Customer Reviews

The Battle of Midway: The Battle That Turned the Tide of the Pacific War

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For 6 months the Imperial Japanese Navy was invincible. It could do no wrong as it swept aside all before it. Plans for the complete domination of the Pacific region had been laid many years before and in the aftermath of Pearl Harbour those plans were being put into effect with devastating results. On 4 June 1942 they came to a critical point; If they could take Midway Atoll, the entire Pacific would be theirs. High on recent success after success - who would have thought they could do anything other than succeed again.

Perhaps if the US Aircraft Carriers had been in their home port of Pearl Harbour on that infamous day when the Japanese attacked, then perhaps Midway would have gone the other way. But they were not and it didn't. Thus Midway will always be known as the Battle that turned the Tide of the Pacific War.

In this book, the author provides a concise and thrilling account of that battle. I have no way of knowing whether the book provides any startling new information or not. What I do know is that this book is an excellent introduction to the subject of the Battle of Midway for anyone who was wondering what it was all about. They will not be disappointed in the way the subject is explained. On top of all that it is also a very good read.

NM

The battle of Midway may be the most chronicled event in the U.S. Navy's history, with a seemingly endless array of books, articles, essays, and media productions that continue to appear non-stop over sixty years after the fact. The sheer volume of references on the battle makes it inevitable that a few of them will be extraordinarily thorough and accurate, some will be quite the opposite, and the vast majority will land somewhere in the middle as more or less decent general treatises on a complex subject.

Peter C. Smith's "Battle of Midway: the Battle That Turned the Tide of the Pacific War" is in that middle ground. It is aided by excellent graphics and a good photo set, but has a typical mix of pluses and minuses that give it honorable mention while keeping it out of the best-of-class category.

First the nitpicks: the book does have a number of errors or inaccuracies that should have been caught by a knowledgeable editor, such as twice placing the Battle of Tsushima Straits in 1904 (it was 1905), mislabeling Admiral Yamamoto's Operation MI as "Plan AF," and naming the wrong commander for the USS Enterprise's strike against the Japanese carrier Hiryu. However, such miscues generally were of little consequence to the overall story, and some of them can be blamed on the extent of knowledge available to researchers when the book was written.

But it excels in other regards. Smith covers all of the important facts of the battle in concise fashion while retaining a level of detail necessary to creditably tell the story. His final chapter, in which he analyzes why the battle turned out as it did and what likely would have happened if it had not, is particularly insightful.

For readers who insist on the Battle of Midway told with unfailing accuracy down to the smallest detail, there are certainly better choices. But for those who just want to learn the basics without getting bogged down in the voluminous minutiae and analyses of more serious works, Smith's tight little book is a worthy contender.