Author Description

This is the Battle of Midway told in a different way. The book isn't the story from a historian's point of view. Instead, it is a factual report on what those fighting the battle encountered and saw. That's done by producing copies of the sailors, airmen, and Marines who wrote Action Reports after the battle. Those reports were released by the National Archives in 2012 and reproduced here. In the book, True Stories of the Cold War in the Air, that contains multiple stories written by U.S. Air Force pilots and crews of the Boeing B-47 Stratoojet, editor Mark Natola writes on page 7, "General Curtis LeMay once wrote: 'In my opinion, first person accounts... are historically more reliable than most historians' accounts.'" These are those first-person accounts that, while factually accurate about events, locations and activities are understandably somewhat skewed when enthusiastically providing enemy damage reporting. One of those reports is a summary of the battle by Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz written to his boss, Admiral Ernest King, Fleet Commander in Washington D.C. There's also a report on the interrogation of Japanese POWs pulled from the sea after their ships sank or their airplanes downed. These action reports are broken into two different sections of the book. The first focuses on what happened to USS Yorktown and USS Hammann that were sunk in the battle. The second section provides information on Midway Island's defense and provides reports on the attacks launched against the enemy fleet from Army, Navy, and Marine aircraft. For example, the following is a portion of a Marine pilot's report: "I took off in an SBD-2 at 0605 and headed for Point Affirm. We were rendezvoused at 0625 and I was flying my regular position as leader of the third box in the first division. At 0630 we started for the reported enemy position, climbing to 9,000 feet and about 0750 first sighted enemy ships. At this time a l