The aircraft returning from Midway brought Nagumo an unwelcome assessment: the island required another attack. Preparations for that task were under way when reconnaissance began to reveal American ships at sea. The carrier force now had to prepare for a different kind of target while recovering its first strike and defending itself against attacks from the island. M14
The danger did not arrive as a complete picture of the American fleet. It emerged through successive reports, questions and revised identifications.
Ships first, a carrier later
The Japanese report identifies Tone’s number-four search aircraft as the source of the first contact with a group of American ships. Its initial message gave a number of vessels, position, course and speed without identifying a carrier. Later reporting described cruisers and destroyers. Only afterwards did the aircraft report what appeared to be a carrier towards the rear of the formation. Those were developing identifications, not a reliable inventory of the American force. M14 M39
The surviving report does not provide one seamless chronology. Its narrative places the initial report around 0500, quoting a message timed 0428. The chronological table instead enters the contact at 0428 and records an order to prepare to attack the enemy fleet at 0437. Both are Japanese report times; they are not the American local clock used in the previous chapter. These entries cannot establish a precise transmission delay without further evidence. M14 M39
The broad sequence is clearer than every minute within it. Nagumo first had news of ships, then more specific information about their types, and finally a report indicating a carrier. Recognition of that threat came after preparations for a second island attack had begun. M14
Changing the target changed the work
The standby attack aircraft were not a single, instantly interchangeable reserve. The report records an order to replace torpedoes with land bombs for another strike against Midway. Its chronological table subsequently orders preparation for an attack on the enemy fleet and retention of torpedoes that had not yet been removed. The changing orders affected work already in progress. M14 M39
Nagumo also had the returning Midway aircraft to recover. The narrative explains his decision to take them aboard and then launch a fuller attack against the American force. It gives projected readiness times for different groups: aircraft still being rearmed and aircraft that would have to land and prepare again. Those forecasts are not evidence that a complete strike was already on deck, moments from taking off. M14 M06
The chronological table places recovery work beside incoming attack warnings and fighter operations. Flight-deck work took place during a battle, with aircraft needed for several purposes at once. This makes the choice more demanding than a simple order to change weapons, but it does not prove that every alternative was impossible. M39
Spruance commits his aircraft
The Americans also acted on a partial picture. Spruance’s Task Force 16 report describes launching from Enterprise and Hornet after receiving a carrier contact. He expected the Japanese to continue towards Midway while recovering and preparing aircraft. Striking before another Japanese launch offered a chance both to protect the island and to reduce the danger to his own force. M43
The launch took time. Fighters for protection, bombers, torpedo aircraft and escorts had to get airborne; Spruance records approximately an hour for the process. His attack plan then depended on a forecast of where the enemy would be. The Japanese turn north upset that expectation and complicated the search by his dive bombers. M43
Spruance also acknowledged that he did not yet know of all four Japanese carriers when launching. His report uses a clock two hours ahead of Midway’s, another reason not to combine its times unmarked with the island reports. M43
Keeping something back
Yorktown, with Fletcher’s Task Force 17, had sent ten scout bombers on a dawn search to guard against undiscovered carriers. They returned without finding another force. The ship then prepared its strike, but retained seventeen scout bombers because additional Japanese carriers might still need to be found and attacked. M04
That reserve reduced the aircraft committed to the known target while preserving a response to an unknown one. Yorktown’s report expressly warns that its account was reconstructed from officers’ memories and that some times may be wrong; its broad explanation is firmer ground than a finely synchronised launch timetable. M04
Both sides had found enough to act, without finding everything they needed to know. The next phase would test their decisions in the air: whether the attacking groups could locate the carriers, arrive together and get through their defences.