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Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jonathan Parshall, Anthony Tully
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  115 reviews
Sales Rank: 13696
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 568
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.9 x 1.5
ISBN: 1574889249
Dewey Decimal Number: 359
EAN: 9781574889246
ASIN: 1574889249
Publication Date: November 19, 2007
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Product Description
Many consider the Battle of Midway to have turned the tide of the Pacific War. It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement.
Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. The authors examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading WWII naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword will become an indispensable part of any military buff’s library. Winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and cited by Proceedings as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 110 more reviews...
 midway November 23, 2008
Well written from a more neutral prespective. Easy to follow narative. I have this book on my nightstand and find my self reading it when I really should be sleeping. Great Book
Shattered Sword -- Shattered Myths November 23, 2008
I, as with many -- perhaps most -- general readers particularly interested in World War II naval history, assumed there wasn't much earth-shatteringly new I could learn about the Battle of Midway. Having read most of the standard narratives, I tackled "Shattered Storm" expecting to simply gain a more detailed picture of the battle from the Japanese point of view. What I got was detailed to be sure, but rather than merely filling in gaps in my understanding, "Shattered Sword" shattered my neat assumptions of the entire campaign. That is exactly what Parshall and Tully intended.
The authors understood that most readers, from the general military history buff like me, to well-educated military historians, had a well-formed idea of what happened preceding, during and after the conflict, why and how it turned out as it did, and its impact on future campaigns -- indeed on the outcome of the Pacific War as a whole. Much of what we knew about Midway, they came to believe, was essentially based on a lie, subsequently perpetuated by lazy scholarship. They felt that the seminal work on Midway from the Japanese perspective, Fuchida's "Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan" (which I have not read -- yet) was a self-serving attempt to deflect blame, which for a variety of reasons, was ever after accepted at face-value by Western researchers and writers.
I personally believe most "revisionist" history is a close-cousin of UFO exposes and conspiracy theories, little more than whining or axe-grinding. Tully and Parshall avoid this trap. Their argument is that the standard picture of Midway is flawed simply because most writers on the subject simply stuck to the previously written script without doing the obviously difficult work involved in scouring and interpreting the Japanese primary sources. They set about carefully reconstructing the battle from the perspective of what the IJN was in 1942 vs. what the dimming mists of time lead us to think it was.
Approaching "Shattered Sword" felt daunting at first. I'm not a historian or a journalist -- my formal education ended with nursing school. I feared this hefty book might be too dense to wade through, but my fears were unfounded. Tully and Parshall write with a relaxed, easy narrative style, wonderfully free of the cant that so often intimidates general readers. They managed to explain technical details and arcane doctrine in a way that was easy to understand without being patronizing. They did not lose sight of the fact that, under it all, they were telling a story, one where most readers already knew the outcome, and had well-formed ideas of who the "good guys" and "bad guys" were. They managed to keep me riveted, while eliciting a measure of, if not sympathy, then empathy for the other side. They presented the facts to bck up their argument within the context of the narrative, so it flowed smoothly within the framework of their underlying story. In the end, they concisely wrapped up the facts and laid out the reasoning behind the conclusions they drew. They offered up a perspective I had not yet seen, and they articulated some nebulous ideas that had been floating around my understanding of Midway and the Pacific War. The graphics they used to bolster their arguments were clear, pertinent and enlightening.
In summary, I found this book persuasive, clear, well-organized, thoughtful (and thought-provoking), and above all entertaining. While I wouldn't recommend it to a reader with no more than a passing interest in World War II history, or to a reader who doesn't have a basic understanding of the Battle of Midway, I would highly recommend it on so many different levels to anyone with a genuine interest in the history of the war in the Pacific. I would urge those who do select this book to read it with an open mind. Certainly one of the most interesting books on the Pacific war I've yet read. I wish Tully and Parshall would put their collaborative writing/researching skills together again for a fresh look at Midway from the American perspective.
Shattered Sword -- A most complete and interesting account of the Battle of Midway November 19, 2008
A very carefully researched and written account of the events leading up to and during the Battle of Midway from both sides. Reading this book almost puts one back in time and part of the story. This is an exceptional book to read that has a refreshing new perspective on a great story that by many accounts was a complex set events that is explained in a way that no other book has done.
An exhaustive Study of the Battle of Midway October 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully have put together a complete revision of the Battle of Midway. Using many Japanese sources we find out the underlying truth of this battle.
I have not read Mitsuo Fuchida's Midway and I cannot comment on his errors or omissions. However, in reading Shattered Sword, I learned a great deal of the mindset of the Imperial Navy of Japan in 1942. It is a fact that Japan's hubris made for the unexplained lack of professionalism in their actions of their offensive on Midway. Yamamoto's battle plan was flawed, he assumed the Americans were mentally beaten at this point in time.
As pointed out in this book and which is widely known even before the writing of Shattered Sword is that the United States had broken the Japanese code. It is fact that they knew the location of the Japanese attack.
However the battle was not won on this fact alone. What Parshall and Tully have done is to examine the points of the Japanese failures and they were many. They sent out their reconnaissance planes much too late to spot American carrier activities. They also made the cardinal sin of sending out all their planes and leaving their carriers unprotected.
At this time the Japanese were in command and were pushing forward to deal the decisive blow. They indeed failed. Japan in fact seemed to think of themselves as infallible. Even in their training exercises they created predictable scenarios in which their school solutions were indeed winners.
In fact Midway never became the ultimate solution. As Midway faded into American victory, the sun was beginning to set on the land of the rising sun.
As Parshall and Tully concluded, in reality even if America did lose Midway, it would have been unlikely that Japan would have prevailed. In conclusion the industrial might of America would have won out. All destroyed carriers and planes would have been replaced. America's fate was indeed to win the war in the Pacific. That was obvious to a real student of history even on December 7, 1941.
Great read, thoroughly researched with great photographs and diagrams. Five Stars, no problem!!
The Most Thoroughly Researched History I've Ever Read! July 6, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully is simply breathtaking, the most thoroughly researched and lucidly thought out history of an event that I have ever read. Setting out to tell the story of Midway primarily from the Japanese side they have created the new standard of that crucial battle in the dark days of 1942 that shines as an example of scholarly effort without parallel.
First these authors clearly did their homework, and to say that they explore the battle in the utmost would be an understatement. Setting the stage for the battle with germane explanations of the geopolitical, then strategic, and then operational backdrops that led up to 4-5 June 1942 the authors then delve into the battle wielding an awesome array of salient information ranging from the psychological makeup of the senior Japanese commanders on the scene, to Japanese naval doctrine of the time, to the naval architecture of the four Japanese flat tops, to how many bomb carts each carrier had (and are thus able to derive such details as the quickest possible practical TIME, down to the minute, it could have taken to re-arm waiting dive bombers and torpedo planes in the hangar bay) to even the names of individual Japanese pilots in the CAP and when they were launched. What emerges is a picture of the battle in toto, grounded in a thorough understanding of the pacific campaign and the entire war itself, aided by a completely fresh and unbiased look (which subsequently shatters many myths about the battle) and delivers not just the most accurate picture of what happened and why during the fighting, but also what it meant in the larger scheme of how the rest of the war was fought and ultimately won (or lost by the Japanese). This is truly the stuff history is supposed to be about.
What is better yet is that the book, in a surprising cut against the grain for pieces written by more than one author, reads both like an erudite intellectual analysis and Tom Clancy-esque action thriller. Throughout the book you are taken from the strategic and coolly logical minds of senior commanders, to white knuckle seventy degree dives in the cockpits of cascading American SBD's flying through walls of flak and marauding Japanese zeros. Later you are privy to the acts of desperate survival of Japanese engineers sweating in the asphyxiating air of the engine rooms in their carriers as the ceilings above them start literally glowing red from the heat of uncontrollable fires ravaging above and blocking their only route of possible escape.
After setting the stage of the history of the Japanese naval war in the Pacific up until the time of the battle and explaining the strategies, doctrines, and technical features (i.e. carrier air wing make up, command organizations, etc.) of both the American and Japanese navies the authors place you onboard the ships of the Kido Butai for a minute by minute account. This in depth and detailed account takes you from the moment they sortie from Hashirajima bay to their ignominous retreat mere weeks later. The writing is crisp, fast paced, and clear, conveying information, tension, emotion, and action all at the same time without compromising any of those features. Told primarily from the Japanese side it is taut and disciplined, delivering information to the readers as it came in real time to Nagumo and the staff of the Kido Butai on the cramped bridge of the Akagi and under fire, instead of giving the reader a truly "God's Eye View" of the battle. There is just enough delving into the worlds and actions of Nimitz in Pearl Harbor, Flether onboard the Yorktown, Spruance onboard the Enterprise, and several other American forces to give appropriate context and understanding, but the reader is basically experiencing what the Japanese commanders were going through. This allows the reader to truly appreciate the Clausewitzian "friction" that plagues any battle, and to understand the decisions the commanders made at the time. After the fact everything is tied together by the authors to deliver a true picture of exactly what happened each minute of the battle. The scope of the battle and the author's telling of it is enormous, covering not just the more familiar strike on Midway istelf and ensuring carrier duel, but the ordeal of survivors from each carrier as they attempted, futilely, to save their ships then abandoned them, to the harried Japanese retreat and the less familiar American attacks on the Mogami and Mikuma which ultimately led to the latter's destruction.
The book sets the record straight on many things, of which I cannot mention all. When the American dauntlesses rained down upon the Japanese carriers at 1020 however it is clear that their decks were NOT full of a strike package just moments from launching to crush TF 17, this was a myth that was propagated by Mitsuo Fuchida after the war's end for self serving purposes as well as dramatic flair. VT-8's heroic and fatally doomed torpedo attack did not draw down the Japanese CAP, instead it was just one of a series of hurried and poorly organized American attacks that virtuously threw the Japanese into confusion and left them reacting to conditions rather than shaping them. The Americans were not so outmatched as is commonly believed, but still won a glorious victory ableit against a deeply flawed plan developed by the actually bullying and overbearing Yamamoto (who was restricted from leaving Kure Naval Harbor while in Japan to visit Naval General HQ in Tokyo on fear that other resentful officers there would literally kill him.)
The lessons the authors draw from this battle are applicable even today. The Japanese primarily lost the battle, and the entire war for that matter (although for the entire war the relative industrial might of the US played a far more important role than it obviously could have in this single, early on confrontation), due to an operational rigidity born of national culture and character. This rigidity left it unable to correctly learn lessons from its past operations, anticipate future operations as well as enemy capabilities and reactions to such, and, most critically, to adapt to real world circumstances when their overly elaborate plans inevitably began to unravel against determined and unpredicted enemy actions. (The Japanese expected to face a cowed, fearful, and largely reactionary and passive US Navy at Midway, and not the aggressive and ably commanded force that Nimitz actually sortied to meet them and that guided itself on the flexible principle of calculated risk rather than dogmatic devotion to operational planning.)
I simply can not say enough good about this book. It is useful to anyone with an interest in history as an example of the heights that that discipline can reach and the edifying fruits it can bear when practiced properly, to those in the military who seek a better understanding of how war actually is fought and can be fought best, to someone who wants to read about a real world battle written with the excitement and drama of a great fiction author.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
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