The Battle of Midway 1942: Told from the Japanese Perspective (1/3)

It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since they were drawn away by a previous attack). It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets, than that they hit their targets. Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: ▶ this video it's great.

> Even with overwhelming superiority during WW2, the US damn near lost their first attempt to invade Japan. > Ditto for Japan attacking Midway, and every other decisive battle. What you're missing here is the fog of war. When decisions are viewed through what information was available to the decision-makers, it paints a far more relatable picture. No one was stupid at Midway. Have a look at this long video going through the battle from the Japanese perspective: ▶ this video

For midway, you might want to watch: ▶ this video > Ineffective dive bombing at Midway? It was the only thing that was effective! Poorly executed would be a better term. They succeeded by almost pure luck. Two different squadrons managed to accidentally attack in different directions at the same time while the Japanese carriers had fully fueled and armed airplanes in their hangars waiting for an opening to launch an attack. Their hit ratio was terrible, but one bomb on a carrier was enough to destroy it given the conditions. > And, what was poor about the navigation at Midway? USS Hornet's Flight to Nowhere. The carrier completely screwed up launching their squadrons and then went in the wrong direction. Their torpedo bomber squadron mutinied and went in a different direction. The torpedo bombers found the Japanese but without any friendly fighters to protect them, all where shot down. All 10 Wildcat fighters ran out of fuel and ditched in the ocean. The other groups aborted to Midway after getting critically low on fuel and not finding any targets. At least four planes lost from the other groups. Blog post: link

The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved: ▶ this video

This youtube series telling the Battle of Midway from Japanese perspective (ie. only using the information available to them)is interesting ▶ this video link link

>, raises a lot of questions about what it means to be human. The relationship between AI and humans is developing and a topic of intense interest, especially among the HN crowd. We're talking about 2 different things: the importance of the topic vs the the method of exposition . You're emphasizing the topic's importance. I'm not disagreeing with that. Instead, I'm explaining that the documentary's style of exposition would be a turnoff to a subset of the HN demographic. As example showing differences in how Battle of Midway can be explained... Here's the "personality-driven" type of history documentary. Scrub the video and you'll see there's a lot of video showing the narrators walking around the beach and flying in helicopters: link To be fair, some viewers need attractive people talking to the camera to make history "interesting". What does an attractive man walking along the beach have to do with explaining strategy and tactics at Midway?!? Nothing. Maybe some viewers need "eye candy" to go along with their medicine of history. Basically, all of The History Channel is structured as personality-driven type of documentaries with a human-interest angle. Compare that to another style of delivery with no video of talking heads but has a voice-over with maps and higher information content: ▶ this video If HN viewers want the 2nd style of documentary for AlphaGo, this thread's url is not it. The importance of "what it means to be human" is orthogonal to the method of explanation.

- Psychologist / Counselor / Professor: Huge impact opportunity. Society is so career and status focused nobody pays attention to emotional needs. There is opportunity help others understand and express the feelings of why they suffer, instead of acting out in indirect/critical, dysfunctional ways, which compounds the problems. That is just benefits that can be attained at ground floor. Please check out Attachment Theory and Schema Therapy: link , link - History professor: Because history rocks. Aside: Montemayor, an independent history documentary maker, has a documentary on The Battle of Midway at ▶ this video . If you would like to support his work he has a Paypal on his channel page! - Flipping houses: Upgrade carpentry from tech level 0 to tech level 3 and get property + credit line