Midway

Every Memorial Day a few of the cable channels run every war movie they can. Midway has become a staple. It was one of the war movies of my youth and I get quite sentimental about it. More on that in another post.

I've been working on a magazine article about the actual defense of Midway. This is interesting. The navy had turned Midway into a fortress. Stationed there was a Marine Defense Battalion, the kind that garrisoned Wake and gave the Japanese a hard time. This was reinforced by three batteries of AAA guns of carious calibers. On top of that Nimitz dispatched two Marine raider battalions and a platoon of M-3 light tanks.

When the Japanese hit Midway they lost nine planes and more than 30 suffered at least some damage. It was a hornet's nest.

They had planned to hit Midway with a naval detachment of 1500. This wasn't enough. An attack by two or three times that number would have bee suicide.

That presumes that the Japanese could have made it ashore. They were planning to hit the southern end of the atoll. This was protected by a large coral reef through which the navy had to blast a channel. Hundreds of Japanese troops would have gotten hung up on the reef and gunned down. Any boats that made it beyond the reef would have been sitting ducks for the Marine MGs.

The Marines waiting for the Japanese, these weren't the battling bastards of Bataan but highly motivated troops almost itching for a fight. They rigged up makeshift bombs and even Molotov Cocktails Each building was ringed with barbed wire. Had Japanese troops landed they would have been hit by counterattacking Marines supported by tanks.

It never came to that, of course.