Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway

If you were interested in WWII and/or the battle at Midway, you probably read Prange's "Miracle at Midway" and found it thrilling. The "Battle of Midway" movie follows closely on the book, with the added obligatory romantic interest (and she is lovely). Both were based on Fuchida's account published quickly after the US occupation government allowed such literature.
If you are interested in WWII and/or the battle at Midway, you should read "Shattered Sword"; research done by Tully and Parshall find that Fuchida's account was written and strongly biased for public consumption. It was less than honest at best, and known to be so by Japanese sources. You will be disabused of several fantasies, none of which diminish the importance of the battle: It marked the end of Japan's expansion in the North Pacific. At Guadalcanal, the Japanese offensive was halted in the South Pacific and not long after in New Guinea. Within 6 months, the Nazis found the end of their tether at both Stalingrad and in Africa; the Axis was thereafter on the defensive; the war was decided. Sadly, the Axis demanded millions of more deaths to be convinced.
Tully and Parshall are nothing if not thorough in their research; the Japanese losses at Midway had nothing to do with 'planes not launched from the flight deck' (as Fuchida has it), the losses had to do with carrier operations, carrier design and the unrelenting (if, until the end, futile) US attacks on the Japanese carrier forces: By the time of the dive-bomber attacks, "Like blood from a wounded patient - time the lifeblood of decision and action - had been oozing out of Kido Butai all morning, slowly and inexorably. Now the patient was beyond recovery" (pg 231).
What follows hopes to be the specific credit for the bombs which demolish the Japanese carriers, the futile attempts to save them and a more accurate report of how they ended up on the bottom; the later two pathos, to be sure.
The battle didn't end with the sinking of the Hiryu, and the remaining sinkings (on both sides) are not ignored. Similarly, the importance of the battle is examined, and in my opinion, properly defined; it did not end the war in the Pacific. It ended Japan's attempt to expand in that direction.
Like Frank's "Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle" and "Downfall", if you presume to be educated about Midway, you must read this.

In "Shattered Sword - The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" (hereinafter referred to as "Shattered Sword" for brevity), two writers with a proven track record of devotion to the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War 1941-45 set out to demolish a long-held view by historians and general public that the Americans won an extraordinary victory at Midway against seemingly overwhelming odds. The authors, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully would have difficulty denying bias in favor of the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. They are managers of the website "Combined Fleet" which is dedicated to the Imperial Japanese Navy's infamous operational arm whose aircraft carriers launched the treacherous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 when the United States and Imperial Japan were still at peace, and whose submariners did not hesitate to sink hospital ships (AHS Manunda 1942 and AHS Centaur 1943) and murder survivors of merchant ships (from March 1943). Some may also recall that unfortunate American airmen plucked from the sea by the Japanese Navy during the Battle of Midway were interrogated and then brutally murdered. Unfortunately, love can blind people to the deficiencies of the loved one.

According to the publisher's blurb, "Shattered Sword" professes to disclose important new material relating to the Battle of Midway and it has been generously reviewed on the book's dust cover and on Amazon.com. I found "Shattered Sword" to be a very disappointing book. I could not find in it any historically significant disclosures that built on the magisterial works [[ASIN:1580800599 Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway (Classics of War)]](1967) by Walter Lord, [[ASIN:B001DDNI8E Miracle at Midway]](1982) by Professor Gordon W. Prange, and [[ASIN:0824825500 Hawaii Under the Rising Sun: Japan's Plans for Conquest After Pearl Harbor]] (1984) by distinguished Japan scholar and historian Professor John J. Stephan. Apart from adding extensive coverage of Midway from a Japanese perspective, one major purpose of this book appeared to be a denial that the Americans won an extraordinary victory at Midway against seemingly overwhelming odds. According to Parshall and Tully, in the chapter "The Myths and Mythmakers of Midway", it was the Japanese who were outnumbered by the Americans at Midway (at pages 432-434). Publishers know that controversy sells books, not dry technical insights into Japanese planning and tactics at Midway. "Shattered Sword" could have provided very useful insights into the Battle of Midway from a Japanese perspective. Instead, it seeks to diminish the historical significance of an extraordinary and heroic American achievement without any adequate foundation for doing so.

I knew that both authors were devoted admirers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, as evidenced by their website "Combined Fleet", and had steeled myself for bias in favour of the Japanese Navy before I opened "Shattered Sword". I found clear evidence of that bias. The authors could not avoid acknowledging the extraordinary heroism of the Americans at the Battle of Midway, but engage in what I am compelled to describe as ludicrous distortion of the respective strengths of the two navies at the point of tactical contact off the northern approaches to Midway Atoll. It appears to me that one purpose in diminishing the extraordinary nature of the American victory at Midway may have been to dredge up an excuse for the defeat of their beloved Imperial Japanese Navy. They argue (at pages 432-434) that their "dispassionate evaluation of the factual evidence" demonstrates that the Americans did not triumph against overwhelming odds at the point of tactical contact on 4 June 1942 as long believed.

So what is the author's claimed "dispassionate..factual evidence"? They point to the numbers of warships and aircraft on either side as if numbers alone could provide conclusive proof that the Americans did not face overwhelming odds at Midway. They assign Vice Admiral Nagumo's First Carrier Striking Force twenty warships, including four large fleet carriers, two battleships, and 248 carrier aircraft. They assign Rear Admiral Fletcher's two Task Forces 16 and 17 a total of twenty-five warships, including three large fleet carriers, no battleships, and 233 carrier aircraft; but they add to Fletcher's force 115 American aircraft on Midway Atoll and suggest that the aircraft on Midway were the equivalent of an unsinkable fourth American carrier (at page 434). If we accept the picture of opposing forces at Midway presented by "Shattered Sword" as being a true one, the Americans have more ships at Midway, and the Japanese have 248 aircraft against 348 American aircraft. It follows, according to this simplistic and deeply flawed reasoning, that the Americans were not facing overwhelming odds at the Battle of Midway; it was the Japanese who were facing overwhelming odds. This assessment of the opposing forces at Midway may suit authors who have long adored the Imperial Japanese Navy, and it may support the publisher's book sales, but it is a very false picture of the true strengths of the opposing forces at Midway on 4 June 1942 and, in my view, it demeans an extraordinary victory marked by extraordinary heroism on the part of Americans, and especially, the American pilots and aircrews. It is necessary to demolish this false picture promoted by "Shattered Sword" by demonstrating with facts the actual strengths of the opposing forces at Midway.

We are told by Prange (at page129) that the American aircraft on Midway Atoll on 4 June 1942 numbered 115; but it was a motley collection of aircraft manned by many pilots and air crews who lacked combat experience or had just recently graduated from pilot training school. This motley collection of aircraft on Midway included thirty-two Catalina PBY scout flying boats. These aircraft are totally unsuited to attacking heavily defended warships. So they can be immediately deleted from the Midway aircraft line-up. Now we are left with a total of eighty-three fighters and bombers on Midway Atoll. Recalling that "Shattered Sword" presents the motley collection of aircraft on Midway as being equivalent to a fourth American carrier, we need to consider whether any of these remaining eighty-three aircraft are front-line warplanes of the sort that you could expect to find on an American carrier in June 1942. We can safely exclude any obsolete and obsolescent aircraft because they would not be on an American carrier at this time. So, out go the eleven obsolete and heavily patched Vought SBU-2 Vindicator dive-bombers that were actually flown off Midway Atoll to attack the Japanese carrier force on 4 June. These elderly bombers were so slow and worn that they could no longer be used as dive-bombers because the fuselage coverings tended to disintegrate when so used. The US Marines jokingly called these flying death traps "vibrators". Their mission on 4 June was effectively suicidal, especially as they had no fighter protection against the deadly Japanese Zero fighters. We can justly remove these museum pieces from the Midway line-up; leaving only seventy-two fighters and bombers. However, that number included twenty Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo fighters. The US Navy called this obsolescent fighter a "Buffalo". The US Marines called these Navy "hand-me-downs" a "Brewster". Unofficially, pilots of both services dubbed them "Flying Coffins". They were no match for the Japanese Zero fighter which was much faster and more agile in combat. On the morning of 4 June 1942, these twenty elderly fighters would fly off Midway Atoll to challenge the incoming Zero fighters from Vice Admiral Nagumo's carrier force. They were no longer front-line fighters fit for service on American carriers, and accordingly, cannot be used by Parshall and Tully to justify their description of Midway Atoll as a fourth American carrier. That brings the number of front-line aircraft on Midway Atoll down to fifty-two. Of this number, nineteen were Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers. These high-flying bombers were totally ineffective against enemy warships, although they could produce excellent aerial photographs of these warships situated 20,000 feet below them. We can justly remove the B-17 heavy bombers from anything equivalent to a carrier line-up on Midway Atoll. So we are left with only thirty-three aircraft on Midway Atoll fit to be launched against the Japanese warships. Of this number, four were US Army Air Corps B-26 Marauder medium bombers that had been jury-rigged with torpedos. None of the air crews on the B-26 bombers had ever dropped a torpedo before 4 June 1942 and American air launched torpedoes were notoriously unreliable at this time, but similar Japanese "Betty" medium bombers equipped with torpedoes had been used to deadly effect against the Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya on 10 December 1941. So we must count the Marauders as part of Midway's effective aircraft line-up on 4 June. We are left with 29 aircraft that can be classified as front-line at this time, namely, six new US Navy TBF torpedo bombers (also armed with notoriously unreliable torpedoes) and flown by inexperienced pilots and aircrews, sixteen Dauntless SBD-2 dive-bombers flown mostly by pilots who lacked adequate training to engage in dive-bombing, and 7 Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighters. The pilots who would fly these 29 aircraft were mostly green or freshly out of flying school (Prange at page 77), and they were facing Japanese Navy combat veterans, many of whom had been honing their fighting skills in carrier-launched attacks on China and in combat ranging from Pearl Harbour to the Indian Ocean. For Parshall and Tully to suggest that the 115 aircraft on Midway Atoll and their mostly inexperienced pilots and aircrews were the equivalent of an American carrier is laughable.

Sweeping away the false picture of comparative Japanese and American aircraft strengths at the Battle of Midway promoted by "Shattered Sword", we are left with a true picture of American aircraft strength at the point of tactical contact at Midway of 233 carrier-borne plus thirty-three front-line aircraft from Midway Atoll, a total of 266 American aircraft against the 248 Japanese carrier aircraft listed by Parshall and Tully. But even this picture of opposing aircraft strengths at the point of tactical contact at Midway is misleading because the American carrier torpedo squadrons were equipped with forty-two of the elderly Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers which Prange describes as "obsolete" - with slow climb, slow speed, and "notoriously poor torpedoes" (at page 130). Prange is talking about the very unreliable American Mark 13 air-launched torpedo that had a tendency in 1942 to either hit a target and not explode, or run deeper than the set depth and pass under targets. When under attack by Zeros, the TBD was a veritable death trap for its unfortunate crews. Without fighter support, a TBD mission on 4 June 1942 was gallant but effectively suicidal. Keeping to front-line aircraft, and ignoring the undoubted superiority of the nimble Zero fighter over the American Wildcat fighter, we are left with a true figure at the point of tactical contact at the Battle of Midway of 224 front-line American aircraft against 248 Japanese front-line aircraft. A realistic appreciation of comparative aircraft strengths at Midway demonstrates that the picture presented by "Shattered Sword" of American air superiority is a false one.

It is necessary to deal now with the claim in "Shattered Sword" that the Japanese were facing greater odds at the point of tactical contact at Midway on 4 June 1942 in ship numbers, including an unsinkable fourth American carrier, namely, Midway Atoll (pages 433-434). The phantom fourth American carrier argument has been shown to lack any realistic foundation. Looking at the actual orders of battle at the point of tactical contact on 4 June, we see that the Japanese Nagumo carrier force had four powerful fleet carriers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and eleven destroyers - a total of twenty warships. The two American carrier Task Forces 16 and 17 at Midway comprised between them three powerful fleet carriers, seven heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and fourteen destroyers - a total of twenty-five warships. For "Shattered Sword" to suggest that the larger American warship fleet at Midway dispels the "myth" of a near incredible American victory (at pages 432-434) is more simplistic and deeply flawed reasoning. Numbers alone did not reflect the comparative strengths of the Japanese and American fleets at Midway. The cruisers and destroyers add little weight when opposing carrier forces do battle. Not only did the Japanese have four carriers to the American three, but the Japanese carriers were all veterans of combat. The USS Hornet had never launched its air group in actual combat until Midway. USS Enterprise had participated in hit-and-run raids against the Japanese. The only American carrier combat veteran at Midway was USS Yorktown, fresh from the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Yorktown's performance on 4 June would prove the value of that combat experience. The two Japanese battleships cannot be discounted by "Shattered Sword" as simply two warships in the Japanese fleet. Aircraft carriers are highly combustible and comparatively fragile shells designed to carry air groups that are intended to project power and defend their carriers. Carriers cannot be brought within range of hostile battleship guns, and the Americans had to avoid any contact at Midway that would bring their carriers within the range of Vice Admiral Nagumo's battleship guns. If threatened with battleship salvoes, the American carriers could only hit-and-run. The four carriers and two battleships provided Nagumo with much greater striking power than that available to Rear Admiral Fletcher. So, a realistic appreciation of comparative warship strengths at the Battle of Midway demonstrates again that the picture presented by "Shattered Sword" of American warship superiority is a false one.

When the true strength of opposing forces at Midway is seriously distorted by apparent bias, as appears to have happened in "Shattered Sword", it appears to me that the book loses credibility as an historical resource.

The chapter "Assessing (Midway's) Importance" (pages 416-430) drives another nail into the credibility of Parshall and Tully as serious writers of Pacific War history. They profess to have read Professor John J. Stephan's authoritative work "Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan's plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor", and they praise it, but they appear not to have read it carefully or with understanding. In "Shattered Sword" they attribute to Professor Stephan a Japanese plan to invade the heavily populated and defended island of Oahu after the destruction of the American carriers at Midway (at page 425). Professor Stephan said nothing of the kind in his book. See pages 110-111. Assuming the destruction of the US Pacific Fleet, the Japanese high command was planning for invasion of the lightly defended and less populous "Big Island" also known as "Hawaii". Compounding their failure to understand what the Japanese were actually planning for Hawaii, the authors of "Shattered Sword" go on to detail the reasons why a Japanese invasion of Oahu must fail.

It is a pity that Parshall and Tully did not address what the Japanese were actually planning for Hawaii in the event of a massive American defeat at Midway. It not only makes much of this chapter valueless, it also raises questions about the credibility of so-called new insights offered by "Shattered Sword" in relation to the Battle of Midway.

If the Japanese were not intending to invade Oahu as Parshall and Tully claim (at page 425), what were they intending to do in the event that they had destroyed or crippled the US Pacific Fleet carriers at Midway? Professor Stephan does not deal with Japanese planning beyond an invasion of Hawaii's Big Island by three Japanese Army divisions (at pages 110-111, 115-117) but we can reasonably assume that the Imperial Japanese Army would be fully aware of the enormous difficulties facing invaders of Oahu in late 1942 and push instead for intensive naval blockade of the Hawaiian archipelago of the kind that was planned for Australia by implementing Operation FS. The Australian Operation FS was designed to isolate Australia from all Allied help in 1942 and compel an Australian surrender to Japan by bombardment of coastal cities and towns without the need to commit twelve Japanese divisions and keep them supplied while in Australia.

Being apparently unaware of Japanese planning to blockade the Australian continent in 1942, Parshal and Tully do not take seriously the possibility that the Japanese might undertake and possibly achieve an effective blockade of Hawaii (at page 426) if America had suffered a massive defeat at Midway. The authors suggest that regardless of cost in American lives and merchant shipping, the United States would expend any effort necessary to break a Japanese blockade of Hawaii. Parshall and Tully do not address the difficulties that would face the United States in supplying beleaguered American forces on Hawaii across 2000 miles of uninterrupted ocean infested with Japanese submarines. They do not address the enormous political impact that would be likely to follow a massive US Navy defeat at Midway for President Roosevelt's Democrats. Even with an extraordinary victory at Midway, Roosevelt's Democrats were savaged at the mid-term elections for Congress in November 1942. Some of these issues are addressed in the Pacific War Historical Society's Midway chapter "Assessing the place of Midway in World War II".

But it gets worse for Parshall and Tully when they refer to the logistical difficulties that the Japanese would face if they actually managed to gain control of the Hawaiian islands. The authors claim that logistical problems would make a Japanese occupation of the Hawaiian archipelago unsustainable. This claim appears to be founded on the argument that the Japanese would be unable to maintain pre-war living standards for the conquered Americans on Hawaii, including ham and eggs for breakfast, without drawing heavily on a Japanese merchant fleet that was needed to move to Japan oil, rubber, and minerals looted from Japanese conquests in South-East Asia. The authors appear to be unaware that Japanese armies were used to living off the lands that they had conquered even if the populations of those countries starved. Based on their harsh treatment of prisoners of war in conquered territory after Pearl Harbor, American prisoners on Hawaii, both military and civilian, would not be supplied with ham and eggs by their generous captors. They would be lucky to live off a couple of handfuls of dirty rice or its Hawaiian equivalent. The authors appear to have acquired their unrealistic logistical argument from objections raised by Navy General Staff to Combined Fleet planning to occupy Hawaii prior to the Doolittle Raid. To block Combined Fleet planning to attack and occupy Hawaii, Navy General Staff deliberately exaggerated the logistical problem by adopting the massive imported food and other requirements necessary to support infrastructure and the comfortable life-styles of American residents of Hawaii in peacetime.

Having written off Hawaii as an unobtainable objective on the basis of unsound premises, Parshall and Tully then discuss other options, including an invasion and occupation of Australia which they describe as a subcontinent with "several superb infantry formations of (its) own", and well capable of resisting Japanese attempts to invade by force of arms (page 427). I have to fail the authors on their knowledge of geography. Australia is a continent. India is a subcontinent of Asia. Again, I have to fail them on their knowledge of Australia's military strength in June 1942. At this time, Australia had only one "superb infantry formation" to defend the whole continent, namely, the 2nd AIF Seventh Division (returned from fighting in the Middle East). The two American divisions in Australia arrived there in April and May 1942. They were inadequately trained and equipped for battle, and had been cobbled together from several State National Guard units. The best Australian militia units had reached the lowest level of combat effectiveness, namely "F", and were sent to New Guinea to fight the Japanese on the Kokoda Track (or Trail) at that same low level of combat effectiveness. Finally, I have to fail the authors on their inadequate knowledge of Japanese Pacific War strategy in 1942. After March 1942, the Japanese high command had abandoned any thought of invading Australia by force of arms. The Japanese appreciated the enormity of such a task. Prime Minister Tojo and his generals believed that Australia could be persuaded to surrender to Japan by isolating it from the United States, intensified blockade, and psychological warfare. As mentioned earlier, this plan for bringing Australia to Japan's heel had the code reference Operation FS.

To be useful to researchers, a book such as "Shattered Sword" should have a proper index. Parshall and Tully have produced an index devoid of sub-headings to topics. For example, "USS Yorktown" featured significantly in the Battle of Midway and has seventy-seven page references in the index to "Shattered Sword" without any sub-headings to assist finding relevant material. The authors need to examine the authoritative works on Midway by Lord and Prange and they will see how it should be done.

This is not a history book about the battle at Midway; this is a political book about the Japanese Navy. Midway is only the excuse for the authors to illustrate their understanding of their subject even if they have to besmirch the great American victory which turned the tide of war in the Pacific.

While the insights into the Japanese military bureaucracies are revealing and informative, if true, the author's incessant and often gratuitous idolatry of the Japanese Navy compromises their entire credibility.

It isn't history; it's ugly politics masquerading as history. The pro-Japanese bias is evident throughout. It presents an incredibly one-sided and revisionist portrayal of the Battle of Midway. As just one example, the authors refer to the sneaky unprovoked slaughter of Americans at Pearl Harbor as a military battle. This is a monstrous lie.

The authors have an annoying penchant for using Japanese phrases like Kido Butai, hikoicho, Bungo Suido, etc., instead of their English equivalents and reversing Japanese first and last names as normally used in the West. Why? These tiresome sophomoric pretensions needlessly burden the reader and seriously detract from the narrative.

Furthermore the authors write the word Kido with a hyphen above the o confusing the Kindle translator into writing it as Kid() with a hyphen above the (). Ditto with words like Hiryu. This just aggravates the reader. Can the authors actually think this needless overhead advances the narrative?

The authors' would have us believe that America's Midway victory was really caused by inter- and intra-service rivalries in Japan's military bureaucracies. What a bunch of crap. All bureaucracies bungle and young men pay the price. That's a revelation?

A more accurate title for book would be, "Two Politicians Write a Revisionist Version of Midway in a Pathetic Attempt to Trivialize the Heroic Deeds of so many Brave American Fliers While Showing Off How Much They Know and Admire About the Japanese Navy."

The authors blithely ignore the ugly facts that Japanese: - gratuitously brutalized, tortured, mutilated, and ceremoniously decapitated captured American pilots, sailors, and merchantmen, - deliberately targeted and torpedoed hospital ships, - Zero pilots routinely strafed and murdered American pilots helplessly dangling by parachute or floating in the sea, - officers routinely brutalized their troops and their troops in turn brutalized prisoners of war.

The authors casually allude to the Japanese, bent upon imperialist conquest, marauding unopposed throughout east and southeast Asia during the late 1930s plundering, destroying, killing, and raping, as brilliant military victories by heroic samurai.

Perhaps the authors' next project should be the Rape of Nanking; they can try and exalt the heroic samurai about that.

First of all, I think this volume is best read as a supplement to other Midway books, such as Walter Lord's classic. Parshall and Tulley's this volume mostly tells the story from the Japanese side, and as other reviewers pointed out, they spend a lot of time criticizing existing studies, which detracts from the coherence of their own book.

They did point out a few myths, such as the two sides were matched pretty equally as far as carrier and air force, the AL (Aleutian) operation was not a decoy, and the Japanese were not ready to launch an attack at the fateful 10:22 American bombing of their three carriers, etc. But all these do not really change the big picture -- Yamamoto's force was too spread out, the U.S.'s breaking of the Japanese code gave them a crucial advantage in preparing for the Japanese attack and setting up the ambush and counter-attack, the late launch of the Japanese scouting plane exacerbated the lack or delay of intelligence, the repeated (though futile) early U.S. attempts to attack the Japanese carriers disrupted Nagumo's preparation for counter-attack, etc.

So, overall, after reading the book, I feel like I came away with a few good points from this 500+ page volume, but it really did not change much of my understanding of the battle. One bright spot is that this book has a good collection of photos, and some high quality computer generated drawings of the Japanese carriers and planes.

If one has to read one book about Midway, I think Walter Lord's book is still the one. True, Lord probably exaggerated a bit by saying that "they had no right to win", "they were hopelessly outclassed", but it was a fact that the U.S. naval force was inferior to that of the Japanese at that point of the war. It was Yamamoto's folly to spread out his forces that contributed to his downfall. Also, Lord actually did not say the AL operation was a feint. In the big schema of things, that is really irrelevant. What is relevant is that Yamamoto *did* spread out his forces instead of concentrating them in one blow. Lord's book tells the whole story and it is remarkable that after 40 years it is still a mostly faithful and accurate depiction of the famous battle.

One final note, I too find the prevalent use of Japanese words (not just proper names) annoying. It is as if the authors were showing off their familiarity of the Japanese language. Is it really necessary to refer to "Striking force" as "Kido Butai"? More ridiculous is to refer to "air officer" as "sho-hikocho", etc. This is a book in English after all, we are reading history, not to learn a foreign language.

Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully is simply breathtaking, the most thoroughly researched and lucidly thought out history of an event that I have ever read. Setting out to tell the story of Midway primarily from the Japanese side they have created the new standard of that crucial battle in the dark days of 1942 that shines as an example of scholarly effort without parallel.

First these authors clearly did their homework, and to say that they explore the battle in the utmost would be an understatement. Setting the stage for the battle with germane explanations of the geopolitical, then strategic, and then operational backdrops that led up to 4-5 June 1942 the authors then delve into the battle wielding an awesome array of salient information ranging from the psychological makeup of the senior Japanese commanders on the scene, to Japanese naval doctrine of the time, to the naval architecture of the four Japanese flat tops, to how many bomb carts each carrier had (and are thus able to derive such details as the quickest possible practical TIME, down to the minute, it could have taken to re-arm waiting dive bombers and torpedo planes in the hangar bay) to even the names of individual Japanese pilots in the CAP and when they were launched. What emerges is a picture of the battle in toto, grounded in a thorough understanding of the pacific campaign and the entire war itself, aided by a completely fresh and unbiased look (which subsequently shatters many myths about the battle) and delivers not just the most accurate picture of what happened and why during the fighting, but also what it meant in the larger scheme of how the rest of the war was fought and ultimately won (or lost by the Japanese). This is truly the stuff history is supposed to be about.

What is better yet is that the book, in a surprising cut against the grain for pieces written by more than one author, reads both like an erudite intellectual analysis and Tom Clancy-esque action thriller. Throughout the book you are taken from the strategic and coolly logical minds of senior commanders, to white knuckle seventy degree dives in the cockpits of cascading American SBD's flying through walls of flak and marauding Japanese zeros. Later you are privy to the acts of desperate survival of Japanese engineers sweating in the asphyxiating air of the engine rooms in their carriers as the ceilings above them start literally glowing red from the heat of uncontrollable fires ravaging above and blocking their only route of possible escape.

After setting the stage of the history of the Japanese naval war in the Pacific up until the time of the battle and explaining the strategies, doctrines, and technical features (i.e. carrier air wing make up, command organizations, etc.) of both the American and Japanese navies the authors place you onboard the ships of the Kido Butai for a minute by minute account. This in depth and detailed account takes you from the moment they sortie from Hashirajima bay to their ignominous retreat mere weeks later. The writing is crisp, fast paced, and clear, conveying information, tension, emotion, and action all at the same time without compromising any of those features. Told primarily from the Japanese side it is taut and disciplined, delivering information to the readers as it came in real time to Nagumo and the staff of the Kido Butai on the cramped bridge of the Akagi and under fire, instead of giving the reader a truly "God's Eye View" of the battle. There is just enough delving into the worlds and actions of Nimitz in Pearl Harbor, Flether onboard the Yorktown, Spruance onboard the Enterprise, and several other American forces to give appropriate context and understanding, but the reader is basically experiencing what the Japanese commanders were going through. This allows the reader to truly appreciate the Clausewitzian "friction" that plagues any battle, and to understand the decisions the commanders made at the time. After the fact everything is tied together by the authors to deliver a true picture of exactly what happened each minute of the battle. The scope of the battle and the author's telling of it is enormous, covering not just the more familiar strike on Midway istelf and ensuring carrier duel, but the ordeal of survivors from each carrier as they attempted, futilely, to save their ships then abandoned them, to the harried Japanese retreat and the less familiar American attacks on the Mogami and Mikuma which ultimately led to the latter's destruction.

The book sets the record straight on many things, of which I cannot mention all. When the American dauntlesses rained down upon the Japanese carriers at 1020 however it is clear that their decks were NOT full of a strike package just moments from launching to crush TF 17, this was a myth that was propagated by Mitsuo Fuchida after the war's end for self serving purposes as well as dramatic flair. VT-8's heroic and fatally doomed torpedo attack did not draw down the Japanese CAP, instead it was just one of a series of hurried and poorly organized American attacks that virtuously threw the Japanese into confusion and left them reacting to conditions rather than shaping them. The Americans were not so outmatched as is commonly believed, but still won a glorious victory ableit against a deeply flawed plan developed by the actually bullying and overbearing Yamamoto (who was restricted from leaving Kure Naval Harbor while in Japan to visit Naval General HQ in Tokyo on fear that other resentful officers there would literally kill him.)

The lessons the authors draw from this battle are applicable even today. The Japanese primarily lost the battle, and the entire war for that matter (although for the entire war the relative industrial might of the US played a far more important role than it obviously could have in this single, early on confrontation), due to an operational rigidity born of national culture and character. This rigidity left it unable to correctly learn lessons from its past operations, anticipate future operations as well as enemy capabilities and reactions to such, and, most critically, to adapt to real world circumstances when their overly elaborate plans inevitably began to unravel against determined and unpredicted enemy actions. (The Japanese expected to face a cowed, fearful, and largely reactionary and passive US Navy at Midway, and not the aggressive and ably commanded force that Nimitz actually sortied to meet them and that guided itself on the flexible principle of calculated risk rather than dogmatic devotion to operational planning.)

I simply can not say enough good about this book. It is useful to anyone with an interest in history as an example of the heights that that discipline can reach and the edifying fruits it can bear when practiced properly, to those in the military who seek a better understanding of how war actually is fought and can be fought best, to someone who wants to read about a real world battle written with the excitement and drama of a great fiction author.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

I was rather surprised that the authors make no mention of the actual prime source for the Battle of Midway that most Americans carry around in their heads: the 1976 film, "Midway." With familiar names like Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Hal Holbrook and Charlton Heston, the film reinforces the popular wisdom that an under gunned American Naval task force, on June 5, 1942, surprised the main fleet of Japanese carriers bearing fighter planes helplessly exposed on the decks. Certainly I had never heard the names Yamamoto, Nagumo and Genda prior to seeing the film one rainy summer afternoon. After reading Parshall's and Tully's masterful study of the battle, I was even more surprised to learn that this enduring version of the Midway encounter came not from the understandable pride of American historians, but from the pen of Fuchida Mitsuo and Okumiya Masatake, whose "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan" [1955] served as a template for historians, school books, and even Hollywood.

Since Japanese historiography has shaped the Midway story for over six decades, Parshall and Tully decided to address their gripping minute-by-minute account of the battle through the eyes of Japanese experience and intentions in order to restore a sense of perspective. In truth, much of Mitsuo's narrative and interpretation is not as much defective as it is deficient. Midway was the product of complicated forces; its individual tactical events at many turns had lives of their own. Thus, only by breaking the battle into dozens of microcosmic signatures could Parshall arrive at something resembling a true chronology of the encounter, though war is such a hellish psychological event that exactitude is its first victim.

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was for the US the beginning of the beginning. For Japan it was the beginning of the end. It may not have been clear to Americans in 1941, but Japan's eastward expansion to Hawaii was something of a Pickett's Charge moment save that Japanese efforts had, for a time, a more favorable psychological outcome. Parshall's map [20-21] makes the Japanese problem crystal clear: advancing across the Pacific meant investment north and south as well as east. Japan at this point had been at war since at least 1937, first with China and then throughout Southeast Asia.

In these circumstances the Midway situation takes on a whole new look. The Empire's interest in seizing the Island had little to do with westward expansion, and much to do with protecting its holdings. Possession of Midway would allow the Japanese to cut US supply lines to Australia. Achievement of the goal was certainly within capability, given the limitations of the US Pacific Fleet, had not the ambitious Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku overreacted to recent US sorties with a complicated plan of his own for Midway. Yamamoto violated a basic tenet of war--massed force--to execute simultaneous action toward Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. Parshall is careful to note that this Aleutian action was not a feint, as is popularly believed, though Dutch Harbor had questionable value in any strategic equation.

With two carriers off to the cold north, Yamamoto proceeded to Midway with four carriers instead of six, and just a one carrier advantage over Halsey's three. [Bill Halsey, of course, would be hospitalized with shingles and replaced by Ray Spruance for the Midway expedition.] The result is basic history, with the US destroying all four Japanese carriers with the loss of only the Yorktown. Parshall certainly does not diminish the accomplishment, nor do he and his colleague entirely deny the element of luck. More often, he takes the dramatic edge off of events, reminding his readers that in war the best schedules go awry, runways get congested, radios break, intelligence gets manhandled, and weather conditions change.

Parshall believes that that US Pacific fleet was not quite the crippled eagle it is often portrayed to be. Between the Pearl Harbor and Midway encounters the Lexington and the Yorktown had embarrassed Yamamoto on several occasions in his back yard. The US Navy had learned quite a bit about aerial warfare despite the fact that at Midway its planes were somewhat inferior. Vice Admiral Nagumo, commander of the strike force, found himself repeatedly surprised by the Americans' tactics and capabilities, though admittedly some of these tactics--with tragic and needless loss of life--were as much a surprise and shock to the Americans' own commanders.

Parshall observes that American forces did enjoy an overall edge in technology, planes notwithstanding. Photographs of the late Soryu, Kaga, Hiryu and Akagi carriers throughout the book reveal tinker-toy vessels of another generation, which in some cases were actually Gerry rigged when designers changed schemes. US carriers enjoyed greater simplicity and a much more efficient deck technology, particularly in the design of elevators which allowed for rapid turnover of planes for duty. Most notably, American carriers enjoyed much safer and more efficient fire control systems, which gave the Yorktown an added essential day. From a humanitarian standpoint, Parshall brings home the terrible suffering of Japanese sailors primarily from fires resulting from poor ship design. As a rule the rank and file of the Japanese Navy manifested an amazing courage and devotion to duty; Parshall's account puts the responsibility for their plight in the appropriate places.

Parshall's decision to write from the Japanese perspective was quite daring and very successful. As befits a military work, nearly one-third of this book is composed of maps, photos, and an exhaustive bibliography. It is hard to imagine how the author could have been more helpful with his illustrations of ship movements and time lines. And yet this is a work with a gripping story line. The revised truth about Midway is still a captivating tale, about commanders coping with strain and sailors loyal to their comrades. For all its technical information, Parshall's work can best be described as eminently human.

This book is more like historical fiction than a history book. The authors synthesized what they learned from secondary sources to recreate a fictional account of the Battle of Midway, and they speculate on what various sides might have done. The authors even relate what various Japanese soldiers were thinking and feeling as the events transpired.... I cringed at first but learned to accept it for what it is: entertainment. This might be interesting to some people, but don't buy it expecting a historical study based on primary sources.

Having read so many excellent reviews here, I won't dive too deep into the ocean with my take on this book. Nevertheless, I was quite disappointed in this offering. Now I won't say that people who have not yet purchased this book should not do so, but they should know that it may be a very frustrating read.
First of all I have the hardback, and it is certainly a handsome book, well laid out with a nice array of photos, appendices, glossary, index, and diagrams. It is undeniable that this book reflects noticeable effort on the part of the authors.
Having said that I will add that my father was a Lt. Commander in the USN and was stationed at Pearl Harbor. He eventually retired from Navy Intelligence and had completed a stint in cryptography. For this I came into this world a Navy brat and lived in that world for a time.
It is this background that helped me to realize that this book contains contradictory statements, is woefully unbalanced in presentation of technical descriptions to the point of dragging the reader through repetition and overstatement.
Worst of all, the authors are occasionally snide, arrogant, and pompous. At times I wondered if it might be that one was and the other was not due to the contradictions found in varying chapters. They were certainly self serving and self promoting and way overstate the "myths" that they "shatter".
I mentioned my dad because I had discussed at some length Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept" with him. From my dad's point of view, Prange's work was very credible. I would have to apply that to his second manuscript that became "Miracle at Midway". Shattered Sword's author's assertions that Prange did not vet his sources, particularly Fuchida was incredibly disingenuous. Their shot that the Midway victory was no "miracle" is even more so. The incredible refit of the Yorktown in such short order was certainly miraculous along with the breaking of the Japanese code. I am sure I could pluck a number of other examples. Prange's own statement that Japan's 88 ships (which did not include the Aleutians Force versus the USN's 28 ships is also difficult to refute. The idea that we were sending Brewster Buffaloes against Zeroes and Vals also speaks volumes. Nevertheless, what they are doing amounts to splitting semantic hairs.
The authors' direct accusation that Fuchida was a liar went over the top. It is certainly fair to be skeptical of post battle statements and viewpoints, but this attitude belies some apparent animosity and not a neutral approach that would better serve historians. Indeed, Gordon Prange himself calls on students of this battle to be careful and skeptical, and he was referring to the USN pilot reports that would lead people to believe that they "had sank everything short of the Imperial Palace"! Nevertheless, Prange and so many others treat their efforts to sort through all of this with utmost respect to the participants. Not so in Shattered Sword.
Two of my favorite military histories are "Battles and Leaders of The Civil War" and "The Blue and the Gray". Both of these multi-volume works primarily contain writings, remembrances, etc. from various participants in the conflict, mostly opposing officers. They routinely disagree and present opposing facts, and occasionally in feisty ways. That is the way of the fog of war colliding with the egos of men. But does this deserve accusations and disrespect?
Shattered Sword way overplays the supposed myths it debunks and condescends to many historians and participants attached to the Battle of Midway that seems nothing short of childish. If you can get around this, then you will find some interesting insights here. Just don't expect all that many miracle shattering revelations as advertised.

I have read over a dozen books on the battle of Midway, was fortunate enough to talk to a sailor who was there. SO, After 65 YEARS, these two guys claim to have "The Untold Story" of Midway. There is only one way they could of done that, by reading past accounts and interviews from the men who were these. Thus they pick, 'what they think is correct and trash the others. They absolutely trash CMDR Fuchida, who was on the flight deck and also the flight leader 6 months before at Pearl Harbor. When I say flight leader, he was in command of ALL 350+ Japanese Planes. He may be the enemy, but he was always considered a man of truth and honor. These authors all but call him a lier .And there is more, much more that flies in the face of good men who were there. Don't get me wrong. lots of goodf info that has been told many times before, charts, pictures, etc .
However, if you want a good book on Midway, try "Miracle at Midway" and "Midway Inquest" Just my opinion.

Overly pompous account, by authors that seem to have some kind of agenda.

They used seemingly official Japanese WWII documents..... that have been hiding where for the past 50 odd years? How did so many researchers for so many years, miss all this documentation that the authors of this book suddenly had access to?

What was seriously missing, were first hand accounts, the human factor in the story.