He couldn’t abandon the Midway Strike Force, which was now landing.

Some aircraft were damaged, some low on fuel.

Turning them away would mean losing pilots and planes, and the reserve strike force wasn’t ready.

Half the aircraft still had land attack bombs, useless against a carrier.

The other half were still being rearmed.

Recover the Midway Strike Force first.

Nagumo ordered.

Then we will spot the reserve strike and launch against the enemy carrier.

It was the only practical decision, but it meant delay.

Precious, dangerous delay.

Gender, watching this unfold, later wrote, “I knew we were in trouble.

The Americans had surprised us.

We had assumed they weren’t there, and we were wrong.

Now we were caught in the worst possible situation with our decks full and our reserve force not ready.

The carriers turned into the wind.

One by one, aircraft landed.

Some crashed on landing, damaged by anti-aircraft fire.

Crews rushed to clear wrecks, push aircraft forward, make room for the next plane.

It was controlled chaos, the inevitable result of recovering a large strike force.

At 8:30, another message from the scout.

10 enemy torpedo planes heading toward you.

American aircraft already attacking.

The scout had spotted them taking off from the carrier.

They were coming.

Nagumo ordered the carriers to increase speed, maneuver radically if attacked.

The combat air patrol was reinforced.

Fighters scrambling to intercept the incoming Americans.

But the situation was deteriorating.

The Kido Bhai was on the defensive, reacting rather than attacking.

Below decks, ordinance crews worked frantically.

Some aircraft still had torpedoes.

Some had land attack bombs.

Some had armor-piercing bombs.

It was a mess, a confused mixture of weapons, and sorting it out was taking too long.

Worse, the land attack bombs that had been removed were sitting on the hanger decks, not properly stored in the magazines.

They would be in the way when the reserve strike force came up to the flight deck.

At 0918, lookouts spotted aircraft approaching low over the water.

American torpedo bombers from the carrier Hornet.

15 Douglas Devastators, obsolete and slow, attacking without fighter escort.

The combat air patrol fell on them like wolves.

Zero fighters shot them down one after another.

Anti-aircraft fire filled the sky.

The Americans pressed their attacks with suicidal courage, but they were outmatched.

Torpedoes dropped into the water, ran wide, or were evaded.

Not a single hit.

14 of the 15 Devastators were shot down.

Only one pilot survived.

On a Kagi’s bridge, the victory seemed complete.

The Americans were brave but incompetent.

Their attacks were uncoordinated, their aircraft obsolete.

If this was the best the American carrier could do, the Kido Bhutai would survive and strike back.

But the attack had consequences.

The carriers had maneuvered violently, breaking formation again.

The combat air patrol was at sea level, having just shot down the torpedo bombers.

Pilots were low on fuel and ammunition, and the decks were still cluttered with aircraft from the Midway Strike.

At 09:30, the last aircraft from the Midway Strike landed.

Now the carriers could begin the complex process of striking those aircraft below, bringing up the reserve strike force and launching against the American carrier.

Nagumo estimated they could launch in 30 minutes, perhaps 45.

Minutes later, more American torpedo bombers appeared, this time from Enterprise.

14 more devastators attacking from a different angle.

Again, the combat air patrol and anti-aircraft fire tore them apart.

10 were shot down.

No hits.

The Americans seemed determined to throw away their aircraft in futile attacks.

Kusaka watched the slaughter with grim satisfaction, but growing unease.

“Where are their dive bombers?” he asked.

American carriers carried dive bombers as well as torpedo planes.

Why were they only seeing torpedo attacks? No one had an answer.

Perhaps the Americans were poorly coordinated.

Perhaps their dive bombers had gotten lost.

Whatever the reason, the absence was fortunate.

At 0955, yet another group of torpedo bombers appeared, this time from Yorktown.

12 aircraft attacking through intense fire.

The combat air patrol was exhausted now.

Some fighters landing to refuel and rearm, but enough remained to savage this attack, too.

Seven were shot down.

Again, no hits.

On a Kagi’s flight deck, crews worked to spot the reserve strike force.

Aircraft were being brought up from the hangers, positioned for launch.

The deck was crowded with planes, some still being fueled, others having weapons checked.

In perhaps 15 minutes, they could begin launching.

The American carrier would pay for its futile attacks.

At exactly 10:22, lookouts aboard a Kagi looked up and saw something that froze their blood.

High above, where no one had been watching because all attention had been on the low-level torpedo attacks.

American dive bombers were rolling into their attacks.

They came from Enterprise and Yorktown.

37 Douglas Dauntless dive bombers that had arrived at precisely the moment when the Kido Butai was most vulnerable.

The decks were crowded with aircraft, armed and fueled.

The combat air patrol was at sea level, out of position.

The carriers were making flank speed in straight lines, recovering from the last torpedo attack, unable to maneuver effectively.

On a Kagi’s bridge, someone shouted a warning.

Nagumo looked up to see aircraft diving almost vertically, growing larger with terrifying speed.

There was no time to do anything.

No time to turn, no time to launch fighters, no time even to think.

The first bomb hit a kagi amid ships penetrating to the hanger deck where aircraft were packed together, where land attack bombs from the aborted riming operation sat unsecured, where aviation fuel lines ran.

The explosion was catastrophic.

Secondary explosions followed as bombs and torpedoes cooked off.

Fire raced through the hanger, reached the flight deck, engulfed aircraft spotted for launch.

Kusaka, standing next to Nagumo, was blown off his feet by the blast.

When he struggled up, the bridge was filled with smoke.

Flames roared from the hanger below.

The ship’s structure groaned.

Akagi, the pride of the fleet, the carrier that had launched the Pearl Harbor attack, was dying.

Nearby, Kaga took four bomb hits in rapid succession.

The explosions ripped through her hanger decks, ignited fuel and munitions, turned the carrier into an inferno.

Soryu took three hits with the same devastating result.

In the space of 5 minutes, three of the four carriers in the Kido Bhutai were transformed from powerful warships into burning wrecks.

Only Hiru, separated from the others by earlier maneuvering, escaped the initial attack.

Yamaguchi, watching from Hiru’s bridge, saw the disaster unfold.

Three carriers burning, the pride of the Japanese Navy crippled in minutes.

He immediately ordered his aircraft prepared for launch.

Here you would strike back.

Aboard the burning Akagi, Nagumo stood on the bridge, stunned.

Everything had collapsed so quickly.

Minutes ago, they had been preparing to launch against the American carrier.

Now his flagship was on fire, unsalvageable.

Kusaka urged him to transfer his flag to a cruiser to maintain command.

But Nagumo seemed paralyzed, unable to process what had happened.

The confidence of the previous evening, the certainty that had pervaded the fleet, had been destroyed as thoroughly as the carriers.

The Kido Bhutai, which had seemed invincible, had been caught at the worst possible moment and paid the ultimate price.

In the hours before Midway, Japanese admirals had spoken with confidence born of 6 months of unbroken victory.

They had believed their intelligence, trusted their plans, and assumed the Americans would react predictably.

They had divided their forces, split their objectives, and made decisions based on incomplete information.

What they said in those final hours reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of their situation.

They didn’t know American code breakers had read their plans.

They didn’t know three carriers waited in ambush.

They didn’t know their own success had made them overconfident.

Their victories had made them careless.

The words spoken on Akagi’s bridge that morning, the orders given, the decisions made had seemed reasonable at the time.

Recover the Midway strike force, rearm for a second attack, deal with the enemy carrier after finishing midway.

Each decision made sense in isolation.

Together, they created a cascade of delays that left the Kido Bhai vulnerable at precisely the wrong moment.

By noon on June 4th, the battle was effectively over.

Three Japanese carriers were sinking or abandoned.

Hiru would launch strikes that damaged Yorktown, but American dive bombers would find and destroy Hiru that afternoon.

The Kido Bhai, the force that had terrorized the Pacific for 6 months, ceased to exist.

Yamamoto, receiving reports aboard Yamato, initially couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Four carriers lost, the entire striking force destroyed.

He had expected to annihilate the American fleet.

Instead, Japan’s carrier force had been gutted in a single morning.

The admiral, who had warned that he could run wild for 6 months, had been proven right.

6 months after Pearl Harbor, the tide had turned.

The words spoken in confidence the night before Midway now seemed like epitaps for a strategy that had failed.

For a plan that had been too clever, for an enemy that had been underestimated.

In the end, what Japanese admirals said in the hours before Midway mattered less than what they didn’t know.

They didn’t know the Americans were reading their mail.

They didn’t know three carriers waited an ambush.

They didn’t know that courage and determination could overcome tactical disadvantages.

and they didn’t know that in war, confidence is no substitute for accurate intelligence and sound judgment.

The battle would continue for another 2 days as Yamamoto tried to salvage something from the disaster.

But the outcome was already decided.

Japan had lost not just four carriers, but the initiative in the Pacific War.

The words spoken before midway, the confidence expressed, the plans made, all belong to a moment that ended at 10:22 on the morning of June 4th when American dive bombers appeared out of the sun and changed the course of the

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