Word: jap
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Midway had been a great victory, the second naval victory scored against the Jap. In the first, the Battle of the Coral Sea (TIME, May 18), the enemy had been scattered and turned back as he tried to cut the communications lines of the South Pacific. At Midway the threat had been greater. Apparently Midway was to have been a way station. Pearl Harbor was the goal, and disastrous defeat of the U.S. in the Pacific was inevitable if Pearl Harbor was taken...
Like the Battle of the Coral Sea, Midway was a triumph of air power. Land-based aircraft from the island struck the first blow and gave the Jap enough to make him turn back. But carrier-based craft, launched as the Jap retired, did even greater damage. The carrier planes (plus Army Flying Fortresses) drove the Jap back into the shelter of the Mandates and the cover of thick weather with only the remnants of his mighty invasion fleet...
...superiority in the Pacific. Now the enemy was a cut below the U.S. Pacific Fleet in sea-air power, but it was not yet time for the U.S. to crow. Its newly won superiority was still too thin for broad-scale offensive action, and it was offset by the Jap's formidable holding of island bases (stationary aircraft carriers) in the western ocean...
...Midway the Japanese lost four first-line aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers and three destroyers. Three Jap battleships, a light cruiser, at least three transports and several destroyers were crippled before they drew out of range of U.S. aircraft. Estimated Jap losses in aircraft...
...Another Jap column (four carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers) was steaming down from the northwest. It was to make the heavy attack...