Battleship guns far less than the strike range of the U.S aircraft but those are now useless in the Darkness that night the Japanese tried to find the U.S carriers with their powerful warships Admiral spruance eventually orders a withdrawal defying the outrage of his offices who want to continue the attack his wise decision saves the American carriers from possible destruction by the battleships foreign two heavy Japanese Cruisers Collide damaging one badly while the second is sunk by U.S warplanes on the 6th of June that Cruiser was twisting and turning making turns that pulled you right over on your back we were dropping bombs all around it was throwing up a flock of anti-aircraft shells one got sad for the first time I really hated them [Music] Yamamoto cancels the Midway operation [Music] when we return to uh to Pearl Harbor we were greeted by Admiral and image he shook hands with everybody there was quite a homecoming Japan has suffered a huge defeat losing 248 aircraft four big carriers a Heavy Cruiser and around 3 000 men by comparison the U.S Navy loses about 150 planes one carrier a destroyer and just over 300 men the argument from Midway being one of the most critical moments in the Pacific War is absolutely valid the loss of four Japanese carriers really did shift the momentum in the Pacific from what had been a really uninterrupted stream of Japanese victories it also gave a great boost to the whole Allied war effort handing them the initiative before Midway the Japanese carriers dictated the flow of the war between America and Japan after Midway it was the Americans who dictated the the pace and the sequencing of the war but when we turned the tide in Midway it was a relief it was a it was a great pleasure and it's gone down in history now as one of the greatest naval battle of all time a Japanese trap became an American Ambush and totally transformed Naval Warfare [Music]

Channel: hazards and catastrophes

Views: 1,842,221

Keywords: midway, war, history, battle, pearl harbor, ww2, documentary, pacific, world war, history channel, navy, world war ii, pacific war, military history, uss hornet, world war 2, the battle of midway, aircraft carrier battle, midway documentary, pacific war documentary, world war 2 documentary, navy documentary, aircraft carrier documentary, warships, warship documentary, enterprise, hornet, battle of midway, war documentary, imperial japanese navy, us navy, history documentary

Id: 5pJU3ahhR-E

Length: 52min 11sec (3131 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 20 2023