The Pittsburgh Press (January 18, 1947)
Editorial: The Army-Navy ‘game’
A wide variance in the Navy and Army Air Force versions of the Battle of Midway, in June 1942, is reported by the Army and Navy Journal.
The Navy version: “During the battle, carrier-based dive bombers made 191 sorties obtaining 32 hits, 15 of which were the principal factors in the destruction of the First (Japanese) Air Fleet Carrier Force while the remainder sank the Mikuma and damaged the Mogami and Arashto. Although the B-17s of the Seventh (Army) Air Force based at Midway made 62 sorties for horizontal bombing attacks, testimony of Japanese survivors indicates that no hits were scored by this means.”
The AAF report: “The B-17s flew 55 sorties at altitudes of from 3,500 to 25,000 feet… Scored 22 direct hits, six probable hits and 46 near misses… Four B-26s dropped one aerial torpedo apiece and made three hits on two carriers.”
Also in the Navy report: “A flight of B-17s reported sinking a ‘cruiser’ by an attack delivered from over 10,000 feet; in fact, the ‘cruiser’ was a United States submarine which hastily submerged when the first bombs fell off her bow.”
The extraordinary conflicts in these reports, now going into the archives, indicate that little if any effort had been made to reconcile the rival estimates of the battle for the benefit of future planning, although that presumably
There isn’t anything funny about bombing one of our own vessels particularly to the lads aboard the mistaken target, if indeed that happened. And it is disturbing to know that 18 months after Pearl Harbor, the old Army-Navy “game” was going into extra innings, the lessons of that debacle.
Such situations as this argue loudly for unification of the armed forces, as now, finally, agreed upon by the heads of the Army and Navy under patient pressure from President Truman.
This is additional proof of the urgent need for a single department with this slogan: One country, one team, one purpose, all for one and one for all.