The Unknown Battle of Midway Quotes

“Put it all together and the TBDs at Midway would have been worried about gas all the time they were in the air, and the four Enterprise and two Yorktown Devastators that made it back must have been running on empty at the end of their flight.”
― Alvin Kernan, The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

“In offering to use his own pilots, Waldron was almost surely insinuating that the fighter pilots were afraid to mix it up with the Zeroes, and at least a touch of this fear is around the edges of the overall fighter performance that morning.”
― Alvin Kernan, The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

“Design differences were not the results of chance or fashion but reflected differing national attitudes toward war and the value of individual life. Where we chose ruggedness and safety for the flyers, to put it simply, the Japanese opted for performance and distance, sacrificing crew safety and endurance to achieve these goals.”
― Alvin Kernan, The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

“loaded with a torpedo weighing over a ton, the old Devastator consumed between 30 and 50 gallons of fuel an hour, depending on its speed and its climb rate, but could carry only a reduced amount of its maximum 180 gallons of gas.”
― Alvin Kernan, The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons

“Our fighters were at a disadvantage with their Japanese enemy, but the American torpedo plane was a real turkey.”
― Alvin Kernan, The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons