Combat Narratives Battle of Midway June 3-6, 1942

A must read...Official report from the US Navy.... FOLLOWING the action in the Coral Sea May 4th-8th, 1942, there was a lull in Japanese operations in the Southwest Pacific. Did it, as was popularly supposed, mean that the enemy had retired for the purpose of reorganizing his forces for an all-out assault on Australia? Or was he preparing to strike in an entirely different direction? During mid-May, United Nations planes delivered two to three times as many blows against enemy bases in the Solomons and New Guinea as Japanese bombers made on Port Moresby and others of our bases. This husbanding of air strength, together with almost complete absence in southern waters of Japanese men-o'-war except for an occasional submarine, seemed to indicate that the enemy had for the time at least abandoned his designs on Australia and was looking for a more vulnerable point of attack. The enemy, moreover, knew that shortly after the Coral Sea fight most of our available carriers were in the South Pacific. Although the Enterprise and Hornet had arrived just too late for the battle, they had undoubtedly been sighted by the enemy. He also knew that the Lexington and Yorktown had been damaged in the fight, even if he was not aware that the former subsequently had been lost. Altogether, this concentration of American naval strength in the South Pacific very probably appealed to the Japanese High Command as offering a most strategic moment for a heavy blow against our positions in the mid-Pacific. From an analysis of all the reports received before, during, and after the Battle of Midway, it is believed that the Japanese gathered together the following forces for participation in this campaign: