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We can disagree on what Fuchida meant by his statement about the two-phase search. To the extent that he argues that Nagumo did not devote sufficient assets to his reconnaissance effort, most people would agree with him. I wonder whether Fuchida actually used the phrase “single phase search” on the bridge of Akagi when there is no evidence the Japanese had ever trained for anything else. Why call it a single phase search when that's all you do? Why not just call it a search and say “how many planes do we have out?”

Parshall & Tully clearly caught Fuchida in a falsehood regarding the status of the strike on the American carriers when Massey & Leslie showed up. That myth has been enshrined in American lore, as seen in the movie “Midway.” Despite what the other posters stated about that film, I thought it was utterly horrible and I refuse to watch it or add it to my video library. But to get back to the point of Fuchida’s veracity, it must be the lawyer in me. Once I catch someone in a falsehood the very next question is “on what other topic have they provided false information?”

I don't doubt that Fuchida’s book has historic value as the memoir of someone who was there. So do “The Rommel Papers,” “Inside the Third Reich” and “Lost Victories.” I have copies of all three (wish I had them in the original German) but I certainly don't take them as the gospel truth. All three have been debunked to a greater or lesser extent, but at one time they were considered accurate primary sources. Just like Fuchida, they won the race to the publisher.

You may consider Parshall & Tully overly harsh in their treatment of Fuchida, or even of Walter Lord and Gordon Prange. I haven't read Lord but do have a copy of Prange. When attacking a myth, maybe they felt that the evidence was so conclusive that they had to go all-in. I consider “Shattered Sword” to be a very well researched book that approaches the Battle of Midway differently from traditional histories by going into a level of detail not addressed in the other works. That it was a truly momentous battle, probably in the top 5 in all of naval history, is no less in doubt after their book than it was before.