School of War - Ep 35: Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor on the Battle of Midway

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Brendan Simms, Professor at the University of Cambridge, and his co-author, Steven McGregor, a U.S. Army vet, join the show to talk about their new book, The Silver Waterfall: How America Won the War in the Pacific at Midway. ▪️ Times  • 02:12 Introduction • 02:30 Why Write About Midway? • 05:54 Strategic Situation In The Pacific  • 08:26 Who Is Chester Nimitz?  • 11:02 Small Scale Start To The Large Scale Fight • 14:20 Intelligence Breaches And Carrier Combat  • 17:12 Dueling Carrier Doctrines  • 22:09 Lt. Dusty Kleiss On The Day Of Battle • 24:45 Hide And Seek In The Pacific Ocean • 28:45 Finding The Kido Butai At Midway • 30:53 To Dive Bomb Or Not • 32:11 Never Call Me A Hero • 33:38 A Fine Days Work  • 36:23 Preparation + Opportunity = Luck

A few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, Chester Nimitz was summoned to the White House for a brief interview with President Roosevelt. Afterwards, he walked home in a daze and found his wife resting in bed. What is it? What's happened? she asked him. I'm to be the new commander-in-chief in the Pacific, he said. You've always wanted to command the Pacific Fleet. You've always thought that would be the height of glory. Nimitz responded,

Darling, the fleet's at the bottom of the sea. Nobody must know that here, but I have got to tell you. Just six months later, Nimitz would orchestrate epic ambush of the Japanese Navy near a tiny island more or less literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The engagement was the fruition of decades of feverish technical innovation and strategic debates. A great carrier battle that marked the high tide of the Japanese Empire and began the multi-year process of American victory. Today, let's discuss the Battle of Midwaters.

It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We'll fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Erin McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. Delighted to welcome today two guests.

First is Brendan Sims. He's professor in the history of international relations and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He's the author of any number of well-known books, including a phenomenal biography of Hitler. And most recently is the author of The Silver Waterfall, an account of the Battle of Midway, which we're going to be discussing today. He co-authored that book with our other guest, Stephen McGregor. Stephen deployed to the Sunni triangle of death as an infantry officer in the 101st Airborne Division. He was awarded the Combat Infantryman's badge in the Purple Heart. Afterwards,

he did postgraduate work in England in history. And this is his first book. Brendan, Stephen, thank you both so much for joining. Hello. Thanks for. Thanks for having us. Well, maybe I could ask actually each of you in turn to just tell us a little bit of backstory about your interest in the battle of Midway. I understand there's a sort of personal connection for the both of you. So, Brandon, why don't we start with you, and then we'll go to Stephen. Well, I'm a bit older than Steve, and so I remember the original Battle of Midway film, the Hollywood version with Henry Fonda and others, which came out in 1976.

And I watched most of the film in the cinema, very struck by it, but I was then obsessed, as a young boy would be, at age or nine at the time, by the scenes of battlefield injury. And so I actually left the cinema and then watched the the Numa, the culmination of the film, which, of course, is the sinking of the Japanese carriers, and I watched it over the shoulders of this cinema washer. And really, ever since then, I've been sort of fascinated by the Battle of Midway. And so when I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to team up with Steve McGregor, who unlike myself, has actually served in a war and knows the American military,

I sort of seized that opportunity, and the book is the result. And Steve, to you as well, and also curiously, As Brennan points out, you're a veteran, you know, how did actual service lead into now work as a historian and an interest in the Second World War period? I suppose, I mean, especially the Pacific Theater and the Second World War is vast. It's three times larger than the European. It's enormous. And so you need some way into that conflict. And the Battle Midway is a great way to do it.

So if it's not something you've studied thoroughly, then this is a great book to get. to come to grips with exactly what's at stake in the major players who are involved in the technology that allows the United States to ultimately win that campaign. I suppose for me, the transition from being in the army to writing about a naval battle, I mean, that was just, it was wild, I guess. I mean, I came over to England originally because I met an English woman and that was, you know, it's a love story. That was how that happened. But I think, I think, as well, reading about the reading, reading these memoirs, there's a lot of memoirs because we spend a lot of time reading firsthand accounts of the battle.

I mean, I found that quite eerie because particularly one of the main characters we talk about in the book, Dusty Klyst, he's a very important pilot on the day of the battle. He goes through the same kind of, he goes through an experience I recognized completely because he delays proposing to his girlfriend because he thinks, I'll do it, I'll propose to her after I come back from the war, and then he finds himself out there. and in the middle of the ocean thinking he was so stupid. He can't believe that he waited. He's like, why?

How could I have done this? I should have just married her when I had the chance. And I completely identified with that. And so, yeah, when I came back, when I came back from Iraq, that was the first thing I did to marry my girlfriend and she was over here in England. So that was how it all began. Good for you. Good for you.

Good for you. My experience leading young infantrymen, perhaps you had the same, was actually typically they propose and get married before deployment, typically to people. Typically to people that they later regretted about. Yeah. It's not universal, but it does happen. It sounds like your story worked out better. You want to make some extra money if you can, you know.

You get to live outside the barracks. I get it. Yeah. This question for either of you. And let's just proceed as, you know, kind of conversationally as we can through here. But let's set the scene. You know, it's May, June, 1942. What is the strategic situation in the Pacific?

What are the Japanese up to? what are the Americans up to? What are the conditions that ultimately lead to this battle? Well, it's a grim situation for not really the United States, but in fact for the alliance, which of course includes the British Empire, because over the previous five to six months or so, ever since Pearl Harbor, the Japanese have run riots across the Pacific and indeed parts of Southeast Asia. So, of course, they've not only sunk most of the battleship fleet in Pearl Harbor itself, they've occupied Hong Kong, they've occupied Malaya, they've taken Singapore, and they've just completed the conquest of the Philippines. So the war in the Pacific, and the Far East is going

very badly for the United States. And they've got to basically turn things around. I suppose you could also, you could also add to that. I mean, it's very, it's very important to remember the way that the Japanese are being, they're very successful in the opening months of the campaign, and this puts America on the back foot. The other thing that's important to remember is that Chester Nimitz, when he becomes commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet, he then decides to go on a campaign, he decides to go on the offense. And so there's a series of island raids in the early months of 1942. And these are very important. They don't accomplish very much. There's not very much destroyed, and certainly the islands themselves don't change

hands as a result. But what, what takes place is the pilots, the pilots who end up participating the Battle Midway are able to become combat tested. They're able to know that they can actually perform when they need to. And so I think, and this also then helps Nimitz know that Midway is worth the risk that he can send in his planes and know that they're going to have a chance of success. But for the pilots themselves, they, this all means that on the day of battle, June, on the 4th of June, they're doing something that they've done before. Let's talk about Nimitz for a minute because the book, which is really excellent gentlemen, and thank you very much for writing it.

It opens with these series of profiles, which one, Nimitz is one. Who is Chester Nimitz? What's his background? You know, what prepares him for this immense challenge of, you recount this extraordinarily moving scene of him breaking the news to his wife that he's commander of the Pacific fleet now are commander chief in the Pacific and she says, you know, this is what you always wanted. He responds, well, darling, you know, the fleet's at the bottom of the Pacific. So, you know, mixed blessing. But anyway, step back. Who is, who is this guy? And when he comes into the job,

what, what does his, what are his priorities? What does his design become? One thing, because there's a lot to say about him. One thing is he's a humble man. He's from the Fulnills of Texas. He's born in Fredericksburg, 1885. You know, remember, he's from another generation. So he's from, He's in some respects. He is born in the 19th century, but he's certainly from an era of, because he enters the Navy in 1901, graduates from Annapolis four years later. So he is definitely, he enters the Navy before the Wright brothers have even flown. So he's from another generation.

But the first point I made about his humble background. I mean, he's not from a wealthy family. He decides to enter the Navy to go to Annapolis because he wants a challenge. initially he's thinking about West Point, but he changes his mind because his local congressman says, well, I can get you, I can get you a spot at Annapolis. So he like many of the, so there's two other main characters in our book, Dusty Klyss and Ed Einemann, Nimitz is similar in the way that he's just, he's from a small town, a small family, and he works very hard and accomplishes a great deal.

One thing I noticed about his career that's, it's hard to contemplate this being. the case today, but here he is, you know, and given a command of immense significance, but at one point, he's run a ship of ground. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a different Navy at that time, no? Yes, the decatur. He runs his first, it's his first command. He runs to the ground and, um, and as a result, he's then put into submarines. And notably a demotion at the time, as you, as you point out. Amazing. Yes, because the surface fleet was sort of regarded as the, the pinnacle of naval power. And, Fortunately, fortunately for us, Nimitz does not give up.

He manages to overcome that setback. And yeah, he has a pretty big failure early on in his career. And so it's a good reminder, you know, for ourselves. And also if you happen to have someone that you know in a similar situation, you know, second chances they sometimes are, you know, they turn out well. Yeah. So here we are December, you know, into January 42. Nimitz has ridden across America on a train with, as you again, vividly put it,

it's a bottle of scotch and, you know, a bunch of paperwork to go through, a bunch of reports. He gets out there to the West Coast. What does he think he has to do? Brendan, what's the plan here? Well, what he needs to do first is to change the dynamic. So as Stephen has said, he launches these series of island raids, which are really, in a sense, pinpricks militarily, but they break. increased confidence and they go down extremely well with the American public. But of course,

while these are useful from the point of view of public relations, useful from the point of view of gaining experience, they haven't actually laid a glove on any Japanese carrier until May 1942. And it changes them because Nimitz is really exceptionally able to understand and to use intelligence. His intelligence station, station, hypo, tells him that the Japanese are going to move into the Coral Sea. Nimitz then knows that this intelligence, he believes this intelligence is good, and then there ensues the battle as the Coral Sea, which is the first proper carrier battle, where the two sides certainly see each other, they simply launch aircraft in each other's general direction. And because the Coral Sea is a success in that sense, it's an intelligence, a success,

has the confidence to accept that when he's told that the Japanese are planning to attack Midway, he then has the confidence to say, well, the Japanese are trying to track me, but I'm actually going to ambush them instead. And so he sets up the Midway operation to make that possible. And so let's flip the map then. So you say the Japanese want to trap Nimitz and I guess the American carriers specifically at Midway. First, what may be an obvious question, but I think we should still ask, why? You know, what's, what's why? What are they ultimately after here? And then how? And why midway? You know, what, what, what's the actual plan from the Japanese perspective? So the problem for the Japanese is that even though they've been doing particularly well,

as we said, for the past six months, they actually missed the American carriers at Pearl Harbor. And so what the Yamamoto, the chief of the combined pleads, wants to do, is to lure the American carriers out from Pearl Harbor. and destroy them. And in order to do that, he essentially has to attack a target that he knows or he believes that the Americans will respond to, that they will feel they'll have to defend. And Midway is, in his eyes, such a target. It's, as the name suggests, it's pretty much Midway in the Pacific Ocean. If you attack Midway, he thinks the Americans have to react. They will then send out their carriers and he will have lying in weight his striking for

the mobile force, the Kido Butai, as it was called, and he will then pulverize the American carriers. Now, Nimitz, having advanced notice of the Japanese attack, is then put in the advantageous position that he can get his carriers into the right place, so they will actually be out of peril, lying in weight themselves a bit north of midway, and so that he will then be able to snare the snare, so to speak. He will ambush. the man who's trying to ambush him. And so presumably then at this point, the Japanese have no inkling

or little inkling of the intelligence disaster that they are in the midst of? Do they get one as a consequence of this battle? Do they go the length of the war without figuring it out? Well, they looked into it afterwards, but they concluded that there hadn't been an issue. So they had absolutely no sense before the battle that this lay in store for them.

So it was a massive intelligence failure. on the Japanese side? You mentioned the Battle of the Coral Sea, which is kind of a bit of a warm-up here. What is the nature of carrier warfare like? I guess we are here in really the beginning of it, I guess in other respects, though it goes on for a few more years,

the end of it too, in a serious and sustained way. How did people in the 20s and 30s as naval aviation is developing think it was going to go? How did they plan for it to go? And then obviously we'll get to how it actually went. You have the fleet problems. The Navy begins this tradition of hosting a fleet problem every year in the 20s and 30s,

and that's where they stage an enormous sort of mock campaign, and they assign all the different ships to different roles, and they typically have kind of two sides, and they practice things like attacking Pearl Harbor, and one side would attack, other side would defend, and they even have a rehearsed battle that takes place off the coast of Midway. And so they're definitely aware of the geography that's important for carrier warfare. And the other thing is they understand that in carrier warfare, the person who strikes first tends to win.

So it's hugely important if you can find the enemy first. And they go to any lengths to make this happen. So they practice actually flying a one-way trip to attack the enemy first. they're willing to to launch the plane so far away that they are not able to return to their carriers because they know that it is more important to lose aircraft but to still get the first strike. I mean, they recognize these carriers are so vulnerable that if you can find the enemy's carrier first, this grants you a huge advantage in the battle. And that is, that's what happens to the battle midway.

The Americans find the Japanese carriers first and are able to win largely, largely because of this aspect. It's hard to think of, and you gentlemen have been thinking about this longer than I have, a sort of comparable sort of weapons platform or, you know, military item that is, A, so potent offensively, while at the same time, B, so completely vulnerable. And I guess that the doctrine had to somehow balance these two, you know, facts, which are really intentions. So how did the American thinking about carrier warfare differ from the Japanese, if at all?

one way is the way they they form up their ships. And this is something where Nimitz plays a huge rule. So Nimitz, he's at the Naval War College in 1920, and that's where he's introduced to a formation of ships, which replaces the battleship with the aircraft carrier. And so typically what happens before the advent of airpower, the battleship sails in the middle of a circular formation with a host of ships outside of it to protect it

and to give it reconnaissance and to tell it what's what to expect ahead and to help it to use its gunpower against the enemy. Well, in 1922, Nimmits, the Nimitz learns from an instructor at the Naval Academy and from another classmate that this can be updated with the aircraft carrier in the center, replacing the battleship. And so it's a circular formation with the battleship in the center. Now, and Nimitz then when he becomes exo battle fleet, then the next year, he implements this formation. It's the same formation that his ships go out to fight in in the early months of the Pacific campaign. So he's instrumental in bringing this formation to bear on the enemy. But the point is that this means that American ships, the carriers themselves, they sail independently of the other carriers. And whereas the Japanese, for some other reasons we can go into, they group their carriers together.

So on the morning of Battle Midway, when the Enterprise Air Group finds Japanese carriers, they find all. four the fleet carriers together. Whereas the American carriers, Enterprise Hornet in Yorktown, they're grouped together, but they're, but they're, you can't even, they, you have to look onto the horizon to barely see the other because we spoke, we spoke to a veteran from, from the hornet. And he told us, because we, yeah, the Hornet wasn't attacked on the morning, or at all during the battle. We were asking him, you know, what it was like. And you say, well, you could just barely see some things going on the horizon with Yorktown under attack. But otherwise, it's like, he's another day at sea. I mean, of course, he sends out the ships. They see the planes go out to attack.

But so the American carriers were much more dispersed and operated much more independently than the Japanese did. But there was two groups, task force 16 and 17. So the Horners and the Enterprise were together, but the Yorktown was separate. And the point Steve is making is that actually you could only see very far on the distance from the Hornet, the attack on the Yorktown. Another difference that is just a more practical one between the Japanese and the Americans in terms of carrier warfare was that the question of damage control, which proved to be absolutely critical during the battle. So the Americans are much more geared to this. They wear effective, you know, flashproof clothing. They have got damage control parties much better organized. The Japanese really give very little attention to either the damage control parties.

or how you contain a fire, they basically just have a fume, fireproof curtains. They don't purge their fuel lines, all kinds of things. They don't do. And the crew members also don't generally wear even longer trousers. So when they're operating in the tropics, they wear shorts. These are certainly more comfortable, but it means if there's a fire or explosions or anything like that, they are horribly vulnerable. And you can see from the, I mean, there are many reasons for it, but you can see from the fight

that the Yorktown puts up, which almost survives some very severe attacks. And you compare that with the speed really with which the Japanese carriers go up, that there are quite significant differences there in damage control doctrine. Doesn't that seem, I mean, especially considering that ultimately the industrial base of America is going to be much more potent in the middle and long run than the Japanese base? This is it bizarre? I mean, does it not cross their minds that might be in their interest to lose fewer ships once they're hit? But it wasn't really their doctrine.

I mean, their doctrine, as Steve says, is to find and hit the enemy first. So hopefully this problem will not rise. And aircraft carriers simply are intrinsically very vulnerable because they defy all the usual principles of naval construction for hundreds of years beforehand, which is that you have armored decks and you're constructed in such a way as to minimize your profile and to minimize and to increase, your protection. But it's very difficult

to protect the flat deck. You have to have a flat deck from which you can fly aircraft. If you do like the British and you've got an armoured deck, then you greatly reduce the number of aircrafts you can fit in your hanger. And if you're like the Japanese and the Americans, you have a wooden deck. It means you can fit more aircraft. And also you can repair your deck much more quickly

when you just bring out some planks and hammer them down. I mean, that's a slight simplification. So really, it all depends on not getting hit. So let's move to the day itself. So we're, what, June 3rd into June 4th, 1942. Maybe we, let's see it through the eyes since you spent so much time discussing this, this Navy lieutenant, Dusty Klyse. Tell us, first, who is Dusty Klyse?

And then from his perspective, how does the battle get going, Steve? He's from Cofiville, Kansas. He is born in 1916. And he enters the Naval Academy in 1934. and graduates four years later in 1938 and then serves in the surface fleet. But he always wanted to fly. He wanted to fly before he entered Annapolis. And in those days, in order to become a naval pilot,

you then had to serve in the surface fleet and afterward apply for flight training, which he does. He graduates flight training in 1940. He goes, he receives his assignment to the Enterprise Air Group to fly the Dauntless. And, well, this is also when, he is debating whether or not to propose his girlfriend, Gene, which he decides not to do. As I mentioned, there's something he regrets very much. But this is the time at which he becomes very, very proficient on the on the dauntless,

this very important plane to American victory in the battle. And so he is, he is ready to go on the fourth tune. He says that if you look at his logbook, it's the eighth time he does, he does a dive in his dauntless in the in the last six months that morning. So he's doing something he knows, he knows very well how to do. And he wakes up early that morning, the breakfast of steak and eggs for him, which the pilots all know that's the meal. They always get a hearty meal on, on combat days. And so there's kind of mixed feelings. You kind of have a range of emotion. Some of the guys are laughing it off. Other guys are very quiet because, you know,

they recognize this could well be their last, their last meal, especially for, some of the torpedo pilots, and then they wait, they go into the pilot waiting rooms, ready rooms, and they sit in these leather chairs and waiting for the report for pilots' man your planes, because this is the command that they wait for to signal that the Japanese fleet has been cited. And at this point, the Japanese still think, I mean, the fact that they're, as it were sitting there with a good breakfast, a combat day breakfast waiting is already a sort of sign of Japanese failure, right? Because the Japanese think they'll strike first, and then the American carriers will come and they'll destroy them. Who has cited whom first? There was something,

there is some mutual recognition on the third, correct? And then tell us what happens the morning before. So the Americans do see a part of the Japanese fleets on the third, but it's actually not, it's not the main body. It's not the striking fleet. It's the, it's the landing. It's the, it's the group which contains the Marines, the Japanese Marines that are going to assault Midway Atoll and land there. And there happens to be a light carrier traveling with that group of ships. And Nimitz correctly, along with some of the other senior officers correctly identifies, this is not the Quito Bhutai. This is not the Japanese fleet carriers that we want to destroy.

So you can already see in that decision. So he tells him, just don't make yourselves known, stay away from them, you know, keep track of what they're up to. but this is not where we want to launch all of our all of our planes because if he if he does then that can potentially give away the the ambush so it shows you how important you know they are waiting what they want to hit are the fleet carriers that is the most important ship and it's willing they're willing to let a lot of other things go by as long as they can maintain their chance at hitting the fleet carrier and that's what takes place on the next morning and so so who sees whom first on on the

next morning how does it happen well the americans of course spot the Japanese first. Then in the course of the morning, the Japanese do spot one of the American chariots, but this actually produces a huge dilemma for the Japanese commander Admon Nagumo, who's commanding the Kiddo Bhutai, because he is now basically forced to make a choice. The original plan, as we've said, is for the Japanese to attack Midway Island and lure the Americans out, so they have attacked Midway Island. However, a secondary purpose of the attack was to neutralise the island, which was a kind of force aircraft carrier for the Americans and could field strike aircraft. And the commander of that strike force

radios back and says, we need a second strike. And he does this shortly after the strike, the first strike on Midway is completed. And so the problem for Nagumo now is, Originally, he had half of his aircraft, actually his best pilots, set aside with aircraft armed with fused bombs, so the dive bombers with fused bombs, and the torpedo aircraft, which could drop bombs on land targets, but against ships would carry torpedoes. So they're prepared it this way to attack ships. Now he's been told he needs another strike on Midway Islands. What is he going to launch that strike with?

Obviously, the original strike is returning to the carrier and his remaining aircraft are armed with weapons which are not suitable for attacking ships. Now, in retrospect, it would have been wiser simply to have sent out those aircraft against the known target, however they were armed. But, of course, Nagumo had been trained. He followed doctrine, and doctrine was you need to deliver a balanced strike with the right equipment. So what he decides to do is to land the force coming back from Midway and then in the meantime to rearm these aircraft with contact bombs to attack Midway. Then when he hears that there's an

American carrier in the area, of course he has to go back and, you know, reattach the torpedoes and the fused bombs. And this is an issue because the weapons which are then set aside that are taken off the aircraft are not sent down to the secure location in the hold, but they're simply propped up in various places around the hammer. So the result is that even before the Americans have attacked, you already have, in effect, a bomb on every Japanese carrier, just waiting to explode. While there's this sort of back and forth confusion on the Japanese ships, what are the Americans doing? Well, they're making their way. They're trying to find the Japanese fleet. So the American planes from the, from the Enterprise and the Hornet, they depart around 7 a.m. Some of them, the Hornet planes go the wrong direction. They fly pretty much due west. And so overshoot the Japanese fleet. The Enterprise planes are held in orbit around the carrier for about an hour. And so they don't, they don't depart until around about eight o'clock. And they begin making

their way toward where they think the Japanese are. About an hour after that, the Yorktown launches its plane. So you can see there, these air groups are all operating independently in a large respect. And the, as it happens, the enterprise and Yorktown planes arrive at the target at the same time at the exact same time. And so at 1023 in the morning, they begin their dives on on three, three of the four Japanese carriers all grouped together. And this is the silver waterfall to which the title of your book points, correct? What is that exactly? Well, that's a phrase from one of the fighter commanders, command attach. And he is trying to protect the torpedo bombers from the opta, torpedo squadron three, who are having very

a bad time of it. And he then sees diving down from 20,000 feet, dive bombers. And what he sees is the sun glancing off the wings. And there's a brave, the fuselage. And so it looks like a beautiful silver waterfall. It's a wonderful image. And one which we've tried to evoke in the cover of the book, in fact, which is a rather non-standard cover. It's sort of an art deco image of a waterfall like descent of American dive bombers. And that was really the moment. And that was really the moment when he knew that the battle which had been going extremely badly for the Americans, was then that the dynamic was about to change within the space of six minutes. And this had been, in some ways, is that the fruition of a resolution of what had been

an intra-war debate, right, about dive bombing versus level bombing and the relative value of dive bombing. What was the criticism of dive bombing and how has it ultimately vindicated here? Well, you do. So Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book, Bomber Mafia, more on the level bombing side. Dive bombing is not really critique so much. I think that what you end up getting is the kind of standard view in the American and Japanese Navy is that in order for naval warfare to be successful from the air, you need to use a combined

attack of torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighter planes all massing together and attacking the attacking the enemy at the same time. And what you really see at the Battle of Midway from the American side, I mean, that is true for the Japanese. They have, the Japanese have very effective torpedo bombers. But the Americans do not. And what you see at the Battle Midway is that it is the American dive bomber that really grants, or it's really the machine through which America earns its victory. And this is what's so important about the book, you know, because we really go into how that, how that victory is achieved and what it is about the dive bomber that makes it so effective. What's it like, Steve, to conduct one of these dive attacks from the point of view of,

Lieutenant Klyse? Well, I think that it's Klyssi, he talks about this in his autobiography, never call me a hero, which was published in 2016. So he publishes it on his 100th. It's actually published soon after he dies, but he's 100 when he writes the book with Timothy of Orr, it's an excellent book. And he talks in there about just the exhilaration of plunging down from around about 20,000 feet down to sea level in less than two minutes. You know, it's loud. It's, it's chaotic. And the whole time, you were going straight

toward your target. And you release the last possible moment. Your altimeter is jerking its way downward. He said it registered accurately to within a thousand feet. So you're pretty much having the eyeball this thing at the very end at least. And it's funny because he says his scope, the scope that he would peer through to hit the target was only a three-time zoom. And of course, that's when I added my rifle in the army. And I'm like, no, that's, it's good. Three times it's good.

But I mean, he still has a day. It's at 500 meters. Yeah, exactly. And of course, it's a pretty big target in an aircraft carrier. By the time you're down at sea level, it's a pretty big target. But he said that before you push over, as you look down at the carrier, he said it look like a ladybug on the tip of your shoe. So it is very small. From altitude, it's very small. And they have to go down and do the work that they've, that they've been trying to do.

Doesn't he, he incredibly, isn't he have something like three hits over the course of the, of the battle? Two. Do I have it right? Yeah, he has one in the morning and one in the afternoon. So he hits two, two carriers, the Kaga, and then in the afternoon or the early evening, the area. That's the distinction. We believe he shares with the tick best, hitting two carriers on the same day. So it's quite an extraordinary achievement. That's a very fine day's work. So there are these critical five minutes that are decisive, but then, of course, the Yorktown gets hit later in the day. What are the circumstances surrounding that? Well, essentially, the defense of the Yorktown is a good example of the

the superiority of the American preparation, because for one thing, they had radar, and so they could actually identify the attacking aircraft for some way out. And even though the radar didn't tell you whether they were friend or foe, you could tell quite easily because no friendly aircraft is going to gain altitude as they approach your carrier light. So you knew that these were bogies, as they called them. And so they have time then to clear the decks, to purge the fuel lines of big problem for the Japanese when they're attacked is that the hangar, the bombs cut the fuel lines, and so the whole place is awash with petrol in addition to all the ordinance. So you don't have that problem in the same way on the Yorktown. And they can also vector out fighters to attack

the Japanese and many of them are shot down on both occasions. Despite that, the Japanese are able to press home their attacks and ultimately render the Yorktown. inoperable. But it's only a subsequent attack by a Japanese submarine that actually finishes off the Yachtown. So if you add up all the punishment that the Yachtan took and compare it to some of the Japanese carriers, one of them, for example, the Akkad beans only hit by a single bomb. That was enough to set off these internal explosions and tear the carrier apart. The Yachtam survived multiple of such hits. Now, your book, it prosecutes a thesis, which is an intriguing one.

You point out that earlier treatments of the battle attribute the American victory in an important respect to luck. And, you know, we're all students of war here. Stephen and I have a little personal experience. Luck plays a role. But your book is dedicated to the proposition that there actually is the professional skill, I think is decisive. What did you mean by that?

Well, luck, I agree. I think luck definitely, you see it or at least what appears to be luck or providence or fortune. You know, it's in a personal lives. It's in every battle. But the issue is that that doesn't help you plan or prepare or even to address the things that are within people's control when battles take place or in our lives. You know, you still, no matter how much we can attribute to fortune, we still need to recognize what people actually do, what they have within their power and what they decide to do, what they desire, and what they accomplish. And that is really what I think has to be considered.

I mean, that's that is our main argument of the book, is that you have to keep this in mind when you look at this battle. I mean, this is the most important naval battle in U.S. history. And so it's vital that we think about what people, the actions that people did on the day and in the years leading up to the battle that were within their control. And because that's what we can learn from. And so I think that's where for us, skill is so important to fully appreciating what takes place at Midway. Yeah, I guess you could say the Americans have put themselves in a position where they could be lucky and then given the opportunity executed well. It reminds me, I'm going to mangle this and

Brendan will not be able to correct me on the specifics, but it reminds me of the story of someone complaining to Napoleon about one of his marshals, that the marshal was merely lucky in Napoleon response with some words to the effect of, I like marshals who are lucky. Gentlemen, this has been a fascinating conversation. I'm grateful for you both making the time and warmly recommend the silver waterfall to everyone. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Aaron. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.