Miracle at Midway

by Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon

Seven months after blitzing Pearl Harbor, the Japanese commander, Admiral Yamamoto, prepared to finish his work. He targeted a smaller United States force commanded by Chester Nimitz, a junior admiral. Given the superiority of the Japanese fleet, Yamamoto had every reason to expect victory.

But we had broken the Japanese code and Nimitz learned of Yamamoto's plans. He responded with tactics of beautiful flexibility. The Japanese, ablaze with confidence, suffered a crippling reverse. Midway put our navy back on its feet.

Based on original archival research as well as exclusive interviews with survivors on both sides, this book is a majestic sequel to AT DAWN WE SLEPT, also by Gordon W. Prange.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military History, War, Military Fiction, American History

469 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

A graduate of the University of Iowa, from where he received his Ph.D. in 1937, Gordon Prange began his teaching career as a professor of history at the University of Maryland. In 1942, he was granted a leave of absence from the University to embark on a wartime career as an officer in the United States Navy. Sent to Japan in 1945 as a member of the American Occupation Forces, after completing his Navy service he continued in Japan as a civilian from 1946 to 1951 as chief of General Douglas MacArthur's 100-person historical staff. When censorship of the Japanese media by Allied Forces was lifted in 1949 and the Civil Censorship Detachment disestablished, Professor Prange, recognizing the historical significance of the CCD material, arranged for its shipment to the University of Maryland. The materials arrived at the University in 1950. On September 15, 1978, the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland passed a motion to name the collection the 'Gordon W. Prange Collection: The Allied Presence in Japan, 1945-1952.' Professor Prange continued to teach at the University of Maryland until several months before his death on May 15, 1980. He is still remembered by alumni as one of the University's truly great teachers, and is well known today for major works on the war in the Pacific, particularly Tora! Tora! Tora!" The Terrapin, the University of Maryland's yearbook, said of his World War I and World War II history lectures in 1964: "Students flock to his class and sit enraptured as he animates the pages of twentieth century European history through his goosesteps, 'Seig Heils', 'Achtungs', machine gun retorts and frantic gestures.

Dr. Prange's manuscript about the attack on Pearl Harbor is credited as the basis for the screenplay Tora! Tora! Tora!, filmed in 1970 while Prange took a leave of absence from the University of Maryland to serve as technical consultant during its filming. His extensive research into the attack on Pearl Harbor was the subject of a PBS television program in 2000, "Prange and Pearl Harbor: A Magnificent Obsession", and was acclaimed "a definitive book on the event" by The Washington Post.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prange managed to cover the battle of Midway in clear and exhaustive terms. He begins with the preliminary actions following the disaster at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Battle of Coral Sea was sandwiched in between December 7, 1941 and the Midway conflict almost exactly 6 month later in June of 1942. The Coral Sea battle is seen as a draw but stopped Japanese progress towards Australia at that time. Admiral Yamamoto decided his next target was to be “AF.” Prange gets this book moving with Naval Intelligence at Pearl Harbor who in addition to cracking Japanese code, understood “AF” to be Midway Atoll. The all-over commander, Admiral Nimitz, trusted his intelligence group and made the very hurried decision to build up defenses on the atoll as much as possible and to throw everything into a crucial battle for Midway.

I particularly enjoyed the sections on the key players, both USA and Japanese, followed by the movements that brought the two sides into this conflict. Miracle at Midway explains the battle, the techniques and the outcome. A very clear section in takeaways concludes the book. Prange makes it very clear that the outcome was never certain and actually decidedly in the Japanese favor. It is seen as the turning point in the war although several more tough years and a number of naval battles were to follow. When this battle was done, Hawaii and the west coast of the United States were no longer viable targets. Luck was a part of the U.S. victory but many other things are seen to be at play. Great summation by the author.

When reading the book it’s good to keep in mind where Midway is—it is logically named because it is roughly midway between the east coast of Asia and the west coast of the United States. It is somewhat closer to Hawaii which is slightly south and west of Midway. In describing the battle, the author frequently uses directions and that can get confusing. Look at a map.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember being at church one Sunday when I was maybe ten years old. The service ended and my family joined the other parishioners in the banquet hall for donuts. While others contentedly chewed their jelly glazes, I kept fidgeting and asking when we could leave. I almost made a scene; in fact, I might have made a scene. The reason? I wanted to get home to watch the movie Midway on TBS.

(This was in the days when TBS showed an odd mishmash of Atlanta Braves games and John Wayne movies; this was also in the days before DVR. And while we had a VCR, there was never a day when we could figure out how to set the timer to record).

If you've never seen Midway, there's no reason to now. It's a curiosity piece. The cast is like a who's who of 70s Hollywood: Henry Fonda, Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Dabney Coleman, Tom Selleck (!), and Erick Estrada (!!). And yes, since you asked, that is a pre-Karate Kid Pat Morita as Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka. I don't know for certain, but apparently this all-star cast ate up much of the budget, because the battle scenes are a choppily-edited pastiche of crappy model work, documentary film footage from John Ford, newsreel footage of other naval battles, and clips from other, better movies such as Tora Tora Tora and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Back then, though, I loved it. That's what it means to be a kid: to love things that have no artistic merit. That's why I have no respect for children. Their aesthetic development is pathetic.

It's taken all these long years for me to get around to actually reading a book dedicated to the Battle of Midway. Fought on June 4, 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, Midway is now considered to be the turning point in the Pacific War. The Japanese navy, after years of running untrammeled, got pummeled by the Americans and lost four aircraft carriers. Things didn't get any easier, of course, since Guadalcanal, Saipan, Pelelieu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa still lay ahead, but the Japanese never seriously threatened American interests again.

Miracle at Midway is the "sequel" to Gordon Prange's classic telling of Pearl Harbor, At Dawn We Slept. I say "sequel" because Prange was dead long before this book came out, and for that matter, before At Dawn We Slept was published. I'm okay with the latter work, because it seems to have been formed from a nearly-finished manuscript, and was probably close in form and substance to what Prange himself would have produced, had he lived.

That is not the case with Miracle at Midway. Everything about it seems truncated, unfinished, half-assed, and semi-complete. Whereas At Dawn We Slept spent a great deal of time fleshing out all the participants, Miracle at Midway doesn't even try. We get one-sentence introductions for most of the personages. There is a dramatis personae in the front, which was sorely missing in At Dawn We Slept, but that only tells you the rank of each person, not why they're important. As a result, unfamiliar Japanese names tend to meld. (You also have to stay sharp lest you confuse your Yamamoto with your Yamaguchi, or your Nagano with your Nagumo).

At Dawn We Slept spent hundreds of pages detailing the gestational process of the Pearl Harbor attack plans. Miracle at Midway dispenses with these formalities in just a handful of pages. Partially, this is a historical reality. Having achieved unprecedented success, the Japanese weren't really sure what to do next. They kind of pulled Midway out of their...Well, they didn't think it through. However, Prange kind of glosses over the rift between Yamamoto's Combined Fleet and the Naval General Staff. Consequently, Yamamoto comes off far better than he deserves, when in reality, he was the driving force behind attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor, and then used that cachet to force the Midway operation, instead of following Admiral Kusaka's advice to create a defense cordon.

The treatment of the American side is just as rushed. Only a couple pages are utilized to discuss America's code-breaking abilities in general, and Col. Joseph Rochefort's "AF" hunch in particular. (In short, America cracked about one word in five; Rochefort noticed that the Japanese kept making mention of an objective "AF". Believing AF to be Midway, Rochefort directed Midway to send a message, in the clear, that its fresh water condenser was broken. The Americans then caught and broke a Japanese message that said AF was running low on fresh water. Very clever).

This is a relatively slim volume, and before you know it, the battle is at hand.

Now, Midway is quite complex. For instance, it's opening stages were decided by scout planes and what they did and did not see. That means you read a lot about certain planes flying certain vectors and whatnot. Now, unless you have committed the latitudes and longitudes of the north Pacific to memory, this is a little hard to visualize. That's where maps come in. Maps that lay out search parameters. Maps that show the relative positions of the fleets. Maps that show the flights of each of carrier groups. Unfortunately, maps are few and far between, and the ones that exist are not very clear or helpful.

Once the battle itself gets started, you learn one thing very quickly: Prange (and his collaborators) is not Walter Lord. His use of anecdotes and oral history doesn't rise to a dramatic pitch because we've never been introduced to these people. They're just names in a book. This is not to say that there is a dearth of drama, just that it never reaches out of the page, grabs you by the collar, and commands you to keep reading. On the plus side, Prange's treatment of the Japanese is especially fascinating (often morbidly so; it was quite interesting to read stories of Japanese junior officers trying to prevent their commanding officers from committing suicide when the outcome of battle was made clear).

One of my chief criticisms in the confused presentation of the battle. As noted above, this was a complex fight spread across thousands of square miles. A certain amount of confusion is to be expected, and perhaps adds to the verisimilitude. I mean, you got American land-based bombers attacking the Japanese fleet; Japanese bombers attacking Midway; American land-based fighters defending Midway; American carrier bombers and torpedo planes attacking the Japanese carriers; and Japanese carrier-based bombers and torpedo planes attacking American carriers. There's a ton of overlap, with simultaneous action in three or more locations. If you overlaid all the flight plans on a map, I suspect you would have a latticework that blots out the ocean.

Prange, though, doesn't do a great job of clarifying things. He avoids the simplest solution, which would be datelined chapter headings (a chronology is produced in the appendix). Things are made murkier because Prange is constantly relating fallacious Japanese and American reports about the damage they caused. However, he never takes the time to clarify what actually happened. Thus, you are left to find out on your own that the various high-level horizontal bombers - B-26s and B-17s - did exactly no damage whatsoever to any ships, even though the respective airmen claimed to have sunk everything but Hirohito's private yacht.

Miracle at Midway's worth comes from its scholarship. Prange certainly did his homework, reviewed the proper files, and interviewed all the important living participants. He gives a very objective account of the battle, and avoids the simple mythologizing that mark so many accounts of this battle. For example, Prange doesn't fall victim to the legend of USS Hornet's famed Torpedo Squadron 8. The Torpedo 8 of legend dove on the Japanese carriers without fighter cover and were completely wiped out; however, their sacrifice was not in vain, because it pulled the Japanese fighter cover down to sea level, allowing American dive bombers to come in uncontested. The reality, as Prange writes (it is also the "miracle" of the title), is that three dive-bombing groups coincidentally converged on the Japanese carriers at the same time, and in a matter of moments, had knocked three of them out of the battle.

The book ends with two helpful sections analyzing the battle from both the Japanese and American perspectives. These short sections actually clarified a lot that had confused me earlier. I found that being retroactively un-confused actually added to my enjoyment. So go figure.

Midway is one of the most important battles ever fought. Sure, we would've eventually won World War II even had we lost, but it would've been a much darker story for all sides. If you want to learn about it, there are a couple places to do so. First, is with Gordon Prange's Miracle at Midway, which despite its faults, is the benchmark English-language study.

The other place you can go is the movie Midway, in which Erick Estrada plays a cocky torpedo-bomber and Charlton Heston single-handedly sinks the Japanese carrier Hiru.

Take your pick.

[Dj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miracle at Midway


This is one of the best overall books on the battle that I have ever read. It does well at covering both sides of the battle so that you aren't blinded by the fog of war as the actual opponents were.

The first part of the book talks about the planning by the Japanese and the Intelligence coup on the part of the United States and the planning that followed.

The detail that is in the book makes it clear and easily understood what was taking place and the reasons for some of the decisions that were made. It also reveals a number of things that helped to set the Japanese up for failure. The after battle reviews are quite informative and are interesting since they take the view of after action reviews by the participants involved.

For myself this book and the
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
Are the only two books that anyone would really need in regards to the battle of Midway.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the epic battles of WWII. A very definite great read!!!

[Belhor Crowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب روایت دقیقی از نبرد میدوی هست. نبردی که در طول اون ارتش ژاپن برای اولین بار در جنگ جهانی شکست بزرگی خورد و این شکست کمر نیروی دریایی ژاپن را خم کرد و در نهایت باعث از دست دادن کنترل در دریاها شد و در نهایت باعث شد آمریکا موفق بشه به خود ژاپن حمله کنه.
کتاب دقت فوق العاده ای داره و چیزی که برام در طول کتاب جذاب بود دقت نویسنده در روایت داستان و مقدار تحقیقاتی که لازم بوده برای رسیدن به این همه اطلاعات انجام بشه بود. واقعا حتی تمامی چینش ها و تمام مطالبی که در دفترچه های یادداشت نیروهای کلیدی نوشته شده بود مطرح شدند.
جالب بود ببینیم یک نیروی نظامی چطور شکست میخوره.

کتاب رو تنها به کسانی توصیه میکنم که علاقه ی خیلی زیادی به نبردهای مدرن دارن و صد بار شنیدن اسم یک واحد رزمی مربوط به 80 سال پیش براشون خسته کننده نیست
lucky for me, I'm one of those people!

[C. Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent history the strength of which is based on the interviews the author conducted with direct participants or original source materials. The Japanese Navy perspective is solidly represented here, a very balanced effort. Well organized and easy to read, a very good page-turner. However, a disappoint for me were the literary accents sprinkled throughout the book that I don't remember distracting me in "At Dawn We Slept". An example from page 224: "When the carrier force sighting report reached Midway, the word sped out to Sweeney in the clear, reaching him when he was about 200 miles from original target... The search took a surprisingly long time, and before he could enter the picture, the Fates had added yet another "eye of newt and toe of frog" to the witches' brew they were stirring up for Nagumo." But aside from that, a book well worth your while that will remind you of yesterday's forgotten heroes and their very improbable victory at Midway.

[Everydayreader1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miracle at Midway by Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon is a fascinating read for those of us who have a passion for all things WWII. What made this such an interesting read for me is the way in which the authors presented the Midway experience from both the American and Japanese perspectives. And if you read this book, you will see the detail and planning that went into this battle--strategy by strategy.

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was read during flights to and from locations that I work in the United States. The good thing about flights (sometimes) is that books can be read in large heaps during these direct flights. This book had parts that were a struggle, slow and prior to the battle the detail could have left out certain things and as a result was likely 75-100 pages more than it had to be; the tone of the book sometimes skipped with flash backs and forwards in the early pages. The ending sounded, read, looked, and provided a glimpse of the 1960’s with the visit of George Prange to the homes of Admiral Nimitz, Spruance, and Fletcher – corny, and I felt I was out of place. It is however an important work, one now that is surpassed by technological advances – some of which make the maps and photo’s points that do not stand the test of time since its publication in 1981 following the death of the lead Author. Mr. Gordon Prange likely had the ability to visit all three Admirals due to his own civilian assignment to Tokyo on General MacArthur’ staff as a civilian working G2 Historical Documentation of the Post Second World War era – oddly enough he also studied at the University of Berlin in 1935/36 and had witnessed firsthand live speeches by Corporal Hitler. His colleagues Dr. Goldstein and Ms. Dillon published the unfinished work of Mr. Prange following his death in 1980.

I give this work 3 stars for the effort and complexities of Naval Warfare that is by all accounts more difficult to write historically than related ground war. The section of the book that was most interesting to me was when the battle began and the accounting that Dr. Goldstein and Ms. Dillon take in pursuit of the work left behind by Mr. Prange. In true Naval form the word “the” never precedes the name of any ship (whether American or Japanese). It was only over time and the loss of the Imperial Forces of the Dai Nippon that it was realized by American and Japanese Forces that the Second World War in the Pacific had two major battles that would lead to the demise of the “Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” of influence and ultimate end of the war in the Pacific. The one is the Battle of Midway (4-7 June 1942); and, the Guadalcanal Campaign (7 August 1942 – 9 February 1943). With Midway cleared of Combatant Belligerents this would lead to a clear supply route for Guadalcanal later – though not without its troubles.

The one part I truly did not care for in this book was the transition from pre-battle history to battle. The authors didn’t seem to place as much care into this one simple section as they did in all the other historical accounts of the pre and post battle accounting. The battle itself was by far the best section of this book in my humble opinion; the transition into the battle needed a bit of literary work. Otherwise, a good book and one that has likely been read by many in the past.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gordon Prange, 1910-1980, was a professor of history at the University of Maryland for many years, except notably during the years 1942 to 1951 when he served, first, in the United States Navy and later as chief historian in General Douglas MacArthur's staff during the post-war military occupation of Japan. His latter position enabled him to interview Japanese military and civilian witnesses to World War II immediately after the event. His co-workers published his historical manuscripts after his death, leading to two popular, and technically excellent books; this book, and "At Dawn We Slept" about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Everything was going Japan's way by June, 1942. Since December seventh of the previous year, victory had followed confrontations with the Americans and the British, including the successful attack which sunk or seriously damaged all U.S. Navy's Pacific-based battleships at Pearl Harbor. Japan had not intended on starting a prolonged war but it was necessary to sweep the naval forces of the allies from the Pacific Ocean in order to secure a chain of bases that would protect the Japanese homeland from attack, while obtaining the material resources of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. Central to the plan was the inflicting of a demoralizing blow to the American navy sufficient to convince the United States to sue for peace with Japan at all costs. Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto's audacious Pearl Harbor attack plan was executed with precision, but the victory was not complete because the United States' aircraft carriers were not in port. During the following six months, Yamamoto was entrusted with formulating a new plan to destroy the remnants of the American fleet. He focused on Midway Atoll, where the United States maintained a naval base halfway between North America and Japan. He figured, correctly, that if the Japanese Combined Fleet attacked Midway with an air bombardment and invasion, the American fleet would be drawn out from Hawaii to Midway. The initial attack would be conducted by task forces consisting of four of Japan's fleet carriers from Pearl Harbor: Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu. When the Americans arrived, another fleet traveling several hundred miles behind the Japanese carriers, led by large battleships, would engage and annihilate the Americans.

The Americans were able to detect this plan by way of intercepted radio messages in the Japanese JN25 cipher code which had been partially cracked. Therefore, when the Japanese carrier spearhead arrived on the scene, the Americans were already deployed and searching the area for the location of the attackers' ships. You could spend all day talking about all of the various aspects of the ensuing conflict, but better to just read Prange's excellent and complete account.

The important thing about this battle is that Japan could have pulled off a victory here, even given their loss of complete surprise. The Americans only had two undamaged aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and Hornet, and far fewer support ships than Japan. A miracle of sorts was worked by U.S. Navy support personnel in Hawaii, who worked nonstop to patch up a third carrier, U.S.S. Yorktown, which had been heavily damaged at the Battle of Coral Sea in the previous month. Yorktown should have been sent back to Washington state for at least a month for repairs; instead, the ship was made battle ready in forty-eight hours of furious work at Pearl Harbor and was sent to Midway.

Prange lays out all of the amazing events which followed. The actions of June 4th, which was the second day of the battle, were the most eventful. The most important lesson from the book is that all military planning and preparation give way to events at the scene of action when commanders must make fateful, sometimes instant decisions and entrust the personnel who actually face the enemy to work out a way to succeed. An entire complex operation can boil down to the actions taken in a few critical moments. Prange describes how the decision of the American commanding admiral, Frank Jack Fletcher, to launch his aircraft against the Japanese as early as possible, when the round-trip flying distance was at the upper limit of his airplanes' fuel range, led to a fortuitous encounter with the Japanese carriers at their most vulnerable. All the Americans had to do, after finding the Japanese carriers, was to sink the ships while they were frantically trying to fuel and refuel, arm and rearm two waves of attack aircraft which were crowding their decks. This day almost led to complete disaster for the Americans, however, when almost all of the aircraft from two squadrons of torpedo bombers were shot out of the sky without inflicting any damage to the Japanese ships.

Some of the book's most fascinating reading concerns how succeeding American dive bombers were able to turn Soryu, Kaga and Akagi into floating infernos, within the time period of six minutes. A human element to this story is provided through the experience of Ensign George Gay, a pilot of one of the aircraft from Hornet's Torpedo Squadron Eight, consisting of fifteen two-man-crewed TBD Devastators. Gays' and the other fourteen aircraft of his squadron were shot down. He was able to ditch his plane in the water and found himself floating in the midst of the bombings and explosions of the Japanese aircraft carriers. He was able to elude detection and capture while swimming for thirty hours, after which an American patrol plane rescued him. He was the only one of the thirty men in his squadron to survive.

Prange tells us the developments of the rest of that and ensuing days, which included the loss of the Hiryu for the Japanese and the Yorktown for the Americans. Many Americans would not be aware that the Japanese invaded the Aluetian Islands in Alaska simultaneous with Midway.

Other notable personalities participated in this conflict. These included the Japanese carrier commander, Vice-Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, who had to abandon his flagship Akagi after an American bomb penetrated to the hangar deck and exploded among the aircraft, fuel and bombs located there. The American Commander in Chief in the Pacific, Admiral Chester Nimitz, devised and implemented the successful American plan of attack. The Americans also benefited from Rear Admiral Fletcher's second in command, Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, who ably led the American carrier task force when the loss of Fletcher's flagship Yorktown made it impossible for Fletcher to continue his task. Without a doubt, the most fateful action by any American in the battle was the decision of squadron commander of SBD Dauntless dive bombers C. Wade McClusky, Jr., who, knowing that his planes were running dangerously low on fuel searching for the Japanese fleet, continued the search and located and attacked Nagumo's carriers.

It was evident that something momentous had transpired by the time both navies withdrew from the scene. During a miraculous six minutes, the tide of the war had changed direction. From this point on, the Japanese Navy's strategic invasion capabilities would be lost while the offensive initiative would gradually turn over to the United States Navy. The Japanese had two other fleet carriers, which did not make the Midway fight due to damage received at Coral Sea, but they lost more than two-third of their attack carriers at Midway. Just as fateful was the almost complete loss of these ships' highly experienced aircrews and aircraft mechanics. They even lost possibly their best carrier operations officer, Vice Admiral Yamaguchi, who went down with his ship, Hiryu. Japan would never be able to recover fully from this loss of valuable assets, while the American ship-building and crew training program would turn out several dozen larger, more effective fleet aircraft carriers before the end of the war.

[Avis Black · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a massive, obsessive-compulsive research dump in which the narrative just gets plain lost. I swear, every single piece of data Prange came up with is in this book. Prange doesn't even reach the battle until he's 20-odd chapters in.

I do not need to know how much fuel each type of ship needs. I do not need to know the name of the song used to pipe Admiral Nimitz aboard during some miscellaneous point in the narrative. I do not need to know the order in which the Japanese ships left harbor.

Some of the research is important--the Japanese planning, for example, is often overlooked by U.S. historians when it shouldn't be--but most of this should have been cut out by a smart editor. A military historian like Rick Atkinson knows when his readers' eyes are about to glaze over, and he avoids that pitfall. Prange doesn't have a clue. Prange is the dull uncle who cannot stop telling a story is excessive detail during your Thanksgiving dinner.

Prange does not understand the difference between important details and unimportant details. If you want to tell a good story, you have to learn this lesson.

If Prange's book was reissued in a new edition that cut out all the padding, it would be a smart move which would win more readers for the story. But for now, look elsewhere for a book about Midway if you don't want to be driven up a wall.

[Vicki Andrada · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very informative, and well written! I love it that it told how the battle of Midway went from both the American and Japanese prospective, as I believe to get the best understanding of history it's important to know how all sides of a battle felt and what they went through.

Until I read this, I'd never read a book about the Battle of Midway. I learned a lot from this book! I would totally recommend it to history lovers of this era!

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Perhaps because I had recently finished At Dawn We Slept, I found Miracle at Midway more readable and more enjoyable. At Dawn was a slog, like reading an encyclopedia. Miracle was a page turner in comparison. But reading them both back to back was like taking a course at the Naval War College. Very satisfying.

[Donald Kirch · Rating 5 out of 5]

We really owe our liberty, nation, and way of life to the men who fought and died at this battle. Just as important as "Operation: Overlord." Wonderful book!!

[Aaron Lozano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, a bit technical which made it slower reading for me but in all if you enjoy military history this is a must read.

[William Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when it first came out nearly 40 years ago, right after Mitsuo Fuchida's book on the same topic, and long before the definitive SHATTERED SWORD came along. It was and is an impressive feat of scholarship, which allowed future authors to build on the work done here. Although aging, it is still a worthwhile read for this critical battle.

[Jack McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid. Great historical context, rising action, and climax of the battle, but the last 10 chapters after the battle ended seemed to drag on...

[Matthew Thieme · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Battle of Midway told in an easily comprehensible manner with a flow that makes the educational journey enjoyable. The book does a great job of telling a particular moment in the battle from the perspective of both combatants and then it explains how it most likely actually occurred. The author does a nice job of being fair to all parties in his evaluation of their actions by framing what they did in context of what they knew at the time and not what we know in hindsight. The author provides many of the reflections of those events from the diaries of those involved, and those viewpoints I found to be especially interesting.

[David Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book on Midway that I’ve read in the past month (others: Incredible victory by Walter Lord and Midway Inquest by Dallas Isom) - all because of the new movie release, Midway. I finally went to the movie yesterday, and it was good. Naturally, all the books are better than a two hour movie, so much juicy detail has to be left out when you have so short a time. After my binges on Civil War and Native American war skirmishes, and the various WWII battles in Europe, it is safe to say that both Midway and Pearl Harbor books are rich with strategy and battle descriptions, illustrating the place that luck, planning, technology and bravery play in these great moments in history. If you like dramatic battle journalism, with lots of color and facts and room for interpretation, then dive into the battle of Midway. There are many good books out there, I just happen to hit on these. I had also previously read the Bill O’Reilly book Killing the Rising Sun to get the creative juices flowing on what the motivation of Japan was at the time.
This 1982 book by Prange was sort of the first definitive text-book, a text-book which gives a fair balance of analysis to both the Japanese and American side of this epic battle. The books by Lord, Isom and O’Reilly are several decades newer, and deal with more facts and testimony. But all of them create similar illustrations of what went on, and similar conclusions. I recommend Midway as a subject, no matter how you chose to read about it.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having developed a dear fellowship with a Navy Pearl Harbor and WWII surviving veteran, ministering in the nursing home, myself a Marine veteran, grandson of a WWII Normandy D-Day soldier, I have always loved WWII history. As a young boy in the 1970's I would ask my paw-paw everything I could think of about this war. I always knew "The Battle of Midway" was the turning point of the theatre of the Pacific War; however, after reading this well documented book, by both opponent's records, diaries, and maps did I come to the decision that the American victory was not just sheer might, will, men, and intelligence operations, but truly an overall miracle!
This is a read for historians and military enthusiasts, because it is heavily footnoted, referenced with quotes, and a minute by minute account from both Japanese and American records, veteran's diaries, and interviews with the three main U.S. Admirals: Nimitz, Spruance, and Fletcher immediately after and again, twenty years after the battle. Great read for fifty cents spent at a garage sale! Definitely adding it to my American history library.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book that I read about the Battle of Midway, and I really liked it. Late Gordon W. Prange (and its subsequent writers due to his death) managed to wrote a clear and easy read detail of the prelude to, the actual battle and its aftermath. I was particularly touched by the latest chapter, in which Gordon W. Prange tells about his encounters with the heroes of the battle, the admirals Nimitz, Spruance and Fletcher.

In all a nice book to start you're reading about the Battle of Midway and I'll definitely will read his other book, about the attack on Pearl Harbour with equal satisfaction.

[Sjervey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very balanced presentation of perhaps the defining engagement of the war in the Pacific with Japan. Drawing on both US and Japanese documentation and recognizing the complexity involved in planning for any engagement, this book highlights both the high and low moments on both sides of the engagement, recognizes elements of luck as well as of genius, and honors the courage and spirit of combatants on both sides. I rarely read books about specific military engagements, but I am glad I read this one. It is superbly done.

[Scott Fogel · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book!

It gives such a good feel for what went on before, during, and after the battle because of all the eye witness interviews with Noguma, Spurance, Fletcher, Nimitz, Fuchita, etc.

It also paints a vivid picture of how close the United States came to losing the battle due to faulty equipment torpedoes, guns, bad communications between the different services, etc. But it also shows how much we knew of the Japanese plan of attack and how overconfident and unprepared they really were.

At times it felt like you were there listening in on the conversations.

[William A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

MIRACLE at MIDWAY by Gordon W. Prange
THE ADMIRALS by Walter R. Borneman
REVIEWER: William A. Glass
Date: 01/11/2021

I recently read Miracle at Midway by Gordon W. Prange and got so caught up in the history of World War II in the Pacific that I next picked up The Admirals by Walter R. Borneman. These two books contain many revelations. I learned that famous American generals and admirals were often incompetent, that Japanese military leaders who prided themselves on their warrior spirit got cold feet at critical moments, and how vital FDR’s top military advisors were to the ultimate U.S. victory.
Incompetence among America’s top brass was evident from the first. In the days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, both Admiral Husband Kimmel, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, and General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded our forces in the Philippines, were warned of a Japanese attack. Still, U.S. forces were not put on alert and the Japanese attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines had the advantage of surprise. Kimmel’s battleships were arrayed in a neat row and MacArthur had his airplanes parked wingtip to wingtip. Japanese pilots obliterated these easy targets.
Kimmel lost his command, but somehow McArthur kept his. He promptly led his army into a trap of his own making. MacArthur escaped capture by the enemy, but his troops were not so lucky. As they were led away on a death march, he was in Australia pledging to return to the Philippines. MacArthur looked and spoke like a great military leader and became a hero to the public despite his shortcomings.
Admiral “Bull” Halsey was another brass hat who looked and talked like he knew what he was doing. Early in the war, he commanded the carrier task force that ferried James Doolittle and his daring raiders close enough to Tokyo for them to drop bombs. This made Halsey a hero to the public, but afterward his story was one of bad luck, poor judgement, and sorry seamanship.
Fortunately for Halsey and MacArthur, the Japanese military leaders had worse faults that surfaced immediately. One more attack at Pearl Harbor to target U.S. dry docks, repair facilities, and oil storage tanks would have made Japan master of the Pacific indefinitely. But Admiral Yamamoto was anxious to head back to safer waters, so the U.S. was allowed to rebound.
Next, Yamamoto messed up the plan for the Japanese attack on Midway Island by making the occupation of this American base the objective, rather than designating the U.S. Pacific Fleet as the target. So, while the Japanese were arming their carrier-based planes with bombs for another attack on the island, U.S. aircraft carriers launched dive bombers against the Japanese ships. Four Japanese aircraft carriers, thousands of sailors, close to three hundred planes, and an equal number of Japanese pilots paid the price.
Two years later, the Imperial Japanese high command decided to bet everything on one roll of the dice. The U.S. Navy was landing MacArthur’s army in the Philippines, and the Americans had to be stopped, or all was lost. Tokyo’s plan was to send a decoy fleet to draw Halsey away from his responsibility to protect MacArthur’s landing. Meanwhile, a powerful Japanese strike force would sneak through a passage between two Philippine Islands and destroy MacArthur’s troops and their transports. Naturally, Halsey fell for the Japanese ruse and took off after the decoy with all his ships. Incomprehensively, he didn’t leave any to guard the strategic passage the Japanese strike force came through. The only thing that saved the Americans was the pusillanimity of the Japanese Admiral commanding the strike force. He skirmished with the few escort vessels guarding MacArthur’s landing, then retreated. Thus, Halsey was hailed in U.S. newspapers as the victor of The Battle of Leyte Gulf!
Back in Washington, Admiral William Leahy, General George Marshal, and Admiral Ernest King ran the war for President Franklin Roosevelt. Marshall was in overall command of the army, King was boss of the navy, but Leahy outranked them both. He was FDR’s chief of staff, plus his National Security Advisor. Leahy, King, and Marshall allowed guys like MacArthur and Halsey to get the headlines and be the heroes, content in the knowledge that they were doing their duty to destroy America’s enemies and protect our democracy. They made all the strategic decisions during the war. Historians are only now realizing how critical these three men were. But congress knew. In 1944 they created the five-star rank. Leahy received it first, then Marshal and King. Guess who else got five stars? MacArthur and Halsey, of course! Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
I highly recommend reading Miracle at Midway and The Admirals one after the other. This brief review contains only a few of the many revelations I gleaned from these magnificent works of history.

[Steven Hull · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long wanted to read this book and now that we are living in a COVID-19 lock down world, I am taking advantage of the time to dive into Prange’s masterpiece. I have read several books on Midway including Walter Lord’s and Professor Craig Symonds recent effort. Both of these are high quality reads. What sets Prange’s effort apart is his deep dive into Japanese sources and his ability to directly interview participants on both sides following the war. Key decision makers and the decisions they made are featured. In addition, the level of detail gives in-depth understanding of these decisions and their consequences.
The Japanese are described as having suffered from overconfidence, a lack of training, and poor planning. Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo in mid-April forced the Imperial Navy to move ahead with their overly complex plan to attack Midway and the Aleutians simultaneously. This effort began at the conclusion of six months of heavy operations beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ending with forays into the Indian Ocean. Ships and crews deserved a rest, particularly the aircrews. Yet, there was no pause in operations. The Japanese considered the fighting skill levels of the Americans to be poor. Although at the Coral Sea the Imperial Navy had encountered a scrappy and resourceful U.S. Navy and had lost a carrier and suffered significant damage to two additional carriers, they still claimed ‘victory’ and overrated the damage they had inflicted on the American fleet.
On the other hand, the Americans gained confidence from their effort at Coral Sea. Although heavily damaged at Coral Sea, the carrier USS Yorktown was patched up in 72 hours after reaching Pearl Harbor and sent to Point Luck. There, along with Hornet and Enterprise, Yorktown lay in wait to ambush the Japanese Midway attack force.
Admiral Nimitz took the advice of his intelligence people and placed hia limited resources there. It was a monumental gamble. A final and critical piece for success was the heroic actions of the U.S. Navy carrier pilots. The aircraft carrier attack squadrons performed admirably. Although the torpedo squadrons suffered enormous casualties, the scout and bombing squadrons devastated the Japanese carriers, sinking all four and destroying their air groups.
The timing of these attacks, the placement of the carriers at Point Luck, the lack of preparedness on the part of the Japanese fleet, and the pervasiveness of Japanese arrogance give meaning to the ‘miracle’ part in Prange’s title.
This is a foundational read for anyone interested in the battle that put the Japanese on the defensive for the rest of the Pacific war.

Personal Note
Ensign Robert “Bob” Swan (mentioned in Prange’s book), the navigator on VP-44’s PBY aircraft that first sighted the Japanese main force at Midway, later went on to serve as a pilot in VPB-150 towards the end of the war. He flew 55 combat missions in the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura, a fast, land based medium bomber, from Tarawa and later Tinian, between March 1944 and March 1945. His radioman during that time was my father, Aviation Radioman First Class Warren Hull. Dad considered Swan a good pilot and a good guy, always referring to him as ‘Swan’.
In the late 1990s I was reading about a Battle of Midway anniversary celebration at the Marine’s Memorial in San Francisco. The article listed Lieutenant Robert Swan as one of the featured guests. I contacted one of the event’s organizers and he put me in contact with Bob. This was the very Bob Swan that my Dad had served with. We exchanged several emails and he and my Dad did the same.
The surprise in all of this was that Dad never even knew that ‘Swan’ had been at Midway, let alone part of a brave crew’s effort to maintain contact with the Japanese fleet at the extreme operating range of their aircraft. Bob Swan never mentioned to his crew, during the entire eighteen months they served together in VPB-150, that he had been at Midway and been the navigator on the plane that first sighted the Japanese fleet.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent work by Prange. Takes you into the decision making process, the action and the after action reports with great clarity. Gives credit and blame equally and tells the reader just how lucky the U.S. was ay Midway.

As for the Japanese: Yamamoto may have been a tactical genius when designing Pearl Harbor but he made many mistakes. Mistakes that later he tried to fix with the Midway assault. Mistake one: Nagumo's written orders for December seventh should have been explicit that if complete surprise was achieved a second strike on the fuel dumps and repair yards of Pearl Harbor was to be launched. Nimitz stated to Prang that with a second launch the Japanese could have extended the war by two years.
Second: the original Pearl Harbor plan had an assault and invasion of Midway included in the plan. Early on this was taken out as two much spreading out of the fleet. If the Midway operation had been carried out on Dec 7th as the Wake Island attack was it could have avoided the entire battle of Midway. This leads to point three of the Pearl Harbor plan.

Three: the HQ of the Combined Fleet should have been moved ashore and freed up the Naugato and other fleet units that were in the Inland Sea. These battleships with Cruisers could have laid in 14 and 18 inch firepower to the Midway and Wake assaults' saving the Japanese the sinking of a Cruiser and two Destroyers off Wake. Again eliminating the need for the Midway attack.

Four: bringing the Yammamoto, Naugato, and Mushashi out of the Inland Sea was a fine idea, but they needed to be with Nagumo's carriers not 300 miles to the rear. This would have provided for much more heavy Anti-Air fire for Nagumo's Air Fleet One and Two.

Five, and this one is quite speculative, but, on Dec 7th the Japanese should have also attacked the Panama Canal. A one way trip to the Canal and torpedo the Mira Flores and Pedro Miguel locks would have set the U.S. with the long trip around Cape Horn to reach the Pacific. And sine the original Pearl Harbor plan started in 1939 there would have been more than enough time to create a CVL specifically for this purpose. Launch from 300 miles, pilots attack, head south to Columbia and pick up by tramp steamer under a false flag. Just thinking.

I have many combined statements about the Japanese from both books as once you've read one the other is becomes required to know the full story.

[Peter Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Miracle at Midway,” by Gordon Prange, with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon (Penguin, 1982). Since Prange died in 1980 and the McGraw-Hill edition was published in 1982, one may assume it was completed posthumously by Goldstein (who was a professor at Pitt) and Dillon, who is identified as a CWO, USAF (Ret.). I presume (not having done any research) that Prange did the bulk of the work and the other two polished it and perhaps added the interviews in the appendix. Anyway. Minute-by-minute, latitude by longitude, intensely detailed account of the planning by both sides, and the action. The level of detail is immense: they describe the specific damage to steel frames, watertight doors, decking, etc. in the various ships. Prange considers that the Japanese plan was flawed from the beginning, that it never had the careful planning that went into the Pearl Harbor attack, that even the war games were rigged so that the Japanese won. He places the blame (as, apparently, did the Japanese after the war) on their overconfidence as a result of that string of victories everywhere, from the Pacific to Australia to the Indian Ocean. It never occurred to them that they could lose. They had even assigned officers to run the Midway airbase after it had been captured (similarly, they assumed that Henderson Field would be overrun during one Guadalcanal offensive and assigned planes to land there). They also never thought the Americans could have broken their naval coded and knew what they were going to do. Prange is very clear about the work involved in figuring out where the attack would come, pretty much the Japanese order of battle, their location and so forth. He provides careful assessments of the characters of the officers on both sides, praises both Spruance and Fletcher for their strategic and tactical moves, etc. At the same time he makes a foregone conclusion into a suspense story. The Japanese essentially outfought the Americans almost every step of the way---until the few minutes that the dive bombers planted those bombs on the Kaga, Soryu, Akagi, and Hiryu. But the Japanese commanders made some critical errors (which would not have been errors had they had a little luck), they tended to be too rigid and unable to respond spontaneously as the situation changed, and the result was (along with Guadalcanal) the turning point of the Pacific War. Paired with “At Dawn We Slept,” foundational.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_...

[Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a full understanding of events leading up to this critical World War II naval battle, the battle itself and the aftermath of this battle in the Pacific Ocean in June of 1942. A fairly common and quick understanding of this battle was that the U.S. broke the Japanese naval code, knew what was coming and during a five-minute period, U.S. dive bombers quickly destroyed 3 of the 4 Japanese aircraft carriers present. The fourth Japanese carrier was sunk later that same day, June 4, 1942. The danger the U.S. forces faced and their difficulty in defeating the Japanese at the Battle of Midway was much more involved than that that quick summary implies. Breaking the Japanese naval code did not assure victory on June 4th. This history book provides the details about how the bravery of the U.S. carrier pilots flying torpedo bombers contributed significantly to the eventual success of the dive bombers. There were 41 torpedo bombers that left the three U.S. aircraft carriers to initially strike at those four Japanese carriers, and only 6 planes returned. Of the 35 torpedo bomber planes that went down, only one man survived. Those pilots knew what danger they faced and their poor chances of survival, but then went ahead and did their duty. The same was true of marine pilots on Midway Island who flew the old, outdated Brewster Buffalo fighter planes in defense of Midway Island. The nickname the pilots gave those planes was “flying coffins”, and many a marine pilot met just that end trying their best with inadequate equipment. The U.S. aircraft carrier Yorktown was sunk as a result of damage received in this battle, but her men fought courageously in an effort to save that ship. The tenacity and bravery of the Japanese is not overlooked as this book gives their side of the story as well. Most of all, when Americans read this book, they will better appreciate the fact that America is the land of the free, because of the brave.

[Pei-jean Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Battle of Midway is etched into the consciousness of people as the battle that would begin to turn the War in the Pacific in favour of the Americans after the devastating blow the Japanese had dealt the Americans at Pearl Harbor a mere six months previously.
Given the decisive victory the Americans had over the Japanese in destroying the very strike carrier force that left Pearl Harbor smouldering, it’s easy to assume that on paper when you count the losses on both sides the Americans had the upper hand all along. What emerges though is that the real story reveals an engagement that was much closer than previously thought.
Sifting through many interviews with combatants on both sides (well except of course Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku who was shot down by the Americans in 1943, Admiral Nagumo Chūichi who would commit suicide on Saipan in the closing stages of the war and Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon who would go down with the sinking Hiryu) this book goes through much of the early planning, the battle itself through to the analysis of what both sides did and didn’t do right given the outcome of the battle. For the Japanese perspective the wrongs that led to their defeat reads like the authors are using Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to address their failures, but let’s not forget that the Americans too had their fair share of failures too, of which the most well known one would lead to the near total destruction of their torpedo bombing squadron across all their carriers. The end result though gives proof that it was indeed a major stroke of luck and most of all teamwork that helped the Americans gain the upper hand that would slowly bring Japan to its knees. Indeed Admiral Yamamoto was correct in his assessment that the Japanese shouldn’t underestimate the Americans and whether or not his words of ‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve’ we’re actually spoken by him it indeed rings true.
Informative and interesting it further filled in many of the blanks for me regarding all the personnel on both sides

[Billy Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard book to review. It actually becomes so many things. It is so full of information as to be a n actual treasure trove for the researcher. But, in the same vein, it might contain too much information and be slightly cumbersome to the casual reader. For example a person being described might be described by rank, by job, by rating, and in the case of officers, what year they may have graduated from the naval academy. All lofty accolades to be sure, but at the same time this plethora of information could make the reader stumble and lose focus in the actual read. Sometimes I felt I was reading a book written by a knowledgeable professional naval historian. Then there were times that I felt the writing was coming from my high-school football coach. The truth was that the United States Navy fought the Imperial Japanese Navy with the odds heavily in favor of the Japanese, and beat them like a drum. So a little cheerleading or grandstanding in its retelling could be understandable, even with a temporary loss of objectivity. Still, the existence of the Japanese, as a tenacious foe in battle and the worthy opponent, does not really come across until the index, and this they were with no doubt. The read was highly tilted toward the U.S. Navy, and not really written from a perspective of neutrality, say like a piece from Toland’s inventory. Maybe agreeably so, because here the U.S. Navy we’re overwhelmingly victorious. Overall it was a great read and the battle itself was expertly depicted. Unless the reader was looking for more clarity on what the Japanese were thinking, from their own minds, and not just American perceptions, would reading about this battle from another source be valuable. The editing errors aside, this book was well written and worthy of the time invested for the read.

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the summer of 1968, I bought a paperback edition of Incredible Victory, Walter Lord’s account of the Battle of Midway. For an eleven year old boy, that book was as thrilling as anything written by Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. Rider Haggard, and as far as I was concerned, it was the definitive book on the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific War in World War II. Unfortunately, because I was so impressed by Lord’s narrative, I had a tendency to discount other books about Midway; why read anything else after having read the best narrative ever of that particular battle? I have read many other histories about Midway, but I never read a better, more dramatic, more breathtaking account than Lord’s. But my opinion was revised this past week when I finally read Miracle at Midway. As strong as my loyalty—the loyalty of an impressionable eleven year old boy—is to Walter Lord’s account, I have to say that Miracle at Midway is in my judgment the definitive account of the Battle of Midway. Donald Goldstein’s and Katherine Dillon’s chronicle of the battle, taken from Gordon W. Prange’s extensive research, goes into great detail beginning with the reasons why the battle was fought and continues through the battle to end with consequences of the battle and an analysis of the battle’s place in the overall chronology of the Pacific War. Such in-depth detail can sometimes result in a dry, sterile narration, but Miracle at Midway is loaded with private thoughts and recollections from participants on both sides of the conflict, and accordingly is always fascinating.