Midway
The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle
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Midway
Buy Now for £17.69
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Narrated by:
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John Chancer
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By:
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Mark Stille
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle by Mark Stille, read by John Chancer.
A detailed re-examination of Midway, one of the most significant battles in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
In April 1942, the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy was at the zenith of its power. It had struck a severe blow against the US Navy at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, before spearheading the Japanese advance through Southeast Asia and rampaging across the South Pacific. Only a few months later, in June 1942, the US Navy managed to inflict a decisive defeat on this mighty force off Midway Atoll and the strategic initiative in the Pacific Theater passed to the US Navy.
Midway is the most famous naval battle of the Pacific War, and one of the most mythologized. The traditional view of the battle, popularized in its immediate aftermath and surviving through to the present day, is of a heavily outnumbered American force snatching victory in the face of overwhelming odds. This view is simplistic and, in many respects, wrong.
Pacific War expert Mark Stille provides a detailed analysis of this pivotal battle, and argues that Midway was neither a miraculous American victory, nor a product of good fortune, but that the plans, personalities, doctrines, ships and weapons of the two sides meant that a Japanese defeat was the more likely outcome. This new study provides an unparalleled level of insight and thorough analysis into one of the decisive moments of the Pacific War.
Of the 15 hours, I'd say only about 3 in the middle of the book deal with the actual events of the battle.
The first few hours were a long preamble, inexplicably analysing the outcome of the battle, which you'd have thought would go better at the end (but have no fear, because hours and hours are spent towards the end of the book, doing the same thing).
Whether it was the actual writing or the narrator's somewhat monotonous delivery, he actually made the many exploits of derring do of the heroes of Midway sound almost matter of fact, like actual after action reports (which he leans on quite heavily).
I think I gave up on the book about 5 hours before the end, when the battle had long since finished and it became one long post-mortem.
If you were a historian (or novelist) intending to write a book about Midway, and you wanted some reference material listing a detailed chronology and inventory of everything to do with the battle, this book might be of some use. Otherwise, for me it was an exercise in how to make one of the most seminal and decisive battles of WW2 sound like an academic lecture.
Plodding, dry, bloodless analysis of Midway
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