Featured battle : Midway

Part of Second World War

Date : 03 June 1942 - 06 June 1942

A key battle in the Pacific to turing the tide for the US forces. Japanese Adm. Nagumo's carrier force including the carriers Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi and Kaga approached Midway Island with an invasion force to secure the Japanese conquests on the Pacific. However the US forces were aware of the attack and prepared. On the night of the 3rd, Nagumo launched aircraft in a raid against Midway island itself, causing great damage and overwhelming the air defence force based there. However spotter aircraft from Adm. Spruance's Task Force 16 located the IJN's carrier forces and launched three waves of torpedo bombers against them during the morning. Little damage was done, but they delayed the Japanese preparations for a second strike against Midway. So when dive-bombers from Enterprise and Hornet arrived above the Japanese carriers around mid-day on the 4th, their decks were full of partially armed and fueled aircraft. The US aircraft scored direct hits on 3 of the 4 carriers, and Akagi, Kaga and Soryu went down. Later in the afternoon, aircraft from Hiryu located and severly damaged the Yorktown but at about the same time bombers from the Enterprise found and sank Hiryu too. On the 5th, the Japanese decided that, without aircover the invasion could not succeed so they withdrew. The following day (the 6th) the crippled Yorktown was finally sunk by Japanese submaries, and the IJN crusier Mikuma was sunk, but the war in the Pacific had turned. The Japanese navy had lost it's irreplacable carriers and more critically it's trained aircrew and was never able to recover the initiative.

British Submarines in Two World Wars

Norman Friedman
This book was a real eye opener for me. I thought I knew quite a lot about submarines but my knowledge paled into insignificance when found the wealth of information before me. Here is a book that tells you all you need to know about submarines. One could probably build a period submarine with little more than the plans and descriptions here laid out. But the book is more than a technical manual. The thinking and attitudes which under pinned the planning and the execution of the Royal Navy’s submarine strategy are well described. The inter-war years are particularly fascinating in this respect. The vessels themselves and the thinking behind them range from the actual through the practical and onto the weird and wonderful. Many things caught my eye and imagination among which were beam firing torpedoes, a large submarine cruiser mounting 6 x 6” guns, some very strange and ugly hull forms, and an aircraft carrying submarine which was built but never went into service. There is also a special mention for the only action in which a submarine has torpedoed another while both were submerged.
This is a large book, 295 mm by 250 mm portrait with 429 pages. There are many photographs, about one per page in total, all appropriately annotated. There are many reproductions of technical drawings from the National Maritime Museum and numerous superb John Lambert drawings. There are also two three page and one four page spread of whole ship drawings from the NMM. It is clearly the product of a massive amount of research written up in a very readable style. However I would caution against cover-to-cover reading unless you can absorb facts at a very high rate. There is no dross, ‘all meat and no gravy’ as my grandfather would say.
This is a rather special book and we highly recommend it.

Seaforth Publishing, 2019