June 6 - anniversary of great military victory, but which one?

[captcalhoun]

D-Day. the single biggest naval invasion in history launched the liberation of Europe and thwarted Communist dominion of most of Europe.

besides, Midway started on the 4th.

 

[Captain Ice]

If the Nazis hadn't had to deal with the Soviets in the East, D-Day probably wouldn't have gone nearly so well for the Allies.

And if the Brittish and americans had not had to deal with the Japs in the Far East, the war itself would not have gone nearly so well for the Germans and Italians. Your logic goes both ways.

As for the OP...

Both operations were fraught with mistakes. But there were mistakes on BOTH SIDES of each conflict. What would have happened had the Germans been better organized in Normandy? What would have happened if the Allies were better organized at Normandy? What would have happened if the allies NOT lost most of their paratroopers?

At Midway, What would have happened had the commander of Hornet's Bombing 8 not incorrectly deduced that the Japanese ships were closer to Midway? What would have happened had Nagumo launched a strike at the US Carriers with whatever armament the planes had on board? What if the Japanese had not divided their forces quite so much? Or if the Japanese had not held that second strike back with armor piercing bombs in the first place and had just added those aircraft to the first Midway strike?


I honestly say Midway was the greater victory. In losing the four frontline carriers at Midway, the Japanese were dealt a blow from which they could not recover easily. Nor would they. They were forced into some pretty radical and interesting choices in order to rebuild even a semblance of a carrier force. Construction on most of their capital ships stopped in order to reappropriate ships and steel to build carriers.

Oh, and something that no one else mentioned. The US pilot training program at that point was setup in such a way that pilots with combat experience were rotated through the flight schools as instructors. The students had the benefit of their combat experience to learn from in the course of training, resulting in much better pilots. The Japanese did not have such a program in place. At Midway, they lost hundreds of experienced combat pilots. A loss that they could afford even less than the loss of the carriers upon which they had been based.