WRITER CRITICAL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 6, 18 September 1942, Page 3

WRITER CRITICAL

PLANE LOSSES AT MIDWAY

LACK OF CO-OPERATION

Mr Hansen Baldwin-, military correspondent of the New York Times says that while the Battle ol' Midway Island was perhaps the greatest single naval victory of the war, the Navy Department communique and supplementary material regarding it are not "the candid documents that the great victory deserves." Mr Baldwin estimates United States aircraft losses in the battle at between 60 and I' 2.">, ;md ascribes them partly to lack of tactical coordination between torpedo-c arri er s, dive bombers and fighters, that marked the Coral Sea battle, and partly to the superior manocuvability and. climbing speed of the Japanese Zeros. It was the Navy's carrier-based aircraft that broke the back of the Japanese l assault on Midway Island, rather than the Army's high-altitude bombers, he says. This especially applied to the torpedo-carriers, of which the Navy probably sent up 70. Mr Baldwin considers that the annihilation of the whole Japanese armada might have been achieved if the surface craft had been able to close in. He believes, also that the American warships may have been -too long at sea, and were short ol' fuel. "Though the Midway Island battle tended to equalise the naval balance of power in the Pacific, it did not confer upon us the advantage of the Strategic inUjaUve," lie adds.