A public domain video
The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American documentary film short directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice-overs of various narrators, including Johnny Governali, Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell.

The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II which occurred between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."

The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.

The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions. Most significantly, American cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush. There were seven aircraft carriers involved in the battle and all four of Japan's large fleet carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser was sunk, while the U.S. lost only the carrier Yorktown and a destroyer.

The Battle of Midway, along with the Guadalcanal Campaign, is widely considered a turning point in the Pacific War.

The film begins with a male narrator (Ray Milland) explaining where Midway Island is and its strategic importance. About five minutes into the film the format changes somewhat, with more leisurely pictures of the G.I.s at work on the island, and then a female voiceover. The female voiceover (Verna Felton) takes the personality of a middle-aged woman from Springfield, Ohio, who is a mother-type figure pointing out how she recognizes a boy from her hometown. The boy is Army Air Force pilot William E. "Junior" Kinney. Then stock footage of the Kinney family back home is introduced.

Abruptly the narrative turns to the battle itself with approximately five minutes dedicated to the defense of the island, the naval battle, and the aftermath. At the end, the various known Japanese losses are shown (four aircraft carriers, battleships, aircraft etc.) and then brushed over with red paint.


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