…for Strategists
"The story of the June 1942 Battle of Midway is well known and well told. It is portrayed as a victory of intelligence, a quintessential analytical success that produced a detailed warning that allowed the U.S. Navy to counter-ambush the Kido Butai, the Imperial Japanese Navy's carrier strike force.[1] It is also portrayed as a victory of bravery and sacrifice. American aviators, flying mostly obsolescent aircraft, pressed home attacks at great cost, catching Japanese carriers at their most vulnerable while refueling fighter aircraft that made up their combat air patrol on their flight decks and re-arming their strike aircraft on their hangar decks.[2] Indeed, this historical narrative is so powerful that it not only has shaped our understanding of World War II in the Pacific but also our understanding of analysis, warning, and intelligence producer-consumer relations.
Although this conventional narrative remains compelling and firmly in place, historians have turned to the inevitable strategic questions about whether and how the Japanese contributed to their defeat.[3] Some have identified new minute-by-minute timelines of the battle to explain key turning points; for instance, why the Kido Butai was caught in a vulnerable position by American airstrikes.[4] While interesting, this sort of detailed analysis tends to enter the realm of friction and fortuna. Instead, what follows here is a more general evaluation of Japanese doctrine, operations, and thinking; that is, how good was the Japanese Navy at fighting aircraft carriers as they approached Midway? If intelligence positioned the U.S. Fleet for success, did Japanese operational decisions create a pathway leading to their defeat? Or, as Carl Cavanagh Hodge put it, "Was the battle of Midway won or lost?"[5]
The answer to this question is important to land, sea, air, space, or cyberspace strategists because it alerts us to the way history influences thinking about future engagements at sea or elsewhere. Midway reveals much about the connections among tactics, operations, and strategy when it comes to war at sea, connections that remain relevant today. Additionally, the relationship of empirics to theory has always been an issue for strategists. Colin Gray warned that it is important to exercise caution when advancing narrow explanations of battlefield outcomes, while Ben Connable has recently noted that our thinking is based on only a few historical events that might not be representative of emergent trends or even recounted accurately.[6] Instead of being portrayed as materially and operationally superior to their American opponents, were the Japanese actually a notch or two below their American competitors when they met in the waters around Midway? Even with the gift of over 80 years of hindsight, it is hard to avoid the observation that the Japanese made some odd mistakes. What should strategists garner from all of this when it comes to today's maritime strategy?…"
link
Armand
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
