The Silver Waterfall
How America Won the War in the Pacific at Midway
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Eighty years after the stunning and decisive battle, a revelatory new history of Midway
The Battle of Midway was, on paper, an improbable victory for the smaller, less experienced American navy and air force, so much so that it was quickly described as “a miracle.” Yet fortune favored the Americans at Midway, and the conventional wisdom has it that the Americans’ lucky streak continued as the war in the Pacific turned against the Japanese. This new history demonstrates that luck, let alone miracles, had little to do with it.
In The Silver Waterfall, Brendan Simms and Steven McGregor show how the efforts of America’s peacetime navy combined with creative innovations made by designers and industrialists were largely responsible for the victory. The Douglas Dauntless Dive Bomber, a uniquely conceived fighting weapon, delivered a brutally accurate attack the Japanese quickly came to dread.
Told through a vivid narrative, Simms and McGregor show how the course of the war in the Pacific was dramatically altered, emphasizing the crucial combination of a culture of innovation, a brilliant contribution from immigrants, and a vital intelligence coup that allowed the navy to orchestrate the devastating attack on the Japanese and dominate the Pacific for good.
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The U.S. Navy's victory at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 was the result of the skills of its veteran pilots and "the effectiveness of their equipment," according to this immersive account from biographer Simms (coauthor, Hitler's American Gamble) and U.S. Army veteran McGregor. Highlighting the design of the Dauntless dive bomber, which was capable of a near vertical plummet that turned bombs into "guided missile"; Adm. Chester Nimitz's wily strategy to "snare the snarer"; and the diligent professionalism and steel nerves of pilots, the authors contend that Midway reveals the importance of experimenting with new technology and how "procurement wins wars." Simms and McGregor also provide a searing, moment-by-moment account from the Japanese perspective, describing the "scream" of descending aircraft and an explosion aboard the carrier Akagi that "seemed to open the bowels of the ship in a rolling, greenish-yellow ball of flame." Applying the lessons of Midway to today's geopolitical situation, Simms and McGregor describe China's naval buildup and territorial disputes as the most "serious naval challenge" in the Pacific since WWII and cast doubt on the idea that the U.S. has "done the necessary preparation to earn another Midway." Well-researched and fluidly written, this military history issues a stark warning for the future.
