A Japanese seaplane spotted the American fleet near Midway Atoll, and Japanese bombers launched preliminary strikes against the island's installations, marking the opening moves of the Battle of Midway. Over the following three days, American dive bombers would sink four Japanese fleet carriers, a turning point that ended Japan's naval offensive dominance in the Pacific.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had planned Midway as a trap to lure and destroy America's remaining carriers after Pearl Harbor, using the atoll as bait. Unbeknownst to the Japanese, American codebreakers had cracked enough of the Japanese naval code (JN-25) to know almost exactly when and where the attack would come—arguably the single greatest intelligence coup of the Pacific War.
On June 3, reconnaissance aircraft first sighted the approaching Japanese invasion force, and land-based B-17 bombers from Midway made largely ineffective high-altitude attacks on Japanese transport ships. The real carrier battle would erupt the following day, June 4, when American dive bombers caught Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu with their flight decks cluttered with fueled and armed aircraft.
The resulting American victory, achieved despite inferior numbers, destroyed four of Japan's six large fleet carriers and hundreds of experienced pilots—losses Japan could never fully replace. Historians consider Midway the turning point of the Pacific War, just six months after Pearl Harbor.
Key people: Chester Nimitz, Isoroku Yamamoto