Neither did I. My wife had never seen the movie "Midway" so when we got back we watched it. There is a scene when the SBDs sight a Japanese destroyer and decide to follow it. This was the destroyer lagging the Japanese fleet because of the actions of the Nautilus. It leads them to the target.

titan said:

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CanyonAg77 said:
And an Aggie was in the water, watching them burn....

(If I have the timeline correct)

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You do!

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Yes. And what is interesting is Ensign Gay had mentioned seeing the carrier closest to him then scuttled close to sunset, apparently by gunfire. This had always been dismissed, but it now seems almost certain that Kaga and Soryu (one of which is what he was likely near) were indeed torpedoed and scuttled at sunset. At that distance assuming gunfire would be just as easy as torpedoes. The main point is it held true.

thach, there is irony in this thread, as your own handle (whatever it came from?) was a name of a very important guy at Midway too, "Jimmy" Thach of Yorktown's fighter squadron had come up with a tactic to help defeat the Japanese Zeros in dogfights, called the Thach Weave.

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There's no irony in the name--that was done on purpose! I'm a big admirer of Jimmy Thach, inventor or the beam defense position! Later dubbed the Thach Weave by Jimmy Flatley at Santa Cruz (IMO, the most interesting carrier battle of '42, since the odds for the Americans were the longest).

I picked up Lundstrom's "The First Team" in the early 90's, and was highly impressed by Thach's analysis of the Zero, and his subsequent solution. Then I got "The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign" when it came out, and was impressed by how Thach (and O'Hare) demonstrated the weave to Flatley, and how he started promulgating it through the fleet. (Actually, I have every single Lundstrom book, including the Civil War one.)

So when I made a handle on TexAgs in 1999, I went with thach (I probably should have capitalized it!). Every now and again I consider changing it...

And IMHO, Thach's ~20 minutes of Dai-ichi Kido Butai on the morning of 4 June 1942 has GOT to be one of the greatest combat missions of all time. His division was at the end of its F4F-4's range. They were outnumbered by ~fighters 41-6 (IIRC, but not outnumbered if you count VT-3, VB-3, VB-6, VS-6, and CEAG). His division came out on top 6-1 (if not much higher) against significantly higher performing machines. He had just two combat veterans with him, two rookies, and one experienced NAP against some of the best aviators in the world--it's just incredible. To me, it's far more impressive than David McCampbell's nine-in-a-mission at Leyte Gulf (and my uncle served on Essex with McCampbell, and I'm a big McCampbell fan!).

Titan, can I ask you a few questions "offline" (of TexAgs)? I'm working on a project on USS Essex (CV-9), and I'd like to get some information from the Japanese side. I.e., what units did CVGs -9, -15, -4, & -83 go up against? Did the Japanese have any sort of nickname for her? How many times did the Japanese claim her sunk (I've got one cartoon with Tokyo Rose claiming Essex was sunk)? Did her pilots go up against any of the Japanese greats? How many Japanese planes did Essex actually shoot down? etc. I don't know the best way to go about getting Japanese information.

I also have some (a small handful, really) Japanese items in my uncle's papers I'd like an expert to look at. One's a hand written letter. Plus I've got some propaganda that was dropped over Japan near the end of the war, and some sort of newspaper and a magazine. I've got it all electronically.

Thanks!

Decided to peruse History on Texags and saw this thread. Fascinating! And now I have two new books to read after finishing Guadalcanal.

Love this board!

What is interesting is to read how the CV captains on both sides were maneuvering their ships to avoid dive bombers and torpedo bombers. They talk about putting their boats into skids and doing complete 360s. When you are talking about putting 800 plus foot long, 40 to 45,000 ton ships doing 30 plus knot into skids and hard over 360's that is just freaking mind blowing.

emails sent!