June 4, 2016

If “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy” the Battle of Midway is proof that God loved us and wanted us to survive.

1942 proved that the Russians had more men that the Germans had ammunition. If the Germans had gotten through Stalingrad their next stops would have been India and China. When talking of hypotheticals, of tap dancing in the cosmic ballroom of “what ifs”, picture the Wehrmacht linking up with the Japanese. Since the Germans didn’t we need keep that thought in nightmare image only.

The American Navy, in 1942, had greatest year in naval History. Ever. I know, I know. Salamis, Lepanto, and Trafalgar are out there.

Those 3 battles, in chronological order, saved Western Civilization from being strangled in its crib, saved Christendom from radical Islamic terrorists – it didn’t begin at 9/11, and saved what we now know as representative Democracy. They were filled with feats of valor, of things heroic, and of things still sung about today but they were fought in less than 24 total hours and the battles could be watched from a single ship.

In April, 1942 the American Navy sailed 4,000 miles across the pacific and bombed Tokyo.

In June, 1942 the American Navy ambushed and sank 4 Japanese carriers.

[In “The Face of Battle”’ John Keegan writes, “At 10:25 Admiral Nagumo was poised to win the greatest naval battle of the 20^th century.” By 10:30 he had lost not only his 4 carrier strike force but the ability to impose his will wherever his ships would take him.

One Naval aviator, Wade McCluskey, will stand for all of them that day. When he got to where he thought the Japanese navy would be they were not to be found. Through “skill and cunning” he found them and sank them. All of them. 

In a 6 week period – part of October, all of November, part of December – the United States Navy faced down the Japanese Navy. It filled a stretch of ocean that came to be known as Iron Bottom Sound. Both sides contributed to its rolls.

As a stand-in for all the Blue Jackets let Admiral “Ching” Lee be its voice. From the bridge of the USS Washington he sent a fleet order. “Stand aside. I am coming through.” He did and when he was finished the Japanese navy left forever.

It began with Midway.

June 4, 1942

“Where do we find such men?”

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – Caitlin Hanson, my oldest Texas Lady, was graduated from Lovejoy High School in Allen, TX last Saturday. The loudest and longest applause was for the 4 seniors who announced their intentions to enlist in the armed forces of the United States on Monday.

“Almighty Father, strong to save,

Whose arm has bound the endless wave,

Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep:

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea.”