The Only Way Japan Could Have Won Midway

Japan had the better carriers, the better pilots, and the most famous admiral in the Pacific. So why did it lose the Battle of Midway, and was there any way it could have won? For more than eighty years, Midway has been told as a story of bad luck: five minutes, one wrong decision, a few dive bombers in the right place. But in 2017, two researchers ran the battle through a computer model one hundred thousand times. Changing the decisions. Changing the luck. What they found points somewhere else entirely. In this video we follow both admirals through June 4, 1942: Nagumo, trying to fight two battles at once, and Spruance, with only one job. We look at the codebreakers who found the target, the torpedo squadrons who never came home, the six minutes that set three carriers on fire, and the myth that Japan was five minutes from victory. Then we change the battle, and show the only way Japan could have won Midway. And we ask the bigger question: would winning Midway have won Japan the war? SOURCES • Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway • Anelí Bongers and José L. Torres (University of Málaga), 2017 simulation study of the Battle of Midway • U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command, Battle of Midway histories • Mark Grimsley, historian, on the war in Europe and Germany First The "What If" chapter is a historical thought experiment based on these sources. It is not a claim about what definitely would have happened. If you enjoy WW2 history told as a story, subscribe for more.