Midway: Aftermath
The Story
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2023

The Battle of Midway ended on 7 June 1942, with one American and four Japanese heavy carriers sunk, along with one Japanese heavy cruiser and one American destroyer. Over 300 American and 3,000 Japanese sailors and airmen died. The Japanese never came close to achieving their objective, the capture of Midway Atoll. It was, by any measure, a significant American victory.

While the battle is usually measured over several days, the decision came relatively quickly: the Americans struck first, and in a little over an hour they had reduced three of the four Japanese carriers of the First Air Fleet into flaming wrecks. Subsequent exchanges destroyed one American carrier and the fourth Japanese flattop.

That ratio could easily have been reversed: Japanese commander Chuichi Nagumo had the option to bend Japanese doctrine and strike first, with an excellent chance to sink the two carriers of Task Force 16 (Enterprise and Hornet). But at that point the American strike had already left its carriers, and such a move would not have spared the First Air Fleet from air attack. Instead, the result would have been mutual destruction, leaving each side with one aircraft carrier.

In the actual battle, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi on Hiryu cobbled together a strike from his surviving carrier’s depleted air group and the planes from the other three that had found refuge there, crippling the American carrier Yorktown (a submarine would finish her off). Yamaguchi’s planes had a range advantage over the Americans but he closed with them anyway, allowing a strike from Task Force 16 to sink Hiryu. Had the American carriers already been sunk, of course, Hiryu would have survived despite Yamaguchi’s foolish impulse.

With the American carriers destroyed, at terrible cost to the Japanese, the way would then be clear for the invasion of Midway. Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki had about 3,000 men with which to capture the atoll; Colonel Harold Shannon had up to 4,500 to defend it, most of them Marines trained in infantry combat. Plus, they had concrete shelters, a vast array of support weapons, and five tanks. As Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully point out in their Shattered Sword, the most likely result of the Japanese landings would have been a bloody disaster much like the initial landings on Wake Island.

And as at Wake Island, the Japanese would try again, with a larger force and cover from their surviving aircraft carriers: Hiryu, the heavy carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku that had not participated in the Midway operation, the converted liner Junyo which had covered operations in the Aleutian Islands, and her sister Hiyo which had been working up when the fleet set out for Midway.

The Americans had received reinforcements of their own: the carrier Saratoga, which arrived at Pearl Harbor on the last day of the Battle of Midway, the carrier Wasp and battleship North Carolina, which followed her, plus their escorts of cruisers and destroyers.

Battleship North Carolina.

The Americans would have a secure base at Pearl Harbor, where they could repair at least minor damage to their ships and draw fuel and other supplies. The Japanese would have to operate at sea, at the end of a 2,500-mile supply line leading back to the Home Islands. But the Combined Fleet had the capability to remain at sea for long periods; during the Solomons campaign the Third Fleet, successor to the First Air Fleet, would conduct operations for a solid month before returning to the fleet base at Truk Lagoon.

Capturing Midway would require a major effort, with multiple convoys and probably battleship support to work over those fortifications much as Japanese battleships poured heavy shells into Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. But eventually Midway would fall, and with that would come a new Japanese requirement to keep their hard-won base supplied in the face of American resistance.

The Hawaiian Islands stretch over one thousand miles, from Midway on the north-western end to the big island of Hawaii at the south-east. The “islands” nearest to Midway are little more than specks rising from the ocean, though the U.S. Navy began construction of an airfield at French Frigate Shoals in July 1942.

The second stage of the campaign would depend on each side’s intentions for Midway. The Americans could probably afford to leave it in Japanese hands, viewing Japanese re-supply convoys as an opportunity to attrit Japanese strength. By itself, Midway would provide a useful early-warning post for the Japanese, but also a springboard for further operations in Hawaiian waters.

With three American carriers sunk at Midway, and no new flattops in the offing until Essex is ready for combat sometime in the spring of 1943, the Americans would be limited to two aircraft carriers. For close to a year, the Japanese would have the edge in carrier power, and they’ll use it to begin an island-hopping campaign of their own from Midway aimed at the bigger islands. Meanwhile, they’ll have to isolate the American bases from the reinforcement convoys streaming in from California bearing troops, weapons and aircraft.

Isolating Pearl Harbor would require closer bases, and the island of Kauai helpfully had two of them: Barking Sands Airport (now the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility), used only for intermittent flights by Hawaiian Airlines, and Port Allen Airport (now used for civil aviation), built in the 1930’s but plowed up in December 1941 during the hysteria over an imminent Japanese invasion in the days after the Pearl Harbor attack.

The beaches of Kauai.

Those potential bases, assuming that Japanese agents managed to convey intelligence about them to Tokyo, would have been very useful for a Japanese campaign in Hawaiian waters. And they would therefore be the first target for an invasion. Kauai lies just 73 miles from Oahu, home of Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field and other major American bases. Japanese landings there would draw an immediate response.

And so the main event of the Pacific Theater would take place not in the Solomon Islands, at the doorstep of the major Japanese base at Rabaul, but in the Hawaiian Islands, at the doorstep of the major American bases on Oahu. With the Japanese trying to establish themselves within the island group, the American must respond. Lacking sufficient carrier power, just as in the Solomons they’ll have to turn to their battleships.

And that’s the story behind Midway: Aftermath, a Campaign Study adding an extra chapter with a dozen more scenarios to Midway Deluxe Edition.

You can order Midway: Aftermath right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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