Watch, Read, Play: Battle of Midway

“The plump silhouettes of the American Dauntless dive-bombers quickly grew larger, and then a number of black objects suddenly floated eerily from their wings.”

— Captain Mitsuo Fuchida

SBD Dauntless squadron seeks the Japanese fleet.

Many argue the Battle of Midway, June 4–7, 1942, was the turning point in the Pacific War. The engagement epitomizes the role of carriers and aircraft in naval operations as strategies relied less on massive battleships (though they’d still have a final significant moment at the Battle of Surigao Strait). Numerous factors played a role in its outcome: interception and interpretation of intelligence; preemptive deployment of American carriers; and Japanese indecision reacting to emerging threats during the engagement (among many others). All these considerations — as in depicting any historical event — prove challenging to interpret on the screen and the gaming tabletop. Given the battle’s importance, an abundance of Midway media offers many opportunities to engage with history by watching films, reading books, and playing games, all with varying degrees of quality.

The Japanese fleet, with the now-infamous Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto at its helm, planned to lure the American carriers into the open Pacific for a final and decisive confrontation To do this, he deployed three fleets, one for a secondary attack against the Aleutian Islands, one to occupy Midway, and another to bomb Midway and engage and eliminate enemy carriers. A force of larger battleships and cruisers — including the IJN Yamato, the largest battleship in the world — trailed the main carrier force headed to Midway and intended to finish the American fleet.

USS Yorktown sustains a hit during battle.

Thanks to American code-breaking efforts naval intelligence intercepted and collated radio messages hinting at the plan and its objectives, which predicated the date and location of the attack and even the enemy order of battle. This spurred the rapid deployment of three carriers in two Task Forces, TF 16 (USS Hornet and USS Enterprise) and TF 17 (USS Yorktown, after extremely rapid repairs). In the resulting engagement the Japanese bombed Midway, but American aerial reconnaissance spotted the Japanese fleet; carrier-based planes from both sides assaulted their enemy carriers. Commanding Admiral Nagumo’s decision to refit reserve planes for a second assault on Midway left carriers vulnerable as they changed out munitions for attacks against carriers for those effective against land targets. Although the Americans lost one carrier of their three, the Japanese lost all four carriers from their main force.

Watch

I’ve seen several films about Midway. I regret I can only recommend one, and it’s a tepid recommendation based on its vivid depiction of carrier action with some secondary consideration to the intelligence situation and a belabored effort to put the battle in the greater context of American involvement in the Pacific War. Roland Emmerich’s Midway (2019) remains a sweeping, visually impressive account of the Pacific War through the Battle of Midway, primarily following the pilots of carriers involved. It begins with a graphic depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack and follows aviators through the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and the Battle of the Coral Sea. Meanwhile American Naval Intelligence laboriously pieces together clues leading to the Japanese operations against Midway. The film includes intense scenes of aerial combat, especially during the battle, with dramatic friction between characters along the way.

Critical response to Midway remained tepid, though many preferred it to previous efforts, notably the Midway film from 1976 starring Charlton Heston (which I cannot really recommend). Some praised its greater historical accuracy, with retired Navy Rear Admiral Sam Cox saying “Despite some of the 'Hollywood' aspects, this is still the most realistic movie about naval combat ever``` made.” Whatever the critics said (and few were impressed), the film does a hair-raising job of portraying the aerial combat sequences, emphasizing the nature of intelligence gathering and interpretation, and maintaining a steady suspense level as the Japanese fleet, American carriers, and naval intelligence converge on the battle itself.

The film includes two interesting scenes I particularly enjoy. The first covers Japanese efforts to wargame the operation. When the red team running the Americans begins with carriers at sea — as they were historically — the admiral forces them to start again with carriers at their base at Pearl Harbor, ensuring a Japanese victory on the wargame table. The other scene, during the opening bombing of Midway island, depicts director John Ford filming despite coming under fire during the attack.

While I cannot recommend it as inspiration for learning more about the battle, John Ford’s Oscar-winning documentary The Battle of Midway (1942) offers a glimpse at what the American public was told about the engagement shortly afterward. Ford’s documentary focuses more on the emotional impact on and influence of the American civilian population than an actual account of the battle, though it includes plenty of footage of American forces. With its Christo-patriotic use of the National Anthem and “Onward Christian Soldiers” to accompany poignant scenes it indulges more in emotion than deep historical accuracy. It’s a fine study in American cinematic propaganda during World War II.

Read

Plenty of books released over the years cover the Battle of Midway, each researching and collating materials to provide a deeper picture of the entire engagement. Gordon W. Prange’s Miracle at Midway (McGraw Hill, 1982) remains among the more meticulously researched volumes. If Prange’s name sounds familiar, you might recognize him as the author of At Dawn We Slept (McGraw Hill, 1981), a similarly deep account of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent investigations into American failings. The University of Maryland history professor served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and conducted much of his research and interviews while serving in post-war occupied Japan as Chief Historian on General MacArthur’s staff. Miracle at Midway serves as a deep dive into accounts of the battle, a scholarly level of analysis piecing together events as they unfolded from both the American and Japanese perspectives. Like books on Pearl Harbor, Prange’s account leads the pack of a prolific bibliography re-examining the battle into the 21st century.

Midway 1942 (Osprey Publishing, 2010) serves as a graphic companion to any book on the Battle of Midway. Mark Stille’s book incorporates all the hallmarks of Osprey’s military history titles: overview of opposing commanders, forces, and plans; helpful chronology of key events; blow-by-blow account of the battle and emerging issues; and the plethora of period photographs, original art, maps, and diagrams. It’s a good summation of the battle with the bonus of helpful visual aids for navigating the complexities of the engagement, not as exhaustive as Prange’s book but certainly helpful in visualizing fleet and air group movements.

Play

Like books about Midway, numerous games have simulated the battle over the years, some focusing on the search-and-engage nature of the engagement and others concentrating more on historical granularity of individual ships and air groups.

One might argue that Milton Bradley’s Battleship simulates the battle in a very abstracted board game experience. But the game, published in 1967, was a more modern implementation of a paper-and-pencil game with origins as early as 1890 and made commercially available in the 1930s as paper pads with rules and pre-printed search grids. (I recall learning German in the early 1980s and using the game, as Seeschlacht, to practice calling out our letters and numbers in German on grids and fleet dispositions hastily graphed out in our notebooks.)

Sebastian Bae’s Find, Fix, & Finish (Center for Naval Analyses, 2025) micro-game serves as a far more refined and modernized version of the search-and-engage naval strategy game that, with a few modifications, serves to simulate the Battle of Midway. Players deploy two fleets in an ocean hex grid with several island spaces. Each turn they may choose one of three search patterns to guess the location of enemy forces; the more tightly focused a search, the higher the chances to detect any enemy present). An attack force may engage (with success chances based on range) if a player detects an enemy fleet, though with a chance they might give away their own fleet’s location. Bae’s modern-warfare game includes naval search-and-attack elements similar to the Midway scenario. A few modifications can transform Find, Fix, & Finish into a Midway game: eliminate all islands except one on hex E-4 or E-5 (representing Midway), and give that island a chance to both search and launch attacks (though it’s knocked out of play by two successful hits, and can be targeted during any turn). Played as-is or modified, the micro-game format enables participants to quickly play several sessions to try different strategies and gain insights from multiple games. Download the free PDF print-and-play game from the CNA “Gaming and Integration Program” page online (scroll down for that and additional modern micro-games).

Midway (Avalon Hill, 1964) was one of the first “modern” wargames covering the engagement. While the mechanics might initially seem like playing Milton Bradley’s Battleship, it implements a host of differences reflecting historical issues. It is certainly a relic of its time, the early boxed wargaming days where tiny chit counters represented individual combat forces. Such fare offers a detailed play style focusing on individual units, which still appeals to many board wargame enthusiasts. Players deploy their forces on their own search board, separated by a screen, much like in Battleship. The gridded board allows fleets to move and announce areas for aerial reconnaissance, with players revealing ships if present. Attacks move to a separate battle board where defenders deploy their ships, attackers send planes against specific targets, and the overall confrontation plays out like most wargames of the time (comparing combat strength of forces and rolling on a combat results table). Quite a bit more involved than Battleship or a modified Find, Fix, & Finish, but a more granular simulation in the spirit of Avalon Hill wargames of the time. The game boasts the technical assistance and historical commentary of then-retired Rear-Admiral C.Wade McClusky, air group commander on the USS Enterprise during the battle credited with making the tactical decision leading to the sinking of three Japanese aircraft carriers.

A more recent game simulates the overall operation as Japanese and American task forces maneuver to draw each other into a decisive confrontation. Worthington Publishing’s Midway Solitaire avoids the Battleship search-and-engage hidden deployment mechanics and uses cards to move Japanese forces, provide modifiers to attacks, and activate threats of patrolling Japanese submarines and naval forces. Each turn the player may move the two American naval task forces and deploy planes from Midway, draws a card and moves the Japanese fleets, then, depending on their disposition, launch attacks. I’ve already played it several times, each game lasting about 20 minutes once you grasp the rules. Although the player has perfect information regarding force deployment, the card play moves Japanese task forces unpredictably, making interception and engagement difficult. Combat heavily favors the Japanese, with a larger task force heading for Midway and the American naval forces having limited advantages, notably only two air strikes for each task force to assault adjacent enemy forces...which also endangers the fleet carriers as if they were directly engaged. Overall, though, I enjoyed Midway Solitaire as yet another board game depiction of a certain perspective on the battle. The game reached my table as fulfillment of a Kickstarter campaign that caught my eye for its historical theme, solitaire play, and lower-than-usual price point. Worthington has recently produced a series of smaller, “travel” games that take up less table space than their more traditional box designs.

One might use a host of games to simulate the tactical engagements from Midway, assaults by torpedo and dive bombers against carriers, with anti-aircraft guns and a combat air patrol as defenses. Wings of Glory and Fighters of the Pacific come to mind. They’re entertaining combat aviation scenarios, but secondary to some of the larger operational concerns that brought about the turning point in the Pacific war.

This is by no means a comprehensive survey of all Midway-related films, books, and games, but rather a starting point offering a few tempting morsels to inspire readers to investigate this media on their own, reflecting on its value to them understanding the strengths and limitations of each form (and each interpretation). This kind of approach can help us determine what broadly interests us (“watch”), dive into the details when we’re hooked (“read”), and immerse ourselves first-hand in historical simulations (“play”) all while increasing our knowledge of and compassion for those who endured these past events.

“A terrific fire...bodies all over the place...planes stood tail up, belching livid flames and jet-black smoke, making it impossible to bring the fires under control.”

— Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka