This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Katherine Tindell-Family
to remember
Beltz, Richard Norman, Y3c.
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Contact Info
Home Town Buxton, ND
Last Address Fulda, MN
Date of Passing Jan 20, 2009
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Richard Beltz was born the son of Maurice & Annette Combs Beltz. He grew up in Buxton, and graduated from high school in 1935. He earned a B.A. degree from MayvilleStateTeachers College, Mayville, ND, in 1940. Richard taught business classes at the high school at White Lake, SD for one and one-half years before enlisting in the US Navy in 1942, as a Yeoman. He was honorably discharged in 1945. He continued his education at the University of Denver, and earned a MBA degree in 1947.
On June 23, 1950, Helen Olson and Richard, both of Buxton were united in marriage. They moved to Granby, CO where Richard was Superintendent of a large county school. In 1957 the family moved to Fulda, MN where Richard taught Business Education for 22 years. He retired in 1979.
Other Comments:
Service number: 6482344
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.
