Since this week marks the 67th anniversary of the battle I will cover a few different WOD’s dealing with the Battle of Midway.

Midway is actually a grouping of small islands northwest of the Hawaiian Island chain. The area was formed over 28 million years ago by volcanic activity and over the years the volcano was eroded away leaving a coral atoll in its wake.

The group was discovered on July 5, 1859 by Captain N.C. Middlebrooks. The islands were claimed by the captain under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. In 1867 the United States took formal possession of the islands, the first off shore territory to annexed. The name of the atoll was officially changed to Midway, since it was midway across the Pacific Ocean.

The grouping is made up of four small sand islands, Sand Island, Eastern Island, Spit Island, and Sand inlet, their total land mass measures, 1540 acres, with the lagoon covering 14,800 acres.

The US military had established a fueling station and two airfields on the islands during the early portion of the 20th century. There was also a radio station used to help relay messages from fleet headquarters to ships at sea. The entire military presence of the US was a token one.

So, with all of this said, why was this small grouping of island so important? The same reason corner lot cost more than a middle of a block lot, location, location, location. With its relative location to Hawaii and the US mainland Midway would have made a perfect forward base for the IJN. Had Japan taken the island they could have forward deployed both surface ships and submarines at the island. Pearl Harbor would not have been an effective front line base and longer for the US. The remainder of the Hawaiian Islands would have been at risk for invasion as well. Had the US lost the advantage of using Pearl Harbor the closets US base would have been San Francisco or San Diego. Both of these ports would have added thousands of miles steaming distance to any US task force heading into the war zone.

Japanese submarines could have patrolled the waters off the US mainland and stalked tankers and supply ships as they headed toward the last foothold in the Pacific, Australia. Japan would have been free to finish the operation they tried at the Battle of Coral Sea. Australia would have then been cut off from supplies from the US. The war would have turned extremely bad for the US and Australia.

So, that is what was so important about keeping Midway in US hands.