Japan Lost Three Carriers in Minutes at Midway — Here's How

Japan lost three carriers in minutes at Midway: between about 10:22 and 10:28 on the morning of June 4, 1942, American Dauntless dive-bombers set Kaga, Akagi and Soryu ablaze, and the fourth, Hiryu, was fatally hit that afternoon. The Imperial Japanese Navy would never again put that fleet to sea. This documentary follows the mechanism behind those five minutes: the Station HYPO code breakers at Pearl Harbor, the ambush position at Point Luck, the three-day repair of USS Yorktown, the forty-one Devastator torpedo bombers that scored no hits but pulled the Zeros down to the waves, and the fuelled and armed hangar decks of Nagumo's Kido Butai. It covers the A6M Zero, the SBD Dauntless, Task Force 16 and Task Force 17, and the full timeline from Pearl Harbor and the Coral Sea to the loss of Yorktown on June 7, 1942, including the 248 Japanese aircraft and roughly 3,000 men lost. Built from after-action reports, loss tables and squadron records rather than legend, so that every date, unit and number can be checked. Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War — new documentaries every few days. #WW2 #WorldWarII #PacificWar #USNavy #WWIIHistory #Midway #BattleOfMidway #Dauntless #MilitaryHistory #USAInWW2