The battle of midway, fought between Admiral Chester Nimitz representing the United States and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto representing Japan, was the turning point in the pacific theater during world war two. The Battle of Midway is comparable in magnitude to the battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War. Midway, in its own right, was revolutionary due to the Japanese code that was broken and kept the aircraft carriers of the United States from being destroyed. This battle showed the strengths and weaknesses of both of the admirals that were involved. The use of the principles of war and the threads of continuity are the main reasons the United States left this battle victorious with a good part of the Japanese Navy destroyed. The following …show more content…
The purpose of the objective is to direct every operation towards a clearly defined objective. The objective of this battle is quite clear. The Japanese had already invaded several islands throughout the Pacific Ocean including the Philippines and Bataan. As the presence of the Japanese started to get closer and closer to Pearl Harbor and the west coast of the United States of America it certainly got the attention of Americas leaders. The goal became to keep the Japanese at bay and as far away as possible. A huge breakthrough came when a man named Joseph Rochefort broke the Japanese code and foretold of an attack on the two islands of midway that the Japanese were interested in. Japans goal in this was to lure out the rest of Americas pacific fleet and destroy them. Luckily for Americans they had no idea that we knew what they were going to do. The Pacific Fleet Including the USS Enterprise, USS Hornet, USS Yorktown, and all of the supporting ships went to Midway and waited for the Japanese to get there. The battle began on June 4th, 1942 approximately 6 months after the devastation of Pearl …show more content…
Economy of force basically means allocate minimal essential combat power to secondary efforts. In other words, put forth all efforts to the primary source. In this case, in the Pacific, the primary effort is taking out the threat of the Japanese. They had already taken out a good percentage of American ships and were enclosing back on them to continue the war. Japan is a few thousand miles away from America and needed a place closer to be able to launch strikes against America. They knew that America could not handle the idea of them getting so close to Pearl Harbor since Midway is within striking distance of it. Nimitz decided that he would have to take out the threat of Japan. He took 4 submarines, 3 aircraft carriers, 2 heavy cruisers, 1 regular cruiser, and all the support ships necessary to keep all them going during a campaign. This group of ships was most of what was left after Pearl harbor. Nimitz used economy of force by taking nearly everything he had and focusing them on the one primary objective. He was effective in using it and was gifted with the victory due to his choices
Everyone in America has heard of Pearl Harbor before if you’re at least the age of 10. But how many people actually know what happened at pearl harbor besides it was attacked? Well you can learn quite a lot from actually looking into a subject. This is just a quick summary of the attack, the significance of it, and the memorial.
Pearl Harbor Bombing Thesis The Pearl Harbor bombing took America by surprise, but the Japenese had every second planned out. America might have been prepared for this bombing, though, because a declaration of war was already created and signed. Much damage was caused to the Americans, but the Japenese came out with little to no damage compared to the Americans. Background
Source B differs to Source C when it says the attack on Pearl Harbor was that mechanism; merely it means to an end. By destroying its Pacific Fleet, Japan expected to remove America from the Pacific equation for long enough to allow is secure the resources it needed so desperately and hoped to crush American morale sufficiently to prompt Roosevelt to sue for peace. Source F claims that the Japanese plan was simple: Destroy the Pacific Fleet. In that way the Americans would not be able to fight back as Japans armed forces spread across the South
Japan ambushed Pearl Harbor with the intentions of obtaining world domination, vengeance on the United States, and to prevent becoming a third-class
Why did Japan attack Pearl harbor? Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because of U.S. Navy expansion, the U.S. embargo on Japan, and Japan’s ambition to create a new world order.
One reason why Japan wanted to attack Pearl Harbor was to begin a new world order. Japan believed that America stood in their way for a new world order. “An old order… (European and American)... is now crumbling” (Document A). Japan wants to be recognized as a world power.
(Doc C) Because of the U.S military presence building in the Pacific, Japan was worried that the U.S could possibly use their forces to attack Japan in order to try to stop them. So, the Japanese believed it needed to cripple the U.S navy early on so they could continue to gain
The Japanese attack had several major priorities. First, it intended to destroy the vital American fleet, thus avoiding the Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese. Japan wanted to overthrow the Dutch East Indies and Malaya and to empower Japan to take over Southeast Asia without any issues
After the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese realized the US were still threats to their expansion. Admiral Yamamoto selected to attack the Midway Atoll a US outpost that the US would defend vigorously in order to destroy their fleet once, and for all. The breaking of one of Japan’s secure codes “JN 25”. When the US broke this code, it gave them information about the impending attack on the Midway outpost. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz decided with this information that the fight would be in the air so he left his battleships to the side while keeping the aircraft carriers in fighting shape.
Due to the Combined Fleet’s “battleship orientation, no Japanese carrier entered the battle equipped with radar.” The rapid implementation and confidence in carrier based air operations for the Pacific Fleet produced a tactical advantage at the battle of Midway because it forced the United States to conform to the ever-changing nature of warfare. As noted by Robert J. Cressman, “It must be remembered that carrier operations in the U.S. Navy were in a state of flux – the air groups learning as they went along, and in the crucible of
On 1941, December 7th, Pearl Harbor was bombed to a fine crisp. America had been slowly chipping away at Japanese patience, they had halted the trading, disabled the Japanese from coming into our country, stopped Japanese bank accounts (going in or out) and many other reasons which struck anger amongst our Japanese allies. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor for 3 main reasons. One, the Japanese had a plan for a new world order. Secondly.
Following the assault on Pearl Harbor, December 7 1941, Japanese aggression in the Pacific Ocean was nearly unbearable. According to the National WWII Museum (2012), Japan launched a series of assaults on the nearby islands of Guam, Solomon, Burma and the Dutch East Indies, solidifying their naval dominance throughout the western Pacific Ocean. The United States (U.S.), still occupying the extremely strategic Midway Atoll, understood in order to stem the offensive operations of Japan the U.S. Navy must confront and destroy Japan’s aircraft carriers. (National WWII Museum, 2012).
But not all went to plan, American fleet admiral, Chester W. Nimitz, led his airforce to where the Japanese ships were meant to be, when he seen nothing decided to keep his air forces going farther which was risky due to the fact they might not make it back to the carriers with the little fuel they had left. As soon as Nimitz was about to tell his fleet to turn around he spotted a submarine in the water, realizing it was Japan's he decided to secretly follow it hoping it would lead him to the rest of the Japanese fleet. Following Japan’s submarine direction, they ended up head back with the United States Navy Carriers ready to fight. With the United States now being able to see japanese ships they sent out a first attack on ‘Akagi’, causing fuel to ignite and then detonating its torpedoes on the ship ending with ‘Akagi’ destroyed, then a second attack came to Japan's other ship ‘Kaga’, this ended with the same result of ‘Akagi’. Soon after these two attacks, ‘Soryu’ was attacked but only hit with three bombs but still leading it to sink and have Japan's navy abandon it.
The main deficiency with Japan’s war plan for Midway, as Symonds pointed out, came from the assumption that the Americans would react and behave in the way that the Japanese wanted, enough for them to strangle and beat down U.S. forces enough to drag them to the negotiation table as they had done with the Russians in the Russo – Japanese War. One mistake that Symonds pointed made on the part of the Japanese regarding their Midway plan was that attacking the island itself provided no advantage for them but everything for the Americans. Japan did not have the resources to both take over Midway and maintain the island, but it boosted all the benefits for the Americans because Midway provided land-based air cover, shorter logistic lines and was close enough to repair facilities that the U.S. forces did not have to stress. Essentially by picking this island, the Japanese had lost another step in the overall battle. Midway was closer to the U.S. bases which were crawling with American submarines and therefore easier to protect instead of the geographical location of Japan were trying to provide resources to Japanese on the would be occupied island would stretch out Japan’s already depleting sources as pointed out by Commander Miyo.
The Philippines were in-between Japan and their potential oil supply,(DOC B). A possible and smart tactic for Japan would to attack Pearl Harbor and while the fleet is weak, take over the Philippines. Once Japan had acquired the Philippines they would have a base to take over many nations that have large oil amounts. A major factor as to why Pearl Harbor was attacked was that the Americans were cutting Japan off from their oil supply. Japan, as an island nation, had very few natural resources and were very dependant on the American oil.