TV / Movies Midway (Movie Review)

Before I get into the movie itself I am a huge history fan especially this time period and event.

History of event: Battle of Midway
(There is a lot of history to cover so I will try to hit the highlights and key events)

Spoiler: history

Spoiler: Prelude to Midway

When the US ended its shipments of oil to Japan the Japanese they realized that they had a limited amount of time before their oil reserves will be out and thus needed to take the Dutch East Indies and other key areas for their resources to keep themselves going in the war in China. Thus Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was ordered by the Emporer of Japan to come up with a plan to attack the United States the Admiral tried to warn him that in a long term conflict that the Japanese could not win but in the end put his whole heart into the planning of the attack of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The attack of Pearl Harbor went according to plan with the first two waves (with a third planned but never launched) knocking out most of the American battleships but the American Carriers were not found there thus escaped destruction.

As a morale-boosting strike, the Doolittle Raid was planned with 16 B-25B Mitchells from the USS Hornet to hit the Japanese mainland which would be retaliation for Pearl Harbor but also prove that Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American attacks. The raid was spotted by a patrol boat and the mission cover was blown so the commanding officer James Doolittle and captian of the Hornet Captian Marc Mitscher decided to launch the B-25s immediately. The mission was a success and as a result, boosted American morale and the Japanese were now confused and armed with the knowledge that mainland Japan was vulnerable to attack. Admiral Yamamoto had to do something.

In the South Pacific, the Japanese wanted to cut off the communication and supply to Australia and thus planned an attack on Port Moresby, seize Tulagi and set up bases for later operations. By this time though the US had already broken 15% of the Japanese codebook and were reading 85% of the Japanese messages. The US responded by sending the carriers Lexington and Yorktown to prevent the Japanese from invading ( the Enterprise and Hornet were sent but they were returning from the Doolittle Raid and were not able to make it in time). Thus the battle of the Coral Sea began and in short, it was a bit of a mess but in the end, the Japanese lost the fleet carrier Shokaku and the light carrier Shoho while the Americans lost the Lexington (it was critically damaged but was scuttled) and the Yorktown was heavily damaged. The battle was a tactical victory for the Japanese but they lost a carrier of their own and another depleted its air group and could not participate in the next battle.

Spoiler: The Battle of Midway

The Japanese wanted to land a decisive blow to the American fleet and wanted to lure the Americans into a fight. The plan was to launch a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands to draw the Americans away from their main target: Midway which once attacked would lure out the American carriers into a battle.

The American codebreakers were hard at work trying to figure out where the Japanese were going to strike next. But they noticed that target "AF" was coming up as an operational objective so the codebreakers devised a ruse that would hopefully indicate what AF was and Midway sent out an uncoded message that their water purification system was broken down and the codebreakers read a Japanese message saying "AF" was short on water. So the Americans knew where, when and what the Japanese were going to do next.

The Japanese were divided into two groups one had the carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu ( and a number of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers) which would lead the attack on Midway and an invasion force to occupy the atoll.

The Americans had at the time the Hornet, Enterprise, and the Yorktown (which was still damaged from the Coral Sea).

The Battle began with the Japanese aircraft carriers being spotted by US PBY patrol and the Midway air group sent in B-17s to attack the carriers they did not hit any of their targets or did any damage. Later on, the Japanese launched their attack on Midway. The Midway Air Group only had 6 F4F "Wildcats" and 20 F2A "Buffalos" to go up against 108 planes which consisted of the Japanese D3A1 "Val" dive bomber, B5N2 "Kate" torpedo bomber (which could also be used as a level bomber) and the A6M "Zero" naval fighters. After the Japanese attack was finished and returned to the carrier Admiral Nagumo ordered that the planes are to be rearmed for another attack on Midway but then a Japanese scout plane had located the American carriers. The Japanese did not know that an American attack was already on the way.

The American TBD "Devastators" were the first to make an attack run and from VT-8 15 TBDs made an attack and all were lost without doing any damage with Ensign George H. Gay Jr. was the only survivor. Other TBD attack groups did make attacks but did no damage (Early war American torpedoes were infamous for being unreliable) but this attack did cause the Japanese Combat Air Patrol to attack the low altitude torpedo bombers and thus were out of position for the next group of attack planes. The next was the SBD "Dauntless" dive bomber groups. They followed a destroyer the Arashi which was attacking the USS Nautilus with depth charges and failed to sink the Nautilus. The attack was an outstanding success with the carriers Kaga, Soryu and Akagi set ablaze (later they were scuttled)

The Japanese first counter-attack successfully hit the carrier Yorktown which temporarily knocked it out of action but the repair crews were able to resume operations. An hour later the second Japanese counter-attack again hit the Yorktown (the Japanese pilots thought they hit a different ship due to the repair work) which put the Yorktown out of action for the rest of the battle. The Japanese pilots returned with the news that they had sunk an aircraft carrier thus they thought it was one carrier versus one carrier. The Japanese wanted to make one more strike with what aircraft they could get together.

The Americans found the Hiryu and attacked with just SBDs as a mixed group from all three carriers (Hornets group was launched late and did not get to attack the Hiryu). The SBDs attacked the only carrier in the fleet and set the Hiryu ablaze (the fire grew out of control and the Hiryu was scuttled). Thus the Battle of Midway ended with a major victory for the Americans.

Spoiler: The Movie Itself

I really did enjoy the movie while I can say it is very historically accurate, the action scenes were engaging and enjoyable and most importantly of all, there were no unnecessary love triangles with made-up characters... (I am looking at you Pearl Harbor (2001))

My only problems with the movie are that it felt compressed, and the CGI could use a little more polish. They tried to cover a lot of history in one 2 hours and 50 minutes of run time. Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle raid and the battle of Coral Sea, in my opinion at least, could have their own movies with just as much run time as Midway 2019 did.

In Summary: it is a good movie 9/10 I would watch it again with my seal of approval.