On 2 June, the Pacific Fleet headquarters’ running estimate recorded increasing indications of attacks on Midway and the Aleutians. It also noted a message to forces and stations calling for careful, prompt contact reports. Intelligence had narrowed the uncertainty. It had not removed the need for someone to see the approaching ships and get a useful report through. M19
The same entry acknowledged a weakness in the American search effort: the PBY patrol aircraft was slow and vulnerable when it met opposition. These were the aircraft on which much of the next day’s picture would depend. Their importance did not make their work safe. M19
Ships to the west
On 3 June, a Navy patrol aircraft reported ships far west of Midway. Nimitz’s later action report places an early sighting of eleven ships at about 0900, roughly 700 miles from the island. As more reports arrived, the headquarters estimate described a force of twenty to twenty-three ships screened by destroyers. These were successive reports of an approaching force, not a settled count of everything in the Japanese operation. M01 M19
The force was associated with the approach to occupy Midway. Finding it mattered: ships carrying an invasion towards the island were targets in their own right. But they were not the carrier force on which the coming air battle would depend. Nimitz’s report explicitly states that the main Japanese carrier striking force was not sighted on 3 June. M01
There was an unverified carrier report among the western contacts. That did not establish that a carrier had been found there. In an operation spread across a large area of ocean, knowing that enemy ships were approaching was different from knowing where the most dangerous ships were.
The first attacks
Midway sent Army B-17 bombers against the western force during the afternoon. Nimitz’s report describes nine aircraft making the attack; the running estimate records claims of hits and near misses. Those claims show what headquarters was being told. They are not, by themselves, a confirmed account of Japanese damage. M01 M19
The distinction matters to the story. A reader who accepts every early hit claim can be left with the impression that the approaching fleet was already being dismantled. The documents instead show commanders assembling a picture from incomplete observations while attacks were still in progress.
As evening came, four PBYs were sent out carrying torpedoes. Aircraft used for long-range patrol were now being committed to a night attack. The action report places their contact with the western force between about 0130 and 0200 on 4 June and records that three made attacks. Its estimates of ships hit or sunk remain claims here, pending comparison with the individual aircraft and Japanese ship records. M01
At headquarters, the expectation was that carrier aircraft would attack Midway the next morning. The running estimate’s 3 June entry conveyed the stakes: the next few days might shape the course of the Pacific war. That was a contemporary expression of uncertainty and importance, written before the outcome was known. M19
Aircraft first, then carriers
Before dawn on 4 June, PBYs took off to search again. Nimitz’s report records a sighting at 0545 of many aircraft heading towards Midway. Seven minutes later, another PBY reported two carriers and other ships to the north-west. The sequence brought two kinds of warning: an attack was approaching the island, and carriers had at last been located at sea. M01
These times follow the report’s stated Zone plus 12 convention. The American task-force reports could use Zone plus 10. Putting their clock readings side by side without adjustment would create a false sequence; the original scout messages have not yet been checked against this retrospective summary. M01
The Sixth Defense Battalion’s local chronology records warnings earlier than Nimitz’s summary, including a carrier report at 0537. This discrepancy remains unresolved; the times above describe Nimitz’s account, not an agreed earliest warning across every command. M31
Nor did a report of two carriers establish that only two were present. It was an observation from a particular aircraft at a particular moment. The approaching force still had to be searched, identified and attacked.
The American plan now had something it had lacked through the previous day: a reported carrier position. At the same time, Midway had only a short interval before the incoming aircraft arrived. The next chapter follows the island’s defence and the attacks launched from it.