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Bobby Holmes, II-Family
to remember
Barnes, Doyle Clayton, ENS.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Bomeville
Last Address San Diego, CA
Casualty Date Aug 24, 1942
Cause MIA-Finding of Death
Reason Air Loss, Crash - Sea
Location Pacific
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Manila American Cemetery - Taguig City, Philippines
Central Pacific Campaign (1941-43)/Battle of Midway
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
June / 1942
Description The Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater of Operations was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy (USN), under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo on Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions.Most significantly, American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses, while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
June / 1942
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories [edit] Battle of Midway Main article: Battle of Midway
Yorktown in drydock shortly before the Battle of MidwayArmed with this intelligence Admiral Nimitz began methodically planning Midway's defense, rushing all possible reinforcement in the way of men, planes and guns to Midway. In addition, he began gathering his naval forces - comparatively meager as they were - to meet the enemy at sea. As part of those preparations, he recalled TF16, Enterprise and Hornet (CV-8), to Pearl Harbor for a quick replenishment.
Yorktown, too, received orders to return to Hawaii; and she arrived at Pearl Harbor on 27 May. Performing a seeming miracle, yard workers there - laboring around the clock - made enough repairs to enable the ship to put to sea. The repairs were made in such a short time that the Japanese Naval Commanders thought they had mistaken Yorktown for another vessel as they thought she had been sunk after the previous battle, yet she had returned to fight another day. Her air group - for the most part experienced but weary - was augmented by planes and crews from USS Saratoga (CV-3) which was then headed for Hawaiian waters after her modernization on the West Coast. Ready for battle, Yorktown sailed as the core of TF17 on 30 May.
Northeast of Midway, Yorktown, flying Rear Admiral Fletcher's flag, rendezvoused with TF16 under Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and maintained a position 10 miles (16 km) to the northward of him.
Patrols, both from Midway itself and from the carriers, proceeded apace during those days in early June. On the morning of the 4th as dawn began to streak the eastern sky, Yorktown launched a 10-plane group of Dauntlesses from VB-5 which searched a northern semicircle for a distance of 100 miles (160 km) out but found nothing.
Meanwhile, PBYs flying from Midway had sighted the approaching Japanese and broadcast the alarm for the American forces defending the key atoll. Admiral Fletcher, in tactical command, ordered Admiral Spruance's TF16 to locate the enemy carrier force and strike them as soon as they were found.
