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Imagine, you know someone who doesn’t know anything about WW2, and you had to explain how the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor, the significance of Doolittle’s raid, the odds the US was up against the Japanese, how Intel helped us win the battle of Midway, and just how crazy, non-politically correct, and determined the Greatest Generation was - all in 2 hours. That’s the movie Midway in a nutshell.

Is so(or Not) Why?

A Near-Run Victory at Midway Walter Lord and Gordon Prange considered Midway an incredible, miraculous victory. For Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, the battle doomed Japan. The calculated risks Chester Nimitz took required assembling all possible resources, and still left him with a three to one disadvantage in ships. To appreciate further this tenuous condition note the fate of four Army B-26 medium bombers rushed to Midway. Captain James Collins led the aircraft in torpedo attacks. The pilots had never seen or practiced with aerial torpedoes. They would now only practice takeoffs and landings. Those early B-26’s earned a reputation...

PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - Code breakers who played a crucial role in winning the first major U.S. victory of World War II were the focus of a ceremony Tuesday on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Midway. The Navy's Blue Angels punctuated the event by leaving a trail of white smoke over Corry Station Naval Air Technical Training Center where Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force cryptographers learn their craft. The work of their World War II predecessors in breaking a Japanese code made it possible for a smaller U.S. naval force to ambush an enemy fleet on...

A Group financed by the late Paul Allen is searching for sunken WW II ships. If you remember they found the Aircraft Carrier Lexington which was sunk in the battle of the Coral Sea. Now the group is attempting to located ships that were lost during the Battle of Midway. They have found the Kaga and more recently the Akagi. New Video of the Kaga on the ocean floor has been released. The ship is around 15,000 ft or more below surface. I find this type of thing fascinating just thinking of how many people on both sides are still...

MIDWAY ATOLL, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (AP) — A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships have found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway. Vulcan Inc.'s director of undersea operations Rob Kraft and Naval History and Heritage Command historian Frank Thompson reviewed high frequency sonar images of the warship Sunday and say that its dimensions and location mean it has to be the carrier Akagi. The Akagi was found in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument resting in nearly 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) of water more than 1,300...

Deep-sea explorers and historians on Sunday announced they apparently found a second World War II-era Japanese aircraft carrier that sank during the Battle of Midway. A review of sonar data captured Sunday showed either the Japanese carrier Akagi or the Soryu resting in nearly 18,000 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean more than 1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Vulcan Inc. director of undersea operations Rob Kraft said. The researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out overnight collecting data, and the image of a warship...

Deep-sea explorers scouring the world's oceans for sunken World War II ships are investigating what they believe could be the third ship of seven lost to the Pacific during the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of miles off Midway Atoll, nearly halfway between the United States and Japan, a research vessel is launching underwater robots miles into the abyss to look for warships from the famed Battle of Midway. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have already led the crew of the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese ship the Kaga. This week, the crew is deploying...

Bayou Pictures will be releasing a movie based on the Battle at Midway. I do not know when this great-looking movie will be released, but you should keep your eyes peeled. Below I'm pasting the IMDB blurb:. By June 1942, the Japanese Navy has swept across the Pacific. In an effort to change the course of the war, a United States carrier group is positioned off the coast of Midway, tasked with springing a trap on the enemy. During this pivotal battle, the two-man crew of a U.S. Navy dive bomber is forced to ditch in the sea. Set adrift,...

Nice video of Japanese perspective on how 15 minutes changed the world.

Why was Midway such a critical victory? First, the fact that the U.S. Navy lost just one carrier at Midway meant that four carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, and Wasp) were available when the U.S. Navy went on the offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign that began the first week of August 1942. Second, the march of the Imperial Japanese Navy across the Pacific was halted at Midway and never restarted. After Midway, the Japanese would react to the Americans, and not the other way around. In the language of the Naval War College, the “operational initiative” had passed from the Japanese...

In sea mariner lore, an albatross is considered a good omen, and for almost seven decades, one bird has spread generations of blessings across the Pacific Ocean. Wisdom, a 68-year-old Laysan albatross believed to be the world’s oldest known wild bird, has returned to her home at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge for yet another winter – and laid yet another egg to add to the already impressive brood that she has built up over an impressive lifetime. Biologists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service think the almost-septuagenarian has birthed and raised as many as 36 chicks over...

That famous battle in June 1942 turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific. Mills was there, as chief steward aboard the doomed carrier Yorktown, playing a small but memorable role that spoke of character and determination — so much so that decades later a barracks at North Island Naval Air Station was named after him. Mr. Mills, a longtime San Diego resident, died last Friday at Mission Hills Health Care. He was 103. -snip In interviews, Mr. Mills said he and other blacks understood that they were under a microscope, watched by white people expecting them to fail. If...

The wreck of a US aircraft carrier that was sunk during World War Two has been found off the coast of Australia. The USS Lexington was found 3km (2 miles) underwater in the Coral Sea, about 800km off Australia's east coast. The ship was lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought with Japan from 4-8 May 1942. More than 200 crew members died in the fighting. The US Navy confirmed the ship had been discovered by a search team led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

... an intriguing side story: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea."It was a fascinating, and detailed, description of much of what American intelligence knew beforehand of the enemy's fleet and plans. Indeed, it was too detailed. The report - 14 paragraphs long - suggested a secret U.S. intelligence coup, and became one of the biggest and potentially damaging news leaks of World War II. "This is the only time in American history that the United States government has ... taken steps toward prosecuting a member of the media under the Espionage Act," The story went on...

Seventy-five years ago this Sunday, some 150 Japanese warships, 250 warplanes and 25 admirals were steaming toward a small atoll 1,300 miles northwest of Oahu. Imminent was the most crucial naval battle of World War II—Midway. But in a windowless basement near the fleet’s Pearl Harbor headquarters, codebreakers under Cmdr. Joe Rochefort pored over intercepted Japanese radio traffic. Independent, impolitic, single-minded, Rochefort “left the basement only to bathe, change clothes, or get an occasional meal to supplement a steady diet of coffee and sandwiches,” one officer recalled. “For weeks the only sleep he got was on a field cot pushed...

President Barack Obama arrived on Midway Atoll today, paying homage to the men killed in a critical World War II battle and stressing the importance of protecting the planet and all its inhabitants from the effects of climate change. Obama emerged from Air Force One and greeted the roughly 40 inhabitants of Midway who had come out to welcome him. “We are going to have a great time,” he told them.

China’s aircraft carrier program is maturing. The first photos have now emerged that show Liaoning operating with a decent clutch of J-15 fighters, as well as helicopters on deck. The aircraft are now painted in telltale battle gray, rather than the yellow used with the initial prototype aircraft. It is difficult to tell for sure, but one may assume that the testing and training regimen has been intense. True enough, the Liaoning was bought from Ukraine and it is, unlike American “big decks,” conventionally powered rather than relying on nuclear power. It also has a ski-jump bow to assist with...

See story at link; we are celebrating freedom and honoring all those who gave their all. If you have never seen the film, you have no idea what you are missing. I would bet that not 10% of those in high school could even place the battle as being in WWII. We have raised a nation of idiots thanks to the leftists who have destroyed our education system and any sense of patriotism.

I knew the day might come. The news still hurt. The daughter of an amazing war hero called the other night to say her father was dying. An overnight email a day later told me that Norman "Dusty" Kleiss, 100 years old, hero of the Battle of Midway, had died Friday. He was the last surviving dive-bomber from the sea battle that turned the tide of World War II. In discussing Dusty with his daughter, we agreed it was as if the pilot was determined to reach the age of 100 before his health faded. Several weeks ago, there was...