The Battle of Midway remembrance ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, June 7 at 9 a.m. in the atrium of the Rear Adm. William Moffett Building (No. 2272). Speakers at the ceremony include Rear Adm. Steven Eastburg and World War II pilot Dave Seeman. In addition, there will be exhibits and documentaries on display in the atrium throughout the day.

Midway is commonly regarded as the turning point of the World War II in the Pacific, but the battle itself turned on five minutes that were, in short, the turning point of the turning point.

It has been said that luck is the residue of design, and these five minutes were just that: the result of a fundamental difference in Japanese and American military training beliefs. The Americans believed, and still believe, that all its military men and women should be able to think on their feet and make command decisions on the battlefield. Their training is designed with that in mind.

This was not the case in Japanese training. Their design did not place a high value on the ability to make changes; to improvise once the battle began. At the Battle of Midway, that shortcoming was fatal.

Take yourself back to June 4, 1942. It is 4 a.m.

Adm. Chuichi Nagumo stands on the bridge of the aircraft carrier Akagi, flagship of his powerful First Air Fleet. He has just launched the first attack on Midway, two small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The attack has been planned by Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the man behind the attack on Pearl Harbor. Since then, Japan has won victory after victory: Singapore, Wake Island, Guam, the Philippines, Borneo, Malaya, Indo-China, New Guinea. Everywhere, Japan is on the march.

Yamamoto is a gambler. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto is gambling again. As at Pearl Harbor, he is relying on the element of surprise. As Yamamoto draws it up, a diversionary attack on Alaska will lure the American fleet out to sea. He will ambush that fleet off Midway.

What Yamamoto and Nagumo don’t know is that the Americans have broken Japan’s naval code. They have guessed the Japanese target, and the Japanese plans.

American Adm. Chester Nimitz commits nearly his entire fleet to stop them. It includes his only three carriers: Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown. By contrast, the Japanese armada includes 11 battleships, 23 cruisers, 66 destroyers, and six aircraft carriers.

But a third factor will decide this battle.

Individual initiative shown by junior officers will make the difference. It will make Midway the turning point of the Pacific War — and five minutes the turning point of Midway.

Initiative is emphasized heavily in American military training. It is strongly encouraged for all officers to become part of the decision making process. Adm. David L. McDonald said once, ‘‘Seldom will a service person get into trouble by using his own initiative unless in doing so he is knowingly violating a policy that has been set by his senior.” McDonald goes on to say that superior officers would rather see a junior officer try something and fail than do nothing at all.

Compare this atmosphere to the training of Saburo Sakai, Japan’s greatest fighter ace with 64 victories. Japanese training, he notes in his autobiography, ‘‘made human cattle of every one of us. We never dared to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but immediately carry out all the commands of our superiors. We were automatons who obeyed without thinking.”

Automatons and cattle do not improvise or show initiative.

Initiative by junior officers first comes into play on June 3. Just before 9 a.m., Ensign Jack Reid, commanding a Catalina search plane, reaches the end of his search pattern 700 miles from Midway. He can turn back and say he’s followed his orders, but he doesn’t. On his own initiative, he flies on for another 30 miles and sights the Japanese invasion force. The Americans now know their code-breakers are right.

But Nagumo doesn’t know that. He does know that he commands four carriers which are the cream of Japanese naval aviation: Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu. Their pilots are skilled and experienced. They have been involved in nearly all the Japanese campaigns dating to the invasion of China. They led the attack on Pearl Harbor. They have never been defeated.

Early on the morning of June 4, over 100 bombers and fighters are racing toward Midway. At 5:20 a.m., American search planes spot them. On Midway, planes get into the air. Six of them are Navy Avenger torpedo planes that will attack the Japanese fleet.

Among the pilots is Albert K. Earnest, who in an interview with the author told of sighting the Japanese. ‘‘We’d been flying about an hour, and finally I saw what looked like a ship down ahead — (it) looked like a transport. And then I looked back a few seconds later and I could see the whole Jap fleet. So we nosed over at that time, and started our run-in on the carriers. The (Japanese) fighters were all over us.”

Doctrine at the time calls for torpedo planes to attack after dive-bombers and fighters have already gone in, but there are no dive-bombers and no fighters on the scene. Initiative is taken; the torpedo planes attack alone.

Six Avengers start that run-in on the carriers. Of the six, only Earnest’s returns to Midway. No hits are scored. When Army B-17s attack, they also score no hits.

At 7:06 a.m., Adm. Raymond Spruance launches his forces from the Hornet and Enterprise, but the Japanese fleet has changed course. When dive-bombers from the Enterprise reach the intercept point at 9:20 a.m., all they see is empty ocean. With radio silence in force, there is no way to call for help.

Individual initiative by a junior officer again comes to the fore. Lt. Cmdr. Wade McClusky keeps going for 30 miles, then turns his air group northwest. Nimitz will later call this ‘‘one of the most important decisions of the battle.”

His initiative is rewarded: McClusky finds the Japanese carriers.

By 10 a.m. on June 4, the Japanese First Air Fleet has been under attack. Midway has not been surprised. It can still fight. Things do not go according to the Japanese plan, which is starting to unravel under what Gordon Prange called ‘‘the pressure of the unexpected.”

Nagumo hesitates. He isn’t prepared for this. He has been trained in a system that has not encouraged improvisational thinking, and has not helped him quickly make a decision in a changing situation.

Finally he orders his remaining planes, armed to attack American ships, re-armed to attack shore installations on Midway. Off come torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs; on go bombs designed for land targets — but the delay caused by Nagumo’s hesitation will eventually have catastrophic consequences.

Then one of Nagumo’s scout planes finds the American fleet. Nagumo is shocked. The plan says the Americans will be drawn out by the attack, and then the Japanese will destroy them. But they aren’t drawn out; they’re already here.

The situation has changed again, but now Nagumo doesn’t hesitate. No improvisation is needed, for he has always known that destruction of the American aircraft carriers is para-mount. He orders the planes re-armed for attacking ships. There is chaos on the carriers as the re-arming process goes on a second time. Bombs designed for land targets are taken off; torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs are put back on. In the rush, however, the land-attack bombs are not disarmed and stored.

Meanwhile, torpedo planes from the Hornet attack. Their commander, Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron, has analyzed Japanese tactics. On his own authority, he changes course and flies almost in a straight line toward the Japanese.

He attacks without waiting for fighter support that he knows is unlikely to arrive. The uneven fight can only end one way. Every torpedo plane, flying ‘‘low and slow,” is shot down. Only one pilot, George Gay, survives. No torpedoes hit.

Mitsuo Fuchida, who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, stands on the deck of the Akagi. He sees it all. He later writes: ‘‘The dramatic scene unfolded before us, and there was wild cheering and whistling as the raiders went down one after another.”

By now, 92 American planes have attacked; only 37 have survived. Not one bomb or torpedo has hit a Japanese ship. Now the Japanese will launch their attack on the American carriers.

It is 10:20 a.m. The turning point of the Battle of Midway has arrived, but individual initiative shown by junior officers has set the stage. Japanese fighters are at low level, drawn down by the torpedo attacks. In the rush to twice re-arm the airplanes, bombs and torpedoes are not stored. Gasoline tanks are on deck. All it takes is a bomb hit to set them off.

And at 10:20 a.m., no one has seen McClusky’s dive bombers overhead.

Below on the Akagi is Fuchida, who hears a lookout yell ‘‘Helldivers!” He wrote: ‘‘I looked up to see three black enemy planes plummeting toward our ship. Some of our machine guns fired at them, but it was too late.”

The attacks are unopposed by Japanese fighters, and almost simultaneous. Thousand-pound bombs fall on the Akagi, igniting the Japanese bombs and torpedos. Fires spread out of control.

More bombs hit the Kaga. Again, bombs and torpedoes scattered around the hangar deck explode, blowing apart the insides of the ship.

Bombers from the Yorktown arrive. They dive on the Soryu. More fire, more explosions, more destruction.

In five minutes, the heart of Japanese naval aviation is gone:

Kaga, on fire and sinking;

Soryu, on fire and sinking;

Akagi, on fire and sinking.

Wrote Fuchida, ‘‘I was horrified at the destruction that had been wrought in a matter of seconds.”

The battle will continue. American dive-bombers sink the last carrier, the Hiryu. The Japanese sink the carrier Yorktown; then they turn for home. From this point on, Japan will be on the defensive.

Midway is the turning point of the Pacific War — but the turning point of Midway is five minutes on June 4th. Squadron Commander Richard Best described the shocking turnabout for the Japanese: ‘‘They were just going to sweep everything from the seas, and it must have been a horrible awakening in those five minutes when four of their magnificent carriers were suddenly reduced to one.”

The seeds of American victory were planted in officer training that says individual initiative is important. Japanese training, for all its other virtues, neglected and discouraged individual initiative.

In the words of Adm. Thomas Moorer, ‘‘Ships and planes are just boxes with electronics in them. People make the difference.”

The men, not the boxes, made the difference in those five minutes at Midway, the turning point of the turning point.

(© Thomas Thompson. Used with permission.)