The Battle of Midway: Turning the Tide of World War II

The US Carrier Yorktown (named after the battle that won the US Revolutionary War) was not damaged during the battle of Pearl Harbor as stated in the video. It was actually damaged during the US-Japanese battle of the Coral Sea.

I was a submariner and our history with WW2 is really important to the culture. There was a submarine that was nicknamed "the seventh fleet" because it sunk SO much Japanese tonnage and was so wildly aggressive that it by itself was thought to be a fleet by them.

Coral Sea, Yorktown was heavily damaged at The Battle of Coral Sea and was repaired at Pearl, in 48 hrs. The Battle of Coral sea was the first time opposing navy forces engaged each other without seeing each other.

Something I learned recently was that while the Japanese were running a war game scenario, a junior officer placed the us carriers exactly where they ended up being. His results came out the same as the real battle but was dismissed because the japanese thought there was no way for the americans to know thier plans

I Love how the Brits seem to appreciate the Battle of Midway the same way we Americans do the Battle of Britain. I am a Yank fascinated how the Spitfire totally embarrassed the Germans and Hermann Goering. It is amazing to me how both battles seem to turn on some luck, I call it Godly intervention. German pilots, apparently off course, decided to let go of their bombs on London, turned out to be a fortuitous respite for the Royal Air Force. We can all look back and see these things in clear vision. The Allies were blessed, I believe at least the UK and USA were. Edit: This is the 1st video I watched and the narration and explanation was very thorough and entertaining. Outstanding video. I gladly subbed and will enjoy the Long playlist.

The Yorktown's story was one of the best parts of this battle. They were damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea (not Pearl Harbor as stated in the vide) and sailed for Midway with the repair crews still on board because they were in pretty bad shape. During the battle the ship was hit by the Japanese and burning, but because the repair crews were already onboard they were able to get the fire under control. The Japanese thought the ship was sunk and when they came back for another attack run saw the Yorktown without any fire and thought it was a second carrier, so they attacked it again instead of moving on to another ship. What the repair crews were able to accomplish with the ship alone was nothing short of amazing even though it was eventually lost from the damage it took during that second attack.

The Japanese brutally executed captured US Airmen, while US held captured Japanese Airmen until the end of the war. You can tell who the good guys are just from something as simple as this.

08:44 Simon is actually incorrect at this point. The carrier Yorktown wasn't damaged in the Pearl harbor bombings it was actually damaged in the Battle of the Coral sea where USS Lexington was lost also.

It is interesting to note that, in 1941, both Japan and the USA believed that battleships, not aircraft carriers, were still the main weapon in naval warfare. So the main Japanese aim at Pearl Harbour was always the battleships. With so many battleships out of action after Pearl Harbour, the US improvised by centering their war effort on the carriers This proved to be the right choice.

Do the battle of Alesia! Building two walls and defending them both is one of the craziest things I've ever heard of!

The story of the three sister Yorktown class carriers (Yorktown, Hornet, Enterprise) always gets me, they bore the brunt of the early war for the US and in the end only Enterprise survived and managed to become the most decorated US ship from WW2. It's a true shame that she was scrapped after the war.

My uncle served in the Aleutians in WW2. I asked him once what it was like. He summed it up as, "The enemy only attacked once, and by the time we got there, they had left." I always thought he was underplaying what really happened but it wasn't until I read his obituary that I learned by how much. Long story short, the Japanese held two islands for a year. After a long bloody fight for the first, 35000 American and Canadian soldiers invaded the second. My uncle was in the first wave of that attack, scaling a thousand foot cliff to open the beaches for those who followed. But as he said, by the time they got there the enemy had left. Under the cover of fog the Japanese had already evacuated. There aren't many quality videos on the subject of the bombing of Dutch Harbor and the subsequent occupation, nor the battles which followed. In the grand scheme of things it was just a diversionary attack in a massive global conflict, but it is quite a story. For example, of the almost 2400 troops on Attu only 28 were taken alive. I would love to see you tackle the topic at some point.

Loving the new channel Simon. Bio Geo and now Warographics are some of the best content on YouTube. Great idea doing a war channel. How can you ever understand history properly without learning about our wars. Keep up the great work.

The decryption of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s communications gave the United States Navy a huge advantage during the Battle of Midway. This allowed them to prepare defend and counter attack! This was the greatest naval win of any navy in history

Would love to see you do the "forgotten battle" you mentioned, Simon. I've known for years about to attack on the Alaskan islands, but, I could never find much on it as it's vastly overshadowed by Midway

Nagumo's real blunder was not pulling his forces back about 50 miles west or northwest when the American carrier was detected. Had he done this, he could have placed his carriers more or less out of range of the American carrier planes while still being able to use the "long legs" of his own aircraft to attack the US fleet. However, this didn't fit with Japanese aggressive fleet doctrine and training, so this option was never considered. It is somewhat unlikely that he could have carried out an attack even if his Kates had been armed with torpedoes, since it would have taken 45 minutes to get those planes onto the decks, spotted and launched. Meanwhile, he was under attack for almost this entire time, meaning he had to launch and land CAP fighters as well land his Midway strike. Not only this, but having the planes on the deck with ordinance attached would have made a prime target for any attaching bomber firing its machine guns at the loaded carrier decks. There are a couple of videos by Montemayor that go into quite a bit of detail on this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjydKPcX60&t=46s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHO6xrSF7Sw&t=66s ).

23:46 the ship they had trailed was the IJN Arashi, which was a destroyer, not a cruiser. Earlier in the day a USN submarine (the USS Nautilus) had launched an unsuccessful torpedo attack against the IJN Kirishima and the Arashi had stayed behind to hunt the submarine as the rest of the formation moved on. The Arashi, a Kagero class destroyer, was misidentified by the submarine crew as a cruiser. After giving up the hunt for the Nautilus, the Arashi made high speed to rejoin towards the group, sailing in a straight line, thereby leading McClusky's flight to the carrier formation.

Simon: The Battle off Samar is worthy of its own video, seperate from the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Of which it was a part. US Navy - 6 small escort carriers, 3 destroyers and 4 destroyer escorts versus the Imperial Japanese Navy: 4 battleships (including Yamato), 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 11 destroyers. The Japanese still lose. I'm not American but I'm still immensely proud of those Tin Can Sailors. They were amazing.

this is quickly becoming my favorite channel on YouTube …

A B-26 (Suzie Q) piloted by 1LT James O. Muri actually buzzed the deck of the Akagi skimming its length to escape both the Japanese fighters and the AA fire and although badly damaged it survived (was the only B-26 out of 6 that did so). This was in addition to the B-26 mentioned in the video that was shot down in an attempt to dive into a ship.