Japan Lost Two Carriers in the War Game. An Admiral Changed the Result | Battle of Midway 1942

Battle of Midway, 4 June 1942. In the first week of May, Yamamoto's staff rehearsed the operation on a table aboard the battleship Yamato. The umpire's dice sank two carriers, Akagi and Kaga. The chief of staff, Ugaki, changed the result and kept Akagi afloat. Five weeks later American dive bombers sank the same two carriers, and two more, in one morning. This film follows Nagumo, who sat at that table and stood on Akagi's bridge, through his own report of 4 June, minute by minute: the rearming order at 0715, the sighting at 0728, "what appears to be a carrier" at 0820, the decision at 0837 to recover first, and the bombs at 1022. It gives the legend of the five minutes and the count that replaced it, and the US Navy's own 1943 account beside the archives. In this episode: the war game and the only man who wrote it down; the Doolittle raid and the plan; Station Hypo, "AF is short of water", and Yorktown's three days in dock; Nagumo's hour; Torpedo 8 and McClusky's turn; Fuchida's five minutes and Parshall's answer; Hiryu and Yorktown; the ledger, and what decided Midway. Chapters: 0:00 The table: the war game aboard the Yamato 2:49 The plan and its rehearsal 7:53 The basement: Rochefort, the water message, Nimitz 11:28 One hour: Nagumo's morning, minute by minute 15:40 The low road and the high road: the torpedo squadrons and the dive bombers 18:58 Five minutes: the legend and the count 21:25 Hiryu and Yorktown 25:06 Two legends and a ledger Sources: Nagumo's report of 15 June 1942, ONI translation 1947 (free at history.navy.mil); the times in the film are his, converted from Tokyo time. ONI Combat Narrative, The Battle of Midway, 1943, pp. 3-55 (free at ibiblio.org/hyperwar). Nimitz, report of 28 June 1942. Naval War College analysis, 1948 (Bates), pp. 41-150 (archive.org). Fuchida, "Five Fateful Minutes at Midway", Proceedings, June 1955. Parshall, Naval History, June 2022. Figures from Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 2005 (pp. 61-63, 90-91, 228-259, 318-359, 432, 476, 524). The war game: Fuchida and Okumiya, Midway, 1955, p. 96, the only eyewitness account; no game record survived, and the Naval War College Museum's caution (2021) is spoken in the film. Memoirs, labelled as memoirs on screen: Fuchida and Okumiya; Ugaki, Fading Victory; Layton, And I Was There. Where the sources disagree, the film gives the range and says so. Archive film: US Navy and US Office of War Information, US National Archives: The Battle of Midway (John Ford, 1942, 80-MN-1433), Torpedo Squadron 8 (John Ford, 1942), United Newsreel no. 4 (1942, 208-UN-4), Naval Photographic Center 428-NPC-894, 2704 and 11589, and the captured Japanese newsreel 428-NPC-10127 (January 1942). All public domain. Photographs. US Navy and US Army Air Forces, National Archives and Naval History and Heritage Command, public domain (80-G, 19-N, NH and USAF series, among them 80-G-466244, 80-G-13065, 80-G-32355, 80-G-414423, 80-G-21694, NH 95575, 80-G-66121, 80-G-32225, 80-G-414422, 80-G-41686, NH 93595, NH 96615, USAF-57576, USAF-3725, USAF 22635 AC) and frames from the two Ford films. US Marine Corps 127-GR-16-A703186, public domain. Imperial Japanese Navy photographs, public domain (Japan, pre-1957; NHHC Hando collection and seized photographs, among them NH 63423, NH 73059, NH 73060, NH 73064 and NH 73065 (Kiyoshi Oniwa), 80-G-704702, 80-G-30549, 80-G-182249; Hiryu and Arashi from the Kure Maritime Museum). Maps: NASA Visible Earth, Blue Marble, public domain, with our markers; tracks and positions drawn from Nagumo's report and the Naval War College analysis of 1948, public domain. Music generated with Merjoai. How this episode was made: three scenes with no surviving footage (the war game aboard the Yamato, the codebreakers' basement at Pearl Harbor, Akagi's bridge at the rearming order) are photoreal AI reconstructions in the style of a 1942 press photograph, labelled RECONSTRUCTION on screen; no real person's face is generated. The film is graded black and white; only the maps and the on-screen text carry colour. Three American airmen captured on 4 June were killed by their captors; the film states it in one sourced sentence and shows nothing. Disclaimer: this video is for educational and historical purposes. It does not promote, endorse or glorify any ideology, regime or act of war. Views in quoted historical sources are those of the speakers at the time. Fair use: US Government material is public domain and credited; other material under Section 107 of the US Copyright Act for education and commentary. Rights holders may contact us through the channel's About page. Subscribe: at least two WWII films every week. #BattleOfMidway #Midway1942 #WW2 #Nagumo #PacificWar