Carved into the marble walls of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., in letters six inches high, is a sentence from Walter Lord's 1967 prize-winning book on the Battle of Midway: they had no right to win, yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war. What Lord meant is that the odds against the Americans at Midway were so great that their eventual success was no less than incredible—hence the title of his book: Incredible Victory. Fifteen years later, Gordon Prange continued that theme in his book Miracle at Midway. Embedded in these book titles, and in their conclusions as well, is the implication that the American victory in the Battle of Midway was largely the product of fate, or chance, or luck, or some other unworldly force—that it was a miracle after all.
That the Americans at Midway changed the course of World War II is indisputable. At 10 o'clock on the morning of June 4, 1942, the Japanese were winning the Pacific War; an hour later, three Japanese aircraft carriers were on fire and sinking. The fate of nations and the course of history had changed in an astonishing five-minute flurry of American bombs.
To be sure, chance played a role at Midway, as it has in every military engagement throughout history. But to attribute the American victory predominately to luck is a disservice to the principal players. A look at the actions of four Americans across the command chain at Midway—Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, task force commander Raymond Spruance, air group leader Clarence Wade McClusky, and dive-bomber pilot Richard "Dick" Best—shows how courageous leadership and sound decision-making, not just fate and chance, determined the crucial American victory at Midway.
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