When the sun set in the North Pacific on June 4, 1942, Yorktown was crippled for good, but four Japanese carriers, 332 planes, one-third of Japan’s combat pilots, and over 3,500 men were on the bottom. It was, as historian Walter Lord characterized it, an “incredible victory” for the United States. Might the outcome have been different had Kakuta’s carriers turned south on June 3 to threaten the American flank rather than attacking Dutch Harbor? Captain Hideo Hiraide, chief of the naval press section at Japanese Imperial Headquarters, put a different spin on the entire outcome. “The enormous
...more
