Cougar
Hate to rain on your parade, but Fuchida is about as good a read as Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War” when it comes to historical accuracy. Many of his statements were thoroughly debunked among Japanese historians years ago, and have now been debunked in America by Parshall & Tully’s “Shattered Sword; the Untold Story of the Battle of Midway.” For example, Parshall & Tully refute the allegation that the late launch of Tone’s #4 search plane was the reason for the failure to spot the American fleet. In fact, it was a float plane from Chikuma that should have spotted TF 16 earlier, but failed to do so. Fuchida states that Nagumo failed to execute a “two-phase” search, but at that time no navy had a two-phase search in their doctrine, and it had never been done before.
Also, Fuchida states that the Japanese strike on the American fleet was spotted on the deck and ready to take off, when suddenly the American dive bombers showed up and destroyed the fleet. There are two problems with this account. One is that the Japanese NEVER spotted those attack planes on their carrier decks. All of those planes were still below in the hangar decks, as the fleet was too busy conducting CAP operations. Second, Nagumo was too late in any event. He would have had to have started spotting his strike two or three hours earlier to catch the Americans before they launched their own strike.
“Shattered Sword” explodes several more myths about Midway, and when I get home I’ll post a few of them.
And when I get a moment here in the office, I have some excellent diagrams from “Shattered Sword” to post.
When looking at Parshall and Tully's criticisms of Fuchida you really get a mixed bag. On the two-phase patrol, they quote from pages 131 to 133 of Midway. However, the quoted text is nowhere in my copy of Midway and pages 131-133 cover the Battle of the Coral Sea and does not mention search patterns at all. In Midway, Fuchida claims to ask Lieutenant Furukaway if they were using a single-phase search system to which he is told "Yes, Sir. As usual." (page 178) He mentions in his post attack analysis that a two phase search plan would have been better, but does not make any mention as to whether this was an option at a time. He readily points out that this is from the perspective of hindsight.
So when they make the claim that Fuchida's two-phase assessment is based on hindsight, then they are correct since Fuchida represents it as such as well. What is particularly interesting though is how they say that two-phase searches were "totally unknown" and use USF-74 doctrine, which is U.S. Navy doctrine, does not mention two-phase searches. Only problem with that is the Japanese did not use USF-74 and just because it wasn't in U.S. Navy doctrine, it does not mean it is not "totally unknown", even to the U.S. Navy, much less the IJN. The introduction of two-phase as doctrine after the battle is not too surprising considering the failures in the Solomons and Midway (May 1943). The document they site for that is called the "Research on Mobile Force Tactics" in which the two-phase would fall under Part 4, subsection D "Gathering Intelligence". This is a wholesale change in doctrine, yet still has a section called "Importance of Decisive Battle". Looks like some lessons just cant be learned.
Interestingly enough, Fuchida does make the claim that TF16 from the Chikuma should have spotted the American carriers, but did not. He states that "had the observer of the Chikuma plane been more watchful on the outward leg of his search, or had the seaplanes been catapulted on schedule, the disaster that followed might have been avoided." I agree with this assessment. The plane that did spot the American fleet was the one that was delayed. Had it launched on time then they would have spotted the American fleet earlier and before, or at least very early in the rearming efforts on the Kaga and Akagi. The first plane should have seen them, but didn't. The second plan did see them, but late. These both contributed to the disaster for the Japanese. I think Fuchida nails that one on the head really.
As far as spotting planes, Fuchida's mention that the Akagi was spotted is probably not accurate. There were some planes top side, but not all of them. The flight crews were moving the planes to the top deck as soon as they were rearmed. Since this process was not complete when they were hit, then they couldn't all have been spotted on the Akagi as he claims. But there were some planes up and they were probably making ready. You will find other aspects too, like the disputed capabilities of the Akagi radio equipment and such.
I understand that Shattered Sword is very critical of Fuchida's work, but honestly it is overly so. There is a lot of value to be had in reading this book and it is mostly accurate. In fact very much so for a first hand account. There are flaws in the details but I can make the same case on Shattered Sword. But the most important aspect of this book is the insight into the Japanese mindset as to where they were, what they thought they could accomplish, and how they reacted when it all went wrong. Sometimes the historiography is more important than the history and this is one of those cases.