MIDWAY ATOLL — Japanese and U.S. naval forces fought northwest of Midway Island on June 4, 1942. This engagement followed a series of Japanese military actions across the Pacific and Southeast Asia in late 1941 and early 1942.
Eight U.S. battleships were destroyed or damaged during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Japanese forces sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea on December 10, 1941. By the end of 1941, Japanese forces occupied Thailand, Burma, and Malaya. They seized Singapore in February 1942, and a combined Allied naval force was defeated in the Battle of the Java Sea during the same month. In March 1942, U.S. Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle launched B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet toward Japanese cities.
In April 1942, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Earnest King directed Adm. Chester Nimitz to deploy three aircraft carriers southwest of Hawaii. The Battle of the Coral Sea occurred in early May 1942 and was the first engagement where opposing fleets fought without visually observing each other. U.S. naval command halted the Japanese advance during this battle. The USS Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor with damage from the Battle of the Coral Sea and entered drydock for repairs. Shipyard personnel repaired Yorktown over a three-day period.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto developed plans to invade Midway Island. Station HYPO, a U.S. Navy code-breaking unit led by Cmdr. Joe Rochefort, intercepted and decoded Japanese naval communications in May 1942. Rochefort instructed the Midway garrison commander to transmit an unencrypted radio message stating the island's water desalination plant was broken. Intercepted Japanese communications referencing the water outage confirmed Midway as the operational target.
Nimitz dispatched USS Enterprise and USS Hornet as Task Force 16 on May 28 under the command of Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance. Nimitz assigned Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher to command the forces departing for Midway. Yorktown departed with Task Force 17 on May 30. Japanese forces conducted an attack on the Aleutian Islands on June 3. Task Forces 16 and 17 rendezvoused northwest of Midway.
American reconnaissance aircraft located Japanese carriers at 0534 hours on June 4. The Japanese Kidō Butai, consisting of four aircraft carriers under Vice Adm. Chūichi Nagumo, launched over 100 aircraft against Midway in the early morning of June 4. U.S. carrier aircraft launched from Task Force 16 around 0800 hours on June 4. A Japanese reconnaissance aircraft transmitted a report of American warships north of Midway.