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The Unsolved Disaster of Midway - The Flight to Nowhere

bearcat241

bearcat241

SOH-CM-2023
In my years studying all things WWII, I've often wondered about the disastrous losses of VT-6 and VT-8 at Midway at the hands of the Japanese fighter patrols protecting their carrier strike forces. I just never could wrap my head around the appearance that they were sent into the jaws of death as TOTALLY UNPROTECTED lambs to the slaughter - no escorting fighters of VF-6 or VF-8 within miles. We've talked a lot about the exploits and the ordeal of sole survivor Ensign Gay/VT-8, but how exactly did he and his comrades come to such a terrible fate despite prevailing USN strike package doctrine that insisted on maintaining air group integrity for mutual support, survivability and maximum effect on target?

Well, I recently found this investigate review of the subject - some of you may have seen or heard it already - that seems to shed a great deal of light on the Navy's ugly Snafu's of that fateful day that put the two torpedo squadrons in such jeopardy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgd7Jdh6iYc

p.s. don't want to lay this entirely at the feet of naval command, as it appears that it was simply a case of friction between flight leaders mostly that command just glossed over in the aftermath.
 
Thanks BC. Yes, I had seen this one. Chris (at Military Aviation History)is pretty good. He has some great videos and this was one of his better efforts.
 
On Enterprise at Midway was CAPT Miles Browning, a highly intelligent man but also a difficult, in fact almost impossible, man to deal with. He had a hand in some of the decisions taken that day - June 4, 1942. I don't know which ones, but I think a review of them in light of his known erratic and irascible behavior and rigid belief in the rightness of his decisions might be an enlightening exercise in historical forensics. He's also supposed to be related to Chevy Chase.
 
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