On the Pacific Ocean, the morning of June 4, 1942, the USS Enterprise (CV-6), USS Hornet (CV-8) and USS Yorktown (CV-5) sailed to meet an attacking fleet of four Japanese carriers - four of the six carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor only six months earlier - to engage in what would become one of the most decisive naval battles in history.

The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the Pacific Theater in World War II. That battle, however, could have easily been lost were it not for the ingenuity that brought an aircraft carrier from the brink of inoperability and back into the fight, or the cunning that cracked the most heavily encrypted code in the Japanese arsenal.

The United States was drawn fully into World War II after the infamous surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan's signing of the Tripartite Act with Fascist European powers, as well as conflicting Japanese and American Pacific expansionism, had greatly strained relations between Japan and the United States. On December 7, 1941, those tensions culminated in the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, planned by Marshall Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Isoroku Yamamoto, aimed to incapacitate the United States Navy long enough for Japan to establish its planned empire across East Asia and the Pacific; a goal they had initially accomplished. The IJN swept across the Pacific, quickly taking Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies from the Allies.

Japan's goal in the war was to force the U.S. to capitulate claims to any Pacific territories through a string of demoralizing defeats, allowing them to take Fiji, Samoa and eventually Hawaii. Spurred on by recent victories and an urgency to destroy the American fleet, Japan planned another surprise attack at Midway.

Yamamoto wanted to incite the U.S. Navy into a full-on battle where he could eliminate America's aircraft carriers, the greatest threat to Japan's Pacific campaign. He needed to draw the American fleet out to fight, but reasoned that another attack on Pearl Harbor, with its now heavily-bolstered defenses, would be too risky. Instead, Yamamoto chose to attack an American outpost on Midway, a small atoll 1,300 miles from Pearl Harbor - just out of effective range of almost all aircraft stationed on the Hawaiian Islands, and important enough for the United States to defend forcefully.

The IJN had planned to conceal their numbers prior to the attack, luring Task Force 16, comprised of the Enterprise, Hornet, and their supporting ships into a situation where they would be taken off-guard, surrounded and outnumbered.

The IJN was not aware of two critical flaws in their plan, however. They believed that Yorktown had been sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea along with USS Lexington (CV-2), when it had in fact made it back to Hawaii for repairs. More importantly, the United States had broken the main Japanese naval code, revealing the enemy's plans.

American codebreakers had named the communication scheme JN-25. It was the most secure code used by the Japanese, requiring the reconstruction of 30,000 code groups. The code was changed regularly, but the most recent version had been sufficiently unencrypted in time to warn of the attack on Midway. Deciphered messages had stated there would be an operation targeting an area coded as "AF." American cryptanalysts devised a ruse of broadcasting an unencrypted radio message that Midway's water purifiers were down. Within 24 hours, they had detected a Japanese message stating AF was short on water, confirming the planned attack on Midway. As a result, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz was provided with a complete order of battle for the operation at Midway.

With the details of the upcoming battle, Nimitz knew that the Japanese would muster four carriers, and decided to pull Yorktown from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

Yorktown had helped achieve a strategic victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea, but had suffered heavy damage in the process; so much that the Japanese believed the ship had sank along with Lexington. Experts estimated it would take at least several months to get Yorktown back in fighting shape, but Nimitz needed every available flight deck. Yorktown's elevators and flight deck were mostly intact and, after 72 hours of working around the clock, the ship was deemed capable of two to three weeks of operation, and its diminished air group was replenished with any aircraft and pilots that could be found - good enough for what Nimitz required.

Armed with knowledge of the Japanese fleet, Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown and the other ships of Task Forces 16 and 17 sailed to meet the enemy at Midway.

Nimitz knew not only where and when the Japanese would appear, but also knew that in their attempt to hide their numbers, their ships had spread out too far to support one another. These factors gave the United States Navy the advantage they needed.

The American fleet met the four Japanese carriers: Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, as well as their supporting ships. The two opposing fleets would battle for nearly three days, and, with the advantages of expansive intelligence, cohesive and supportive ship formations and highly-trained pilots, The United States won a stunning victory over the Japanese, sinking all four enemy carriers, destroying 256 Japanese aircraft, along with more than 3,000 men.

The United States Navy lost Yorktown, 144 aircraft, and 300 men. Unlike America, however, Japan lacked in resources and industry, and its navy would never recover from the defeat at Midway. This loss marked the turning point in the Pacific theater, putting Japan on the defensive for the remainder of the war.

The same diligence that cracked the JN-25 code, spirit that never wavered after initial defeats, and the same gumption that brought Yorktown to Midway would carry the United States Navy to victory in the Pacific Theater.


For more information, visit www.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/usnavy, or www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), visit www.navy.mil/.