Battle of Midway (1942): Coral Sea · 550

On 4 June, US dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown caught Japanese carriers with armed aircraft on deck. Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and, later, Hiryu were lost. Yorktown was crippled and sunk on 7 June. Japanese dead are usually given around 3,000; US dead a few hundred -- a lopsided butcher's bill for a few hours of dive-bombing.

Midway did not end the Pacific war; Guadalcanal and 1944 still lay ahead. It ended Japan's run of carrier initiative. English-language memory -- helped by the 1976 and 2019 films -- treats it as the Pacific's Stalingrad: a turn, not a finish. Korean readers should pair it with Tsushima (1905): two decisive naval days that recast who could project power in these waters.

Code, carriers, and a morning in June Midway was an intelligence success that still had to be converted by dive bombers -- and by luck of timing that historians still argue about. May 1942 left Yorktown damaged and Japan short of a clean win. Yamamoto planned a complex operation with feints at the Aleutians. Complexity was itself a risk.