Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway

A very detailed review on the Battle of Midway, using both Japanese and American sources. The best book I've read on the battle.

"Shattered Sword" is a worthy companion to John Lundstrom's "First Team" epics, which is as high a compliment as can be paid to any book dealing with the Pacific war. "Shattered Sword" puts to bed numerous inaccuracies concerning the battle. Perhaps more significantly, it offers a searching critique of Midway's importance while not denigrating in any way the sacrifices and heroism of the participants on both sides.

My sole criticism is so minor that it's verging on the churlish to raise it, but as an expatriate American who's now lived longer in Australia than in the U.S., I feel it's fair comment. "Northern Australia" was not threatened by the Japanese in 1942 so much as eastern or north-eastern Australia, particularly the east coast of Queensland. A cursory glance at a map of Australia will establish that.

My guess is that more Aussies know about Coral Sea than about Midway, because that battle countered what many people at the time conceived as a direct threat to Australia. It's also true that the result of Coral Sea profoundly influenced Midway. Imagine if Yorktown had been sunk!

I hope "Shattered Sword" will attract a wide audience in Australia. The book is aptly titled. Coral Sea blunted the sword pointed at this country, but Midway well and truly shattered it.

I've little to add to the other reviews other than "read this book." I wish it contained a bit more detail on the American side of things, but other books well cover that whereas no one has done a better job of giving the Japanese side of events than Shattered Sword.

Excellent book presenting some interesting and revealing new perspectives on the Battle of Midway and why certain things happened the way they did. An easy read. Highly recommended.

I'd also recommend the book "And I Was There" by Layton et all. This book gives some real insight into the breaking of the Japanese naval intelligence code which provided Nimitz with the whereall to plan the ambush for the Battle of Midway. In addition it also reveals how the political games at the highest levels in Washington (by certain Admirals in the Navy Dept as well as the Roosevelt Administration) affected the entire war in the Pacific. Mind boggling reading! Makes you want to try some of those [...], who made decisions based on furthering their own personal political agendas which in the end caused men to die and US ships to be sunk as a result. Written by a person who was there from the attack on Pearl Harbor until the surrender of the Japanese on the USS Missouri!

Although in the end the new findings of the book do not alter the basic facts and views accepted by serious researchers and readers of the battle, it is an essential book to properly many details, specially of the Japanese air operations, that have been ignored or distorted in almost all the previous literature. The level and quality of the research is great. This book is no cut-and-paste of earlier works, and is a mandatory reading for those who have only been left with the traditional literature on the battle published until the 70's like Fuchida's Midway: the battle that doomed Japan. I also like many of the opinions on the Japanese admirals, that challenge many myths.

Also, I strongly suggest to complete your bibliography about this engagement with Smith's Midway: Dauntless victory which perhaps is my favourite book on this battle.