I read the article. The authors have an interesting theory and it is well argued. However, at least in my case, it raises more question. As I understand it, the basic premise is that previous accounts were flawed because they relied too much on the USSBS interrogation of japanese officers ("USSBS"), Nagumo's report ("NR")and Fuchida's 1955 book, with emphasis on the latter.
Not to turn this into a batlle of historians, but Morison first published his Midway book in 49 and 1st revised it in 53. He relied primarily on USSBS and NR. In his 2nd revised edition dated 59 which is the one I have, he acknowledges having read Fuchida's book to doublecheck his Midway chapter although Fuchida is not quoted as a source. USSBS and NR remained his primary sources.
The problem every historian has faced trying to write the story of Midway from the Japanese side is the fact that all of the logs from the 4 CVs were lost and many of IJN officers involved did not survive the war.
Let's look at one of the main issue, namely whether any planes were on the CVs deck during the crucial 0730 - 1020 period.
Morison states that at 0730, a ready force of 93 planes were on the decks ready to take off. Patch and Tully state that they must have been in the hangars based on IJN carrier doctrine. This may well be true, Morison does not quote a source. It may have been a misunderstanding by the US authors as to how IJN CVs worked.
As additional proof, they use a reconstituted log of Akagi's flight operations pulled from the NR which shows fighters taking off and being recovered regularly as proof that no dive or torpedo bombers could have been on the deck during that period.
You can find the report here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/I ... ay/Nagumo/
the important bit is here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/I ... umo/#III-2
you have to look at June 5th since the fleet used Tokyo time. The important part is that the log only mentions flights from the
Akagi, there is no mention of the other 3 CVs. The authors presume the 3 other CVs were doing the exact same thing, but there is no documentation of their flight activities. The other problem when dealing with the NR is that no one knows under what conditions it was written since Nagumo did not survive the war. It appears to have been written purely from memory, so no one knows how accurate it is.
Again if we move on to the period just before the attack, the authors state that there would have been no planes on the decks except fighters when the SBDs attacked. Morison mentions nothing about planes on the
Akagi, presumably because he had no info. He states that
Kaga had about 40 planes being fueled and armed. The source appears to be capt. Aoki of the
Kaga. The
Soryu is supposed to be turning into the wind to launch a strike. The souce for this is Capt. Ohara, the executive officer of
Soryu. This is more of an issue for me since Morison quotes actual eyewitness accounts while Patch and Tully again appear to be relying primarily on their log.
I dont know if the book contains more supporting documentation, but would be interested in finding out. So far I do not find their evidence to be as solid as they make it out to be.
[/center]
