The Battle of Midway was the Turning Point of WWII

It worked out good actually, The USA shut the doors, In the Pacific, Canada shut the doors in the north Atlantic.

As much as you fuckers annoy me, we work good together

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Well its more like Canada, Britain, and the US sealed the Atlantic. The two really arent comparable at all, namely because the US was pulling all of the weight in the central pacific and the majority of it in the south Pacific.

 

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Buffalo, we seem to be kind of disconnected.

I am arguing that Guadalcanal was the decisive victory of the Pacific war.

you are arguing that Midway was the turning point of the Pacific war.

The Turning point and the decisive victory are two different definitions.

 

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I don't think there was ever any real threat of the US "losing" the battle for Guadalcanal. Even if the initial marine landing forces had been defeated, or if any of the Japanese attempts to counterattack and retake the major airfield etc. had been a success, the US was in a position to simply land more and more troops until it won. The Japanese didn't really have that option...

 

Hey, The Americans and Canadian soilders got to europe, mostly thanx to Canadian Esscorts, But any way thats off topic.

 

Splitting hairs I see, Midway was a Decisive Victory, which made it the Turning Point in the Pacific War, and that Decisive Victory, and Turning Point was our going over to the offensive and the Japanese being forced onto the defensive, a fact that never changed through out the rest of the war, from Guadalcanal on the Japanese reacted to our offensive operation, and were never able to create a sustainable offensive action to challenge U.S. and Allied forces for the rest of the war.

 

Im talking about THE decisive victory. Not A decisive victory.

 

Wait, Midway was not a US offensive, you cant say it was our turning point from defense to offense, that's silly.

 

You know, it's pretty easy with simple logic to figure out why the Japanese never intended attacks on Hawaii and that the purpose of taking Midway was not as a lure.

 

Which campaign was bloodier and ended in a greater strategic victory. Midway or Guadalcanal, politically, militarily, and tactically?

guadalcanal on every single count.

Yah Japan lost 4 carriers at Midway and that is significant, and it would take them until I believe 1944 to recover.

What they lost at Midway was everything they had, they threw everything at an isolated band of marines which had minimal support and the marines threw them off the island. The navy obliterated many enemy craft at sea and the cactus airforce of Guadalcanal destroyed more than twice as many aircraft as the US had destroyed at Midway.

At Midway 2,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, at Guadalcanal 31,000 Japanese soldiers were killed along with another 1,000 captured.

Far more supplies, ships, and manpower were used at Guadalcanal than at Midway.

96,200 men participated at Guadalcanal.

And if you had actually read my very first post I had quoted how several major Japanese commanders said that Guadalcanal was the decisive victory of the Pacific.

So long as their islands had over lapping aircraft ranges they did not need carriers because land based planes would be a larger threat, Guadalcanal was to be one of the last airbases in the chain and when completed it would form a wall of overlapping aircraft ranges between the islands.

Japan did not recognize Midway to have been the decisive victory nor the turning point. The turning point is when Japan changes from defense to offense. Midway did not make Japan go on the defensive, actually the proof is with Guadalcanal, they went on the offensive and sped up their plans and their attempt to build an airbase was a direct result of a sped up offensive. Midway did NEVER made the Japanese go on the defensive, Guadalcanal made Japan go on the defensive.

 

What?

Nasor, that is not true. The US only had one chance. Midway did not destroy the Japanese fleet in any definition, it merely helped even the field slightly, at sea combined with air bases at Rabaul and other islands the Japanese navy could easily obliterate any other landing fleet.

The only reason they didn't is that they did not suspect the marines would land there the first time. They didn't even guard the island, all they had were engineers that ran before the marines even landed, they ran when they heard the naval artillery.

The very first battle on land had the Japanese advance force punched through the marine lines they would have raised hell. The Japanese had just as many chances to win that battle as the US.

Remember, this is the first defining moment for the US marine corps in the Pacific, they were fighting with WW1 weaponry, with ammunition that frequently was so old it would not fire. With none of their heavy artillery, they had been landed with no engineering equipment and had to use the equipment the Japanese engineers had left behind. They had maybe a week's worth of food that was landed with them and less than the full force of the marines had been landed. As luck would have it the Japanese engineers left behind their rations and the marines had to use them to survive.

Malaria was a massive problem for the marines. The Japanese sent their best marines, troops, seamen, ships, airmen and aircraft to take Guadalcanal. And they were beaten back.

At Midway Japan only lost a fraction of their top of the line units. They still had more carriers left.

At the end of Midway the US had two fleet carriers and the Japanese still had more than enough left to pose a massive threat.

 

feder808, I will have to agree Nasor, the only way we could have lost the Battle of Guadalcanal was if we walked away from it.

The Japanese no longer had the ability to protect their Naval Troop and Supply Convoys to Guadalcanal, they had to resort to trying to run in under cover of night, to be caught in daylight would get them sunk.

The U.S. from the beginning won the race to place men, aircraft, supplies and equipment, on the Canal, and then to reinforce, and resupply those forces for the duration of the battle, and because the Japanese had lost 6 carriers they were incapable of preventing the U.S. from interdicting the Japanese supply lines, to the point that the Japanese were reduced to cannibalism to survive.

No Nasor has a valid point, the only way we would have lost the battle was if we had just quit and pulled out of Guadalcanal.

 

Since you are so intent on saying that Midway was a turning point Im gonna be the one to throw the monkey wrench in this silly belief.

A turning point is the precise battle when one side goes from defense to offense and the other goes from offense to defense.

The reason Guadalcanal is by definition the turning point was because it was THE FIRST major US offensive. So that fulfills the first definition that the defending side becomes the offensive.

As a direct result of Guadalcanal Japanese strategy shifted from the offensive to the defensive.

That is literally A FACT.

Thus, it does not matter what you say, the literal meaning of "the turning point of the Pacific war" is when both sides reversed their rolls from offense to defense and visa versa.

At Midway that did not happen, the US was on defense and the Japanese on offense.

At Guadalcanal the US was on offense and the Japanese was on the defense.

By the literal meaning of the term "turning point" Guadalcanal wins the argument because it is the first time in the war that the US had went from being the defender to being the attacker, and the first time the Japanese went from being the defender to being the attacker.

There is literally absolutely no way around that point.

 

It is true, the Japanese were on the offensive all the way up to Guadalcanal.

 

^^^^^^^

Read It.

 

feder808, there are plenty of rounds to your supposition, it is the battle, that creates the situation for that turn around, that is the most critical, simple reason if we had not won at Midway, Japan would still have continued on the offensive, next objective Hawaiian Islands, which would have given them the ability to attack any move we made from the flank or as we would have had to do, take Hawaii head on at the end of a 2551 mile supply line, yes, do a invasion with our nearest supply base 2551 vulnerable miles away, a absolute recipe for disaster.

Have you ever really looked at a map of the Pacific, to the west of Hawaii there are plenty of Islands for the Japanese to establish supply points to feed expansion and to the South West of Hawaii, Islands that with supported of a Japanese main base at Hawaii, capable of interdicting any supply route to Australia and New Zealand, isolating them out of the war, read your map, and it becomes abundantly clear that the Turning Point in the Pacific was Midway, it brought Japanese expansion to a screeching halt, allowed the U.S. to retained Hawaii as a forward supply and operations base, and allowed the supply routes to remain open to keep New Zealand and Australia in the War, from which we were able to launch the Invasion of Guadalcanal, so with out Midway, Guadalcanal never would have happened.

 

They have plenty of ships, an aircraft. Guess what they did with what they had and their captured territory?

 

Buffalo, midway may have brought us to the battle that was the turning point, but by it's very definition midway can never be considered The turning point.

 

Midway was that decisive moment, it was when we went over to the offensive, with out Midway, again Guadalcanal would nevr have happened.

 

Are you high? We were on THE DEFENSIVE at Midway. We were never on the offensive.


Stop it with this bull crap of "without Midway Guadalcanal would nevr have happened", without Pearl Harbor Midway would never have happened, without the American revolution Midway would never have happened, without the British empire none of this would ever have happened. Its a bullcrap argument.

Midway was not a decisive moment and any Pacific war historian worth a damn knows it. We destroyed several times more equipment, 15 times more manpower, and more than twice as many aircraft at Guadalcanal than we did at Midway.

Guadalcanal is by definition the turning point of the Pacific war.