A fake water shortage confirms Japan's target, and its fleet
What happened
US Navy cryptanalysts had partially broken Japan's naval code and knew an attack was coming on a location codenamed AF, but not for certain where AF was. To confirm it, the base at Midway deliberately broadcast an uncoded message claiming it was short of fresh water; when Japanese radio traffic soon repeated that Midway was low on water, American codebreakers had their answer, along with the attack's date. Forewarned, US carrier aircraft caught Japan's fleet carriers still rearming after their opening strike on Midway's airfields and sank three of them, Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, within minutes of each other; the fourth, Hiryu, was found and sunk hours later. Japan lost around 3,057 men and all four carriers; the United States lost about 362 men, one carrier, and one destroyer.
Why it matters
Midway reversed, in a single afternoon, the string of Japanese victories that had followed Pearl Harbor, destroying four of the six fleet carriers that had launched that attack and permanently shifting naval initiative in the Pacific to the United States, which then began the slow, years-long push back across the ocean.
How we know
The false water-shortage signal and Japan's intercepted response are documented in declassified US Navy signals-intelligence records, and the loss of all four Japanese carriers is independently confirmed by postwar Imperial Japanese Navy action reports.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. The Battle of Midway · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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