Midway - Finding The Carriers

[@roberthudson1959]

For those who might be wondering, USS Nautilus did survive the battle.

[@shawnc1016]

Then refueled at Midway, sailed to Japan, and sank one of the destroyers returning from the Aleutians.

[@warfriday]

And she was a menace to the IJN during the battle,

[@valdomero738]

Based

[@roberthudson1959]

@@valdomero738 Too cryptic to be coherent. Did you mean "biased?"

[@valdomero738]

@@roberthudson1959 no, I mean it was based

[@54blewis]

What this movie did where the others omitted was the clashes between the Japanese imperial navy and the army,Nagumo’s unpopularity among senior naval officers,Yamamoto’s distrust of his own government and Yamaguchi’s stoic professionalism….

[@timothy740]

Except Yamaguchi gave in to emotion and bitter revenge instead of being professional, sailing the lone Hiryu towards the numerically superior US carriers in a desperate and suicidal act to get payback, despite the fact that her planes outranged her American counterparts and could've launched a strike without getting Hiryu dangerously closed which doomed her.

[@54blewis]

@@timothy740 that basically sums up the Japanese mindset during WWII,sending a regiment (Ichiki)against practically a divisional sized force just as an example,not to mention banzai charges,literally fighting to the last man and so on,Yamaguchi did what was expected of him, he felt duty bound to face down the Americans even if it cost him his life and those under his command,judging him through western eyes is a little disingenuous,I believe that he would have felt disgraced if he returned to the rest of the fleet without even attempting to avenge the disaster,the code of Bushido was very much apart of the character of the Japanese at that time and definitely influenced Yamaguchi as it did the majority of officers of the Imperial Navy

[@timothy740]

@@54blewis True, you certainly have some valid points, but it doesn't explain why he had recklessly Hiryu close the distance when it wasn't necessary as their aircraft were already in range.

[@54blewis]

@@timothy740 I believe it had to do with the shortage of aviation fuel on board and the uncertainty of the location of the American fleet which Yamaguchi believed was further away than it was,either way you’re correct about that,in the heat of battle many decisions are sometimes made by emotion rather than rationality and his mindset may have been influenced more by his witnessing the destruction of Akagi,Soryu and the Kaga(the Kido Butai) which were the pride of the Combined Fleet,plus it was noted that Japanese commanders had a near mystical attachment to their ships and such horrific losses would have been a spiritual experience for Yamaguchi and his closing in on the enemy would be the equivalent of “coming to grips “ or a “bear hug” if you will….it’s difficult to imagine or properly assess his state of mind at that point and it’s hard for us(westerners )to comprehend all his actions after the American attack but surely he was intent upon seeking some sort of minor victory…

[@thomassalois3508]

When the Nautilus fired the Mach 14 it let them down like it always did

[@nursesteve2004]

Yes one torpedo hit the side of Kaga shortly after it was bombed and ordered abandoned. The torpedo hit, failed to explode, the buoyant section bobbed to the surface, and provided a temporary raft for several Kaga crewmen

[@ActionFromApathy]

When your defective torpedo defects to the enemy's side.

[@mikecondray4805]

I still cannot believe a movie that was helped by the US Navy historical office had so many *ghastly* historical errors. A few details are spot on. For example, Guido's manning a Dauntless rear gun to fight off Japanese suicide diving bomber did happen pretty much as portrayed. Similarly the McClusky-Best mixup (McClusky was mostly a fighter pilot new to dive bombers; didn't realize according to doctrine HIS unit was supposed to attack Akagi while Best's unit attacked Kaga) that led to Best attacking Akagi with just three dive bombers. The placement of those bombs around Akagi (and in a quick glimpse the hits by Yorktown Dauntlesses on IJN carrier Soryu) were excellently done. And a US Army Air Force B-26 did in fact barely miss its own suicide dive that came within about twenty feet of wiping out the Japanese commander and his staff (though said bomber actually had tried a torpedo bombing run, not a level bombing run). BUT...Japan did not have multiple Yamato-class battleships in formation with their carriers (just two Kongo class and two heavy cruisers). The entire formation was much more widely spread out. The Nautilus (US sub shown here) never got deep inside the Japanese formation and wasn't attacked *while* it was launching torpedoes (*). Japanese flak units were nowhere remotely close to the "Death Star" levels of performance shown in this movie (for example, careful analysis by historians Parshall and Tully in "Shattered Sword" noted only ONE (1) Dauntless was shot down (by Kaga) in the climatic attack). (*) Not shown at all was one of the crown jewels in "how bad was the American Mark 14 sub torpedo?" case. After the Japanese carriers had been bombed and set on fire, US submarine Nautilus finally caught back up and launch an attack, scoring a hit dead amidships on the burning Japanese carrier Kaga. The torpedo not only failed to explode (*BONK!*). When it hit the Kaga the torpedo broke in two, with the heavy warhead sinking but the back of the torpedo still floating. The back of the American torpedo was used as a rescue flotation device by Japanese sailors in the water, clinging to it until they could be rescued later. Most emotionally egregious is how on earth the US NAVY could have approved a movie (as in put their stamp of "we cooperated with this movie" on it) that portrays Torpedo Six (from the Enterprise) attacking before Torpedo Eight (whose heroic doomed attack, where all fifteen planes were shot down but not ONE of them broke off the attack, showed the courage and determination of our naval aviators)? The end result is a movie that leaves one shaking their head. How could so many small details have been done right and yet so many BIG details hideously wrong? Did the US Navy Historical really sign off on this?

[@albay543]

Who cares

[@mikecondray4805]

If one views movies as purely entertainment with no need to care about actual history? Folks like that have no reason to care. Grab the popcorn and enjoy the spectacle. If one views movies about historical events as an opportunity to show as closely as possible what actually happened and then yes it does matter. Granted, I come at this from a military history background. So it matters more to me than most. In the same way, lawyers cringe at "Boston Legal" or "A Few Good Men", medical personnel roll their eyes at medical movies etc. But to use another perhaps-appropriate quote, anyone with prior knowledge of the Battle of Midway would find it "Inconceivable!" the movie portrayed Torpedo Eight going in after Torpedo Six @@albay543

[@griffinsutich1067]

As someone who loves the battle from a historical perspective I thought it was done quite well. I was afraid it’d have a political bend to it and I was pleasantly surprised to that extent. Maybe the reason they didn’t go with the exact storyline was because it’d be difficult to portray the story to an untrained eye?

[@mikecondray4805]

@@griffinsutich1067 That looks like a fair summation of the movie makers approach. It seems they chose exact storyline and did it great when they thought it made great theater (Bruno Gaido, the dive bomber mixup and subsequent 3-plane Akagi attack etc)--and had no hesitation at all to put in massively WRONG stuff (multiple Yamatos, Death Star IJN AA, keeping ships tight together for visuals vs actual distances and so on) when the movie makers wanted great theater. But...Torpedo Six going in before Torpedo Eight?!? That's a tough one to accept the Naval Historical Office signing off on. It's a sidebar, but the "Godzilla Minus One" movie currently in theaters shows how one can do extremely good attention to historical details on a budget--even when doing a freaking Kaiju/monster movie (where one might think attention to historical detail is completely irrelevant). In "Godzilla Minus One" (set in an early postwar Japan) movie makers operating with less than 1/10 the budget for Midway not only did remarkably accurate presentations of three former-IJN ships that (briefly) put up a good fight vs the critter. They took care to pick three ships (CA Takao, DDs Hibiki and Yukikaze) that actually DID survive the war and got the ship details correct right down to the English ship names written on the sides of the Japanese ships (something that was done on the surviving former IJN ships enlisted by the winners to help with a Japanese version of "Operation Magic Carpet" to bring all those cut off Japanese garrisons home after the war). So yeah, one CAN do accurate historical details if one cares about them.

[@ryanjw15]

@@mikecondray4805 The only part I'm pissed about is that they didn't show the Japanese sinking the Yorktown. They just wrote it off to words exchanged by naval officers or something along those lines. Why show the enemy winning, you know? We gotta make this movie as Allies friendly as possible.

[@dfaircloth30]

The only thing I didn’t like about this movie… was they didn’t show the PBY’s in particular Strawberry 5 which spotted the carriers

[@roberthudson1959]

And gave the inaccurate sighting report that almost sent the dive bombers away from the Japanese carriers.

[@Wolfeson28]

@@roberthudson1959 The report wasn't really inaccurate, it was simply several hours old by the time the dive-bombers flew out to attack. The Japanese fleet had changed course multiple times since then, so the extrapolation of their location at that time from the original report was inaccurate, but that's kind of expected with old information.

[@roberthudson1959]

@@Wolfeson28 I read somewhere that the original report was off, but will have to accept your correction since I can't document my claim.

[@smoketinytom]

Yeah, they dropped the ball on the spotters portrayal or lack thereof for this movie. Whilst older, the 1976 Midway movie has some excellent scenes showing off the failings from the Japs and the Guessworks from the US HYPO team and the reliance on Spotters with Midway's bombers actually given some screentime.

[@robertdendooven7258]

@@roberthudson1959 The original report was off a bit in that the Japanese were about 30 miles further West than where the PBY reported them. Also, after recovering the Midway strike, the Japanese changed course towards the American fleet towards the ENE. The problem I have with Enterprise's dive bombers is that they assumed the Japanese would continue towards Midway. The Japanese did not and stayed in general around the morning's sighting report saw them. That is why VB-6 and VS-6 missed them to the South initially.

[@SouravChakraborty-es4xv]

We are not godless anymore bear the sun as a testimony of our will.

[@nursesteve2004]

the first carrier planes t attack werer VT8 from the Hornet, not VT6.

[@ScrewLCPDKarlo]

Yep it was VT-8 then VT-6 my guess

[@patrickcallaghan8577]

Also, most accounts make clear the torpedo squadrons were overwhelmed by the Zero CAP long before the shipboard AA could have any effect

[@tonyhill1264]

Japan...." We bomb Pearl Harbor....They never F with us again....😂😂😂....Wrong!!!!!

[@FriendlyFirePodcast1989]

@2:00 The reason why the admiral is shocked is because that sub was never in the middle of the fleet.

[@chkmnx]

4:22 Wrong translation. Yamaguchi was referring to the pilot who is shot down in front of him. Not 'brave men' but 'a brave man'.

[@artificialintelligence8328]

But torpedo bombers usually had more than 1 crewman, so "men" makes sense.

[@patwiggins6969]

Anybody who knows for sure. Did they really wear ties in submarines?

[@karlbrundage7472]

Not a chance. Nautilus was a pre-Gato boat and had no air-conditioning- meaning that it was likely 90 degrees F+ throughout the boat. Everyone would have been striped down to skivvies and boondockers

[@patwiggins6969]

@@karlbrundage7472 thanks

[@NaterobloxERLCpolicefiremanEMS]

1:37 1:39

[@charakaamayantha_ca9784]

Bad planes?

[@koh631]

浅野忠信さんが かっこよすぎて 他は どおでも良くなったてさ🎥

[@SouravChakraborty-es4xv]

You should question our morality.

[@kiko8343]

日本語おかしい。