Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Battle of Midway essays

Battle of Midway essays The turning point in the American Civil War was reached at bloody Antietam, Maryland, when Confederate forces were fought to a standstill. The Allies reached several turning points in World War II: the Battle for Britain, the Battle of the North Atlantic, and the Defense of Stalingrad. For America, her shining hour, her turning point in that wars Pacific Theater was reached at an island called Midway. Midway is located in the Pacific Ocean, about 2100 miles east of Tokyo and 1135 miles west of Hawaii. Midway is actually two islets, Sand and Eastern, with a lagoon about five miles across and is located just inside the southern reef. Sand Island is only 850 acres or so and its highest point is only thirty nine feet. Eastern is not half of what Sand is, but the Navy placed great strategic value on Midway. Since1903, a telephone cable had connected it with Honolulu, and this cable was used in the battles preliminaries, leaving the level of radio traffic normal and there by foiling any enemy listeners. (1) The Battle of Midway started on the third of June, 1942 and lasted until the sixth of June, but the actual fighting in this battle only lasted one day. However, it could be argued that the real battle began the eighteenth of April, when Army Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his forces of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers were launched from the deck of the USS Hornet (CV 8), 668 miles off Tokyo for what was to be the famous Raid Over Tokyo. In Washington, D.C. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told reporters that the raid originated from a place called Shangri-La, a name designed to mislead enemies. The plan worked. The Japanese figured that the Aleutians or Midway Island had to be Shangri-La because it was within the bombers range. They Japanese decided that Midway had to be destroyed. (2) Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, argued that the...

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