Customer Reviews

Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway (Twentieth-Century Battles)

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This book purports to shed new light on the Battle of Midway, but actually it is a smoke screen. It just might be the worst book on the Pacific War I have ever read.

The basic problem is that the author explicitly set out to exonerate the senior Japanese officers who are traditionally assigned most of the blame for this crushing defeat. Isom accuses previous historians of treating Admiral Nagumo and his staff as "stupid" and "incompetent" -- a wild exaggeration. He then relies almost totally on the postwar interrogations and memoirs of these officers who had good reasons to misremember or fudge the nature and exact times of their actions. Sometimes this requires elaborate rationalizations to explain away conflicts between these sources and contemporary documents.

Like the former law professor he is, Isom defends the 1st Air Fleet's command decisions with every possible argument, including many that show a profound lack of understanding of how WWII navies operated and some that actually impeach the competence of the officers he claims to defend.

For instance, Isom makes several impossible claims about the radio suit of Nagumo's flagship AKAGI. He claims that key intelligence reports transmitted from Tokyo were not received by AKAGI due to her small and badly positioned antennas, and small command island structures. Actually, all the Japanese fleet carriers had antenna arrays almost identical to those of US fleet carriers, supported on tall masts that were folded down only when planes were actually landing or launching. The size of the islands is irrelevant because the main radios of carriers were not located in the island structure, but below the flight deck. And Nagumo's fleet had two CAs and two BBs with normal fixed antennas that could have passed messages on to AKAGI. If the Tokyo broadcasts were really not received by Nagumo, the only possible cause is incompetence by his communication staff. It is more likely they were simply ignored as part of the general overconfidence the IJN had developed during the first 6 months of the war.

It is essential to Isom's model of the battle that the 0728 TONE-4 scout plane report did not reach Nagumo until about 0800. So he claims that "AKAGI's radio" was not tuned to the scout channel because "it" was monitoring the strike on Midway. This is just plain crazy. Aircraft carriers had multiple receivers and radiomen to monitor all relevant channels. No competent battle staff would rely on vital tactical radio messages being relayed by flag or blinker from TONE as Isom claims.

Isom even attempts to justify Nagumo's grossly inadequate air search plan with a variety of misleading statements and fudges. It is easy to show from the chart in the book that all likely locations of US vessels were not searched until about 0845 and that Nagumo should not under any circumstance have disarmed his 2nd-wave torpedo planes before then.

In summary, this book is a defense lawyer's brief and not a work of objective history. Since all the "new" issues raised by this author were discussed more carefully by Parshall and Tully in "Shattered Sword" (2005), I strongly suggest that you buy that book instead.

Clearly, the Battle of Midway is the most chronicled single event in the U.S. Navy's history. Six decades of books, media productions and scholarly studies on it would seem to have covered every conceivable fact that can possibly be analyzed and reported. At this late date, then, researchers face an intimidating challenge in coming up with anything new as to how and why the battle turned out as it did. Midway Inquest is author Dallas Isom's attempt to do just that, and he largely succeeds.

Isom, a law professor at Willamette University, initially presented his thesis (that Japanese carrier admiral Chuichi Nagumo was befuddled by circumstances largely beyond his control) in 2000 via a detailed treatise in the Naval War College "Review." That article was something of a groundbreaker in Midway historiography, for it included a fresh analysis of certain key evidence coupled with original revelations that brought important new understandings of Nagumo's woes as the battle unfolded. Midway Inquest is the author's NWC article expanded into book form, with abundant supporting data and supplemental text.

The book's subtitle, "Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway," may appear rather simplistic to casual students of the battle, for those facts have long been assumed. But Isom believes that there is much more to the story, and that certain elements of the classic explanation for Japan's defeat at Midway are wrong. He bases his theories on several interviews with Japanese veterans and extensive review of primary documents in Japan. The result is two rather significant findings that Isom brings to the Midway discussion. Number one, his Japanese interviews were focused more on the enlisted mechanics who worked on the carriers' hangar decks than on the pilots who are the usual focus of interviewers. That gave Isom a highly detailed understanding of exactly how, for example, a torpedo was mounted on a B5N2 torpedo bomber ("Kate"), and especially what was involved in removing one, replacing it with a land bomb, and then reversing the procedure. It turns out that such minor details were a very important factor in Nagumo's decision process as the carrier battle commenced, which leads the reader to a far better understanding of why the admiral could not get an air strike launched before it was too late.

The second new revelation concerns the renowned flight of the cruiser Tone's number 4 scout plane which, to Nagumo's supreme consternation, reported an American carrier in his vicinity. Tone 4 had launched thirty minutes behind schedule due to mechanical trouble, leading many Midway authors to conclude that Japan would have won the battle if the scout had launched on time. A half hour advance notice that an American carrier was nearby would have given Nagumo a head start in rearming his Kates, with the result that a full strike could have been launched before American dive bombers arrived overhead. But Isom's analysis of Tone 4's track and the time of its contact report over Yorktown reveals an interesting incongruity--it wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the American carriers at that time. Its assigned track should have taken it well to the south and beyond the U.S. fleet's location, with the result that its crew most likely would never have seen any ships at all.

But that didn't happen--Tone 4 spotted the Yorktown at a time it shouldn't have, leaving Isom to conclude that its pilot had decided to make up the lost thirty minutes by shortcutting his assigned track. He apparently turned north to start his dogleg return much sooner than he would have had he launched on time, and thus overflew Yorktown at an unintended time and location. Ironically, then, Tone 4's mechanical problem was the cause for Nagumo having any luck at all in striking the U.S. fleet, rather than the critical failing in Japanese search operations that earlier writings make it out to be.

The book has other desirable features, most notably a chart showing all of Nagumo's scout plane assignments superimposed over the tracks of the opposing fleets. It makes the Tone 4 issue very clear. Other plusses are Isom's supplementary chapters, which give a very good overview of America and Japan's march to war as well as excellent synopses of the post-Midway battles of 1942: Guadalcanal, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz Islands.

However, Midway Inquest suffers from several notable flaws that diminish the book's appeal. Isom comes off as rather elitist in his preface, implying that other Battle of Midway authors are guilty of chauvinism and that a lawyer like him is best able to dispassionately analyze the facts of the battle in an unbiased manner. Professional historians will probably argue that they are as capable as Isom for writing on this subject without prejudice.

Other faults include the author's contention that a main catalyst for the Japanese defeat was a fortuitous error in the initial U.S. scouting report of Nagumo's location, which is only true if you believe the American PBY was absolutely wrong and that Nagumo's report--written long after the battle, with much of his ships' records at the bottom of the Pacific--was absolutely right. Isom gives no reason why we should do that. His suggestion on how the Japanese could have actually taken the atoll focuses exclusively on the carrier battle without considering the critical problems that would have faced the Japanese cruisers conducting the bombardment, as well as the troops that would have waded ashore against daunting defenses about which they had no intelligence. The author makes numerous other claims that historians will find highly arguable.

In fairness, though, such issues are peripheral to the book's central theme and are not a reason to avoid buying it. Indeed, Midway Inquest should be read by everyone embarking on a serious study of the Battle of Midway. Isom has given us something quite rare, a good book about the battle that doesn't simply retell it. Its subject matter is new, important, and very well presented despite the occasional flaw.

This book is written in the form of a legal inquest to find out what happened. The author is to be commended for his massive research, inclusion of detail, and attempt to break down just what went wrong on the Japanese carriers minute by minute.

The problem is that while he purports to be just searching for the truth in the facts, my impression is that this was written from the point of view of Admiral Nagumo's defense attorney, not an objective court.

The author does a great service explaining the time-consuming process of rearming Kate Torpedo bombers, but I thought he jumped through a lot of hoops along the way to exonerate Nagumo.

I agree with the other reviwer that "shattered sword" gave me a much better and easier to understand picture of how Japanese carriers operated, along with much of the same material on their doctrine. I also tend to agree with their conclusion that it was mostly over-confidence ("victory disease") from a string of endless victories and their belief that they would have to enduce the Americans to fight, rather than realizing that the Americans might bring the fight to them.

I also really did not care for the extensive wargaming and "what if" scenarios the author went off on at the end. Carrier warfare cannot be predicted that accurately. I also disagree that the Kate Torpedo bomber was the real "ship killer" in the war, especially when used against carriers. They were more vulnerable, hit a little less often, and while better at sinking a ship, they were probably less useful for quickly putting a carrier out of action by messing up the deck. Their explosive force damaged the ship deep down, and often did not even bother planes on deck or in the hangers. That was the really vulnerable area for a carrier. He's right they could sink ships well, but his own argument for how they were slow to rearm and less versatile defeats his argument that they were the preferred weapon for use against enemy carriers.

I would also point out that in these books that purport to show how the Americans were not outnumbered, they tend to minimize the fact that a huge proportion of the US planes were virtually worthless (Devastator and their faulty torpedos, jury rigged B-26's with the same torps, high level B-17's that rarely hit anything, obsolete buffalo fighters and vindicator bombers) and that when you subtracted them the Japanese definitely had a quality and quantity advantage that they squandered.

The real Japanese errors I noticed were:

1. A weak search plan. Even if not 2-phase, it should have been thicker and overlapping. In carrier warfare finding the enemy first is paramount. Totally the result of overconfidence.

2. Nagumo failed to use his number one advantage, the range of his planes vs American ones. He could deliver escorted attacks at longer range than the Americans could deliver unescorted ones, and far longer than the ranges at which they could deliver escorted attacks with both dive bombers and torpedo planes. Attacking Midway at medium range invited a response by all their bombers that he didn't have to risk, and not conducting a long range search BEFORE the attack was a mistake. Better to not catch Midway's planes on the ground than to have half your force away when you spot US carriers unexpectedly. Also, Japanese forces continually moved TOWARD US forces, which again negated much of their range advantage.

3. Not obeying orders to hold back torpedo armed Kates in case US carriers showed up. Just inexcuseable. But worse, why use any Kates at all against midway? They were certainly less accurate against point targets, and anyone knows cratering sand airfields is pointless.

4. Using planes from all four carriers in the Midway raid. This tied up all his carriers landing returning planes when they could have instead launched two deckloads from 2 carriers and had the same effective force in the raid, reserving the other two for CAP and ship strike reserve.

5. Insisting on strict doctrinal combined arms attacks rather than launching what could be launched as soon as possible. "Perfect is the enemy of good", they say.

6. Over-commitment of Zeros to CAP duty and poor fighter control. The over-kill against the US Torpedo planes shows that too many Zeros were attacking and none were kept in reserve. This is the very essense of the duty of the commanding Admiral, to make sure his people know to keep enough fighter planes properly disposed to counter the dive bomber threat he KNEW was bound to be coming soon.

This is a useful addition to one's library on the subject, but I feel it could have been done in the form of an article and saved the reader a lot of tedium.

I really wanted to like this book. The author apparently did some interesting research in Japan in the early 90's. Unfortunately, I found the presentation almost painful to wade through. The problems with the book fall into four groups:

First, there are a number of factual errors in the book. Halsey was not the skipper of ENTERPRISE. The Mk 13 torpedo, while using an exploder similar to the problematic exploder on the Mk 14 torpedo, did not have the same contact failures due to the slower speed of the Mk 13. PRINCE OF WALES was not "designed to be invulnerable to an air attack". After encountering error after error of this type, it is hard to have any confidence in the conclusions the author reaches.

Second, much of the reasoning seems very flawed. For example, the author correctly points out that the Midway operation severely impacted IJN fuel supplies, and curtailed the operations of their large ships after the battle. He then goes on to assert that had the Japanese 'won' at Midway (defined as losing 2 carriers while sinking 3 US carriers), the IJN would then have proceeded to attack Hawaii and the the Panama Canal. Where the fuel for this would have come from is unstated.

Other reasoning is simply unsupported - for example, that MacArthur's planes were caught on the ground because he thought he was safe because "..almost all the Japanese carrier strength was apparently in Hawaiian waters.."

These type of arguments suggest to me that the author simply doesn't have a good feel for combat operations in general, or naval operations in specific. Another example: At certain points he expects Nagumo (who was not an aviator) to have detailed information on the status and mechanics of the aircraft rearming process, while at other times he assigns no blame to him for what may have been a significantly flawed process for handling communications within the First Air Fleet.

Third, I found the organization of the book to be difficult. The author pitches it as an 'inquest', and so it is not structured as a history as much as a series of arguments supporting a conclusion he has reached. Yet even this flow is poorly executed.

Finally, the author seems to have a problem with the authors of Shattered Sword. While there are references to and criticisms of other works and authors, only the authors of Shattered Sword are subject to what are almost personal attacks. Rather than simply making his case on the strength of the evidence, the author feels the need to insert comments such as "It is even more strange that Parshall and Tulley treat the SRMN summaries as preempting more authoritative sources."

Buy and read Shattered Sword. Then read the appendices and notes in this book - there is some interesting material there. If you choose to read the body of this book, do so with a critical eye.

If taken solely on its merits, Isom's "Midway Inquest" deserves three stars out of five. After all, given that perhaps 15% or less of published books on the war make serious attempts at being scholarly and this one DOES, it's on one hand hard to give it a grade of less than 50%.

And yet, I do and give it 2/5. And the reason for this is something called "reviewer's tilt" where I reserve the right to modify my objective scoring for the book (3/5) based on my personal subjective criteria. My basic reasoning for this can be summed up by the following excerpt from an introductory portion of the book:

"Finally, a word about my approach in writing this book. It has been that of an investigator attempting to solve a mystery: why Nagumo's strike force could not be launched on time. As Admiral Nagumo and the crew of Tone 4 have been charged with serious malfeasance, or at least with gross negligence, I have also taken on the role of a lawyer conducting an inquest into a "crime," hence the title "Midway Inquest." But, also as a lawyer, I have applied a more rigorous standard to evidence than have other commentators; some documents and other sources that has been accepted in establishing a point by other authors has been rejected by me where its reliability is highly dubious. I have endeavored to be as evenhanded and objective as possible in this account."

My initial response to the above statement ends with "... and the horse he rode in on!" but I suppose I should respond properly.

First, there's something to be said for the supreme arrogance associated his apparent belief that law professors on one-year sabbaticals or whatever it was he took to write this book apply "more rigorous standards of evidence" than historians. While he leaves himself some wiggle room in naming only "other commentators" vaguely, in the book he attempts (and generally fails) to take on some serious works by some serious authors. I guess I don't mind this so much (heck, if he, or a random hot dog vendor can come up with a more convincing and well-researched book, that would be awesome!), as his implicit belief that his law training makes him a better historian. As we shall see, it actually makes him (in his specific case) MUCH MUCH worse.

I guess in the spirit of full disclosure, by the time I read the above quoted section, I pretty well had established in my book that the author was an (unprintable word), and the savageness and incivility that he used in his book when attacking other authors' points (even as he himself was technically wrong or was forwarding a dubious proposition) did nothing to lessen that idea for me. It seems that other reviewers here have picked up on this as well.

Second, looking at that excerpt, we see two stated goals that are at complete cross purposes. He wants to be both (and I'm changing the order of the words here, but you get the idea) an "evenhanded and objective as possible... investigator attempting to solve a mystery" and also "a lawyer conducting an inquest into a crime." But actually his wording is incomplete here - Isom actually plays DEFENSE lawyer for Nagumo here. Playing defense lawyer can be (and in this case is) deeply at odds with actually painting a maximally faithful image of historical truth. As other reviewers here have pointed out, the book cherrypicks facts and, even more unforgivably, attempts to overwhelm the jury (us) with absurdities and anachronisms basically to "defend" his client. At the times it does so (and there are many), the book stops becoming a work of history.

Based on my reading, please allow me to make my own "inquest" here as to how I think this book came to be. First, Isom always had an interest in Midway. To this extent, he even went so far as to (quite laudably) conduct some firsthand interviews in Japan. Working with a Japanese collaborator (more kudos to Isom for this - are you reading this Barrett Tillman - see, it is possible!) he got insight into basically two works - one, volume 43 of the official Japanese War History (Senshi Sosho) and two, Middowei Kaisen, a Japanese language book. The rest of his bibliography is the standard English-language stuff like Horikoshi's book about the zero and various midway books that we all know and have read. So, based on his reading of the two Japanese sources and his interviews, my inquest believes that Isom had some new ideas about midway. He was going to sock it to that Mitsuo Fuchida! But then, shock/horror, before he could publish, a very very good book came out about Midway (which I won't name here). Suddenly, Isom was in a pickle. His thunder was gone. So, what to do? He changed the focus of his work to focus on the major point of disagreement that he had with the authors of the new book, and not so subtly used his book to vent his displeasure of the authors of the new book for having the audacity to release their competent and better researched book before his. The result is the occasionally competent but generally disjointed mess that is Midway Inquest.

Other reviewers have pointed out various technical and historical howlers in Isom's book. There are certainly many more. However, I'd like to float one idea here that I don't think has been given adequate attention in Isom's book even given his approach. I don't know what (if anything) it's called formerly, so I'll call it "Super Bowl behavior." If you're a starting (American football) quarterback in the Super Bowl, you've spent a season if not a career getting to that point. You've spent the last two weeks thinking about the game. You play every second of the game with intensity and with some recognition of the importance of the event and you know that every second may later be analyzed. The same "intensity of experience" does not apply to, say, eating breakfast a couple days before the Super Bowl. Here's the thing -Super Bowls have starting whistles and fixed times. Modern battles do not. Nagumo hadn't realized that his Super Bowl had started on the morning of June 4th even though, in hindsight, he should have been at least more open to the possibility that it had. All the minute-by-minute hypothesizing (and please let us make no mistake about it - Isom's book with regards to Nagumo's timetable is basically hypothesis and rationalization and "it could have happened this way and if I write forcefully enough maybe you'll be convinced that it's the only way it could have happened.") in my view misses what in my mind turns out to be the most likely case.

Nagumo didn't realize or took a calculated risk in believing that he wasn't in the Super Bowl yet. He and the rest of the forces had a dooming combination of having lost their edge from sustained operations to lost their sense of reality from sustained victories. Is that incompetence? Probably not--but I haven't seen any modern authors claiming that it was.

Conclusion: there are a few nuggets of good to be gotten out of this book, but life is too short to waste on such arrogance. The world at large would be far better off if Isom had just published the full text of his Japanese interviews and also translated versions of the two Japanese works cited.

In "Midway Inquest" author Dallas Isom proposes to explain why the Japanese lost the Battle of Midway by solving what he (and many others) characterize as the "central mystery" of the battle, i.e. why Japanese Admiral Nagumo failed to launch his dive bombers and torpedo bombers against the American carriers before US Navy dive bombers attacked and sunk three of the four aircraft carriers in his Task Force - and to make that determination given the underlying premise that generally Nagumo and his subordinate line and staff officers acted in a competent manner rather than presuming they lost simply because they were, or performed, incompetently. As Isom notes, presuming incompetence allows construction of simpler scenarios explaining the outcome, whereas an assumption of competency requires deeper analysis and supported conclusions. Historically Isom's approach is reasonable given the Japanese Navy's almost unbroken record of victories for the six month post-Pearl Harbor attack period preceding the Battle of Midway.

As Isom notes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had failed to destroy American Naval power in the Pacific. Key facilities such as the fuel storage areas were left intact and the US Navy's aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers were not in port on that day. Ships the Japanese high command is described as vainly hoping would meet their demise when subsequently struggling to prevent their forces from advancing Southward across the Pacific Ocean region. Instead, until the Battle of the Coral Sea, the American Carrier Task Groups were used to harass Japanese targets. Although those strikes caused little damage, after Doolittle's bombers flew from the USS Hornet and bombed Japan a humiliated Japanese Navy high command approved Admiral Yamamoto's plan to draw the surviving American into battle and to sink them. A need to destroy the American carriers brought home when at the Battle of the Coral Sea they interfered with the Japanese advance into the Southwest Pacific region.

In sum, the Japanese plan was to use Nagumo's Navy Aircraft Carrier Task Force to bomb the American base on Midway Island and then for Admiral Nobutake Kondoi's amphibious force to seize the Island by amphibious assault. While Yamamoto was unaware of the number of aircraft carriers Admiral Nimitz had available, he was correct that the movement of the Japanese Navy in the area would bring out the US Navy. The Japanese Navy's plan, however, sent their forces in three different directions rather than against a single point (the US Navy carriers). A threat of assault against Midway would have sufficied as bait and the attack against the Aleutians was a complete waste of resources. Although many of his critics appear not to realize it, Isom clearly states on page 92 that it was the Japanese Naval General Staff that required Yamamoto to send part of his force to capture two of the Aleutian Islands to preclude their use as a base for an attack on Northern Japanese home Islands.

The author makes the case that while Nagumo and his staff were unaware that American Aircraft Carriers were in the Midway area, the Japanese High Command had concluded through an analysis of radio traffic volume that the US Navy knew the Japanese Navy planned to invade Midway, which estimate they communicated to Yamamoto. Isom assserts these messages were either not communicated to Nagumo or not received by him. A lack of receipt Nagumo documented in his post-battle official report -- which has been confirmed or repeated (depending on one's viewpoint) by surviving members of his staff over the years. Regardless of whether Nagumo did or did not receive these intelligence estimates, the Fleet Commander (Admiral Yamamoto) elected not to insure Nagumo received these warnings. On the basis of my experience of having served as a US Naval Officer in both line and command level staff positions, that failure by Yamamoto would have at a minimum cost him his command in the US Navy. Electing to retain radio silence in that situation was simply stupid. If the American carriers were in the area, obviously they knew/believed the Japanese were coming and there would be no spoiling the element of strategic surprise by breaking radio silence. If the American carriers were not in the area and rushed to that general location due to intercepting Japanese radio traffic, that movement would have facilitated Yamamoto's plans to draw them into battle at that location.

Yamamoto ordered Nagumo to keep a substantial number of his aircraft in reserve armed with torpedo's to attack the American carriers should they arrive on the scene, therefore, not to use those planes against Midway. Orders Nagumo countermanded by directing that those planes be rearmed with the weapons needed to participate in a second attack against Midway Island. Given Nagumo's cautious nature, and accepting the author's premise that Nagumo was a competent admiral, this action indicates that he was unaware that the American Carriers were comparatively close at hand. A mistaken belief that could have originated either due to a failure to receive the above intelligence estimates sent from Naval Headquarters or that the information received from the scouting planes incorrectly reported that the US carriers were further away then their actual relative position.

While the technology associated with the communication equipment installed on Japanese Carriers of that era indicate he should have received copies of the messages from Naval Headquarters, if his task force was not an addressee they in all probability could have been ignored by their equivalent of a crypto staff, or as every Naval Officer familiar with radio communications during that era through at least the late 1960's knows communications and other electronic equipment often did not function as advertised.

Once the US carriers were sighted, Nagumo's moving his task force toward them while having to arm his planes indicates, as Isom asserts, that the Admiral believed the American ships were further away than their actual position - otherwise he would have turned his ships away from them while his planes were being rearmed. Japanese carriers of that era are described as having to rely primarily on high speed (30+ knots) maneuvering (zig sagging) to avoid bombs and torpedoes from attacking enemy aircraft due to an absence of sufficient on board gun mounts for defensive purposes. As every Naval Officer who has ever stood Officer of the Deck (OOD) bridge watches on a World War II era aircraft carrier knows, turning a carrier any number of meaningful degrees while it is proceeding at 30+ knots would cause it to "heel" significantly. As a result, carts, equipment and tools, bombs, or planes not secured would be moving in a dangerous out of control manner around the hanger or flight decks. It would be hard to believe, despite the supposed Japanese belief in aggressive actions, that any of their Admirals or Ship's Captain would maneuver an aircraft carrier conducing aircraft armament and fueling toward an enemy task force believed close at hand. Such irresponsible action would expose a rearming and fueling effort to an unacceptable level of risk and significantly endanger a ship.

That experience based knowledge indicates to this reviewer that from an operational perspective Isom is correct, Nagumo must have believed that the American Carriers were further away than their actual location. However, once the attacks on Japanese ships from US Navy torpedo bombers began why Nagumo decided to not launch available aircraft on a counter attack against the American carriers will truly never be known as he did not survive the war. All else is at best educated guess work on the part of any writer. One may presume that Nagumo was influenced by a belief that piecemeal attacks would not inflict sufficient damage and that his plane losses would too high unless they were part of a large scale coordinated attack -- as apparently indicated by their prior war gamming exercises. Regardless, as Isom and almost everyone discussing the battle note it was Nagumo's decision at approximately 0715 to rearm the torpedo planes (being held in reserve) with the weapons needed to participate in a second attack against Midway Island, his (necessary) subsequent decision to countermand the above rearming order between 30 and 60 minutes later, and his decision to delay attacking as soon as he became aware that the American carriers were in striking range that combined to cost Nagumo the battle -- strategically dooming the Japanese Navy. From that point forward they would conduct a losing defense with an ever weakened Navy. Interestingly, as the results of the attacks by US Navy dive bombers against the Japanese carriers and the subsequent attack on the American carriers by planes from Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi's carrier Hiryu demonstrated, attacks by a reduced number of aircraft can cause significant damage to an opposing fleet.

While the debates and discussions between authors over the specific time events occurred during the battle are interesting, they are generally guess work. Again, as any former or current Navy Officer can advise, detailed times in an after action report are almost meaningless unless the report's content is prepared using the content of so-called "rough" type logs prepared as events occur. Even the content of the "formal" logs prepared somewhat later could be questioned given the unknown degree of attention the preparer paid to detail when hurrying to complete those logs in order to get off watch. Regardless, it appears that all the rough type logs prepared by Japanese sailors are somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Although not the tome produced by Parshall and Tully and despite the bad press from some reviewers this book is worth reading, although it is debatable how much the information concerning many of the events preceding and subsequent to the Battle of Midway adds to one's knowledge about this specific event. Isom's conclusions as to why the Japanese Navy lost at Midway are as valid as those produced by anyone with knowledge concerning the events of that transforming battle.

Finally someone who is a fine writer presents Nagumo as a good and decisive leader. Factual and well presented!