Midway Research Website

Started by Frederick J Seitz III · 9 · 5 years ago
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    Frederick J Seitz III said 7 years, 2 months ago:

    http://www.midway42.org/

    The above link, is for a website, whose sole purpose is the discussion of, and dissection of all things Midway.

    It is a great place for research and it is free to join, if that interests you.

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    Louis Gardner said 7 years, 2 months ago:

    Thanks for sharing this link with us. I went over there and checked it out. Lots of great information there.

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    Bernard E. Hackett, Jr. said 7 years, 2 months ago:

    Freddie, thanks for the information. An amazing resource, one I was unaware of, 'till you showed us. Thanks for this!

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    Jeff Bailey said 7 years, 1 month ago:

    I can't contribute to this group build except in words but I admire the work being done. The link provided by Mr. Seitz had some very interesting information. It's too bad they didn't compare the F6F to the Zero,but I suspect the performance of the Hellcat would be slightly less than that of the F4U, so no big deal ... especially now, 6 decades later! We've known for ages how good the Zero was against its' foes, but this report's conclusions were very interesting, nonetheless. I've often wondered "What If" regarding the performance of the Zero, the F6F, & the F4U would have been had they been used in Europe against Me109s, FW190s, etc! Someone may correct me if this is incorrect (that those A/C weren't used in the European theater) but It's an interesting thing to ponder.. IMHO

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    Rick Wilkes said 7 years, 1 month ago:

    Particularly for those of you building a TBD, but also for the rest, I highly recommend reading "The Unkown Battle of Midway -- The destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons" by Alvin Kernan. Besides having a Phd in Literature, he was an aviation ordance man assigned to VT-6 aboard USS Enterprise during the Battle of Midway. In the course of his service in WWII he earned the Navy Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross. This book deals with the plight of the US torpedo planes, both from Midway and the carrier. It is an unvarnished look at how the sorry state of American torpedos, tactics and training, combined with bad luck, errors and incompetence led the the debacle at Midway.

    The book is available on Amazon for as little as ~$2.50 for a used hard cover or $9.99 for the Kindle edition.

    I have no connection with the author or Amazon, just the desire to bring a lesser known work on Midway to your attention.

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    Bernard E. Hackett, Jr. said 7 years, 1 month ago:

    Jeff, Hellcats from the USN and the RN were used in the Allied invasion of the South of France. They shot down several Luftwaffe aircraft, no specific details.

    The failure of U S Navy torpedos early in the war is unsurprisingly not well publicized. Our submarines were firing lots of them, for no results. Skippers were being releaved for poor results, and the Bureau in the Navy responsible for the torps kept saying everything was just fine. There's a two volume set on the U. S. Submarine effort by Clay Blair. The first volume has the story of the torpedo problem. There should have been court martials, reliefs, and reductions in rank and retirements. It just got real quiet.

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    G. Ley said 5 years, 6 months ago:

    My uncle flew a "Clunk" during this battle, but would never talk about his experience there. He later became a test pilot, evaluating aircraft like the F4D, F2H, F7U and A-3. He was appointed base commander of Pax River NAS.

    A definitive work on this battle is found in this book.

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    Jeff Bailey said 5 years, 6 months ago:

    VERY interesting, Mr. Ley. Thanks for adding to this.

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    Craig Abrahamson said 5 years, 6 months ago:

    Great reference site...thanks for sharing it.