In April 1942, the US learned that Japan planned to invade Midway Island and, in doing so, hoped to lure the battered American fleet into battle so they could finish it off. Instead, planes from American aircraft carriers found and sank four Japanese carriers. The crushing defeat marked the end of Japan’s expansion in the Western Pacific. Prange’s other major contribution to the literature on the Pacific War is the wide-ranging study Miracle at Midway (by Gordon Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, McGraw-Hill, 1982). Once again, the question that interests the authors is why it happened: The answer they offer is good intelligence work, courage, highly trained pilots, and luck.
