Midway turning point: Ian McGibbon notes the 80th anniversary of arguably the most important battle in New Zealand's history.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: ANNIVERSARY

On 4 June 80 years ago, New Zealand's fate hung in the balance. The battle fleets of Japan and the United States were approaching each other in the vicinity of Midway Island, near Hawaii. The ensuing four-day clash ended in a resounding defeat for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Four of its aircraft-carriers succumbed to US naval aircraft after American dive-bombers somewhat fortuitously found themselves over the Japanese force while it was refuelling its aircraft and unprotected by air cover. It took only a matter of minutes for them to inflict crippling damage--but the consequences would be profound and long-lasting.

This battle followed another significant clash the previous month--at Coral Sea. Two American carriers defeated a Japanese force making for Port Moresby--the first naval battle in history in which the two adversaries remained out of sight of each other. Many in New Zealand believed that Coral Sea was the battle that saved their country from the threat of invasion, but, in reality, it was Midway that was crucial to its security.

Unlike Coral Sea, Midway was a contest in which command of the sea in the Pacific was at stake. Defeat for the US Navy would have opened up many strategic possibilities for Japan, including the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands if only to prevent the Americans using this forward base for a future rematch. Unchallenged at sea, Japan could have contemplated significant operations against Australia and New Zealand, with the latter no doubt presenting a more manageable task to subdue. New Zealand's defences, frantically bolstered in the early months of 1942, would not have sufficed against a major Japanese effort. Such operations would have been strategically sensible--if only to make a US comeback at sea more difficult.

Defeat for Japan at Midway was the turning point in its war. In the six months since its surprise attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, it had run amok in the Pacific, occupying territories as far south as the Solomon Islands and launching more than a hundred bombing raids on Australia. But, fatally for its hopes, its surprise attack had not secured command of the sea in the Pacific: to be sure, the attack had destroyed or damaged many of the battleships of the US Navy, but operations soon demonstrated that these behemoths were no longer the key to seapower. More important were the aircraft-carriers, absent from Honolulu on 7 December, that provided the United States with...