Return To Midway

by Rick Archbold, Robert D. Ballard, Ken Marschall (Illustrations)

Provides an account of the 1942 battle of Midway and the high-tech hunt for the lost ships fifty-six years later.

Genres: History, World War II, War, Military Fiction, Military History, Historical, Nonfiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book - Robert Ballard interweaves a vivid retelling of the Battle of Midway, a turning point in World War II in the Pacific, with a nuts-and-bolts narration of a voyage of exploration organized jointly by the U.S. Navy, the National Geographic Society, and academics from several universities. The trip is aboard a specialized Navy ship that is normally used to collect topographical data and map the floors of oceans. For this trip, they're trying to find the wrecks of the ships that were sunken in that battle: on the U.S. side the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and the destroyer USS Hammann, and on the Japanese side the four large aircraft carriers Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu. Also aboard for this trip are four veterans of that battle. A pair of Americans were among the crew of the Yorktown, and two Japanese fliers that had been assigned on the Kaga are along. For all four, their emotional reasons for making this trip, and the ways it has its impact on them, are complex.
Beautifully illustrated with period and present-day photos and paintings.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

After watching the movie, “Midway” this was a quick primer to check the accuracy of the movie. Yes, the movie is true to the facts of the battle. The battle of Midway was won through incredible bravery and and a few fortunate turns of good luck.

[Jbussen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half of the book is the history of the battle and includes perspectives from participants. And of course there is Ballard's sections. Interesting. Not groundbreaking but it is what you think it will be.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great historical story complete with great underwater pictures. Again Ballard shows to be the best.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The cover of this book drew me in and, after reading about Ballard's discovery of the Titanic and other ship's wrecks, I knew it would be interesting.

I didn't know much about the Battle of Midway before reading this. I'd heard about it, but that was it. The book presents a detailed account of the battle and the ships involved. Ballard brings two American and two Japanese veterans with him to search for the ships involved, two American and four Japanese. I thought it was great that the veteran's were able to accompany Ballard on this expedition and that they got along.

Most of the book focuses on telling what happened during the battle and looking for the ship is written in updates that are like journal entries. Given the amount of time that they had and the amount of technical issues with their surveillance robot, they didn't have time to find all of the ships. They did find the USS Yorktown though and that's the one that's featured on the cover.

For being at the bottom of the ocean, I was surprised at how well the ship had held up. It was in one piece, you could still read the name and numbers painted on it and the guns looked like they were ready to fire. It was eerie and amazing at the same time.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes reading about history, war and shipwrecks.

[Eli Panagap.]

i thought this book was cool because i could understand the history behind it and the battle or bombing per say at pearl harbor. the cool thing that i liked about this book was the fact that it wasn't a book during the time of the attack but the aftermath and the exploration of history though artifacts. i got to see that through the study of past we see that history is very much uniform through out and by studying artifacts we get a better understanding on the events that occurred. through the book we see Yorktown and all its glamor and we can feel the tragic event that occurred through its descriptive writing.

[Kenno82 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most coffee table books, the structure prevents this from being a page turner with all of its breakout sections and imagery. At times, it feels like the book has been thrown together in a pretty haphazard fashion - many of the maps are unclear, and the exploration component of the book reads like a blog post. However, as someone who knew nothing about the Battle of Midway, the book still provided me with an accessible overview of what took place.

[Russ Bingaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other than there were a lot of descussions concerning the WWII veterans aboard Mr. Ballard's research vessel and there should have been more pages spent on Ballard's efforts to find the wreakage this was an okay book.

[Norbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hoped in more photos (there are a couple of dozens from Yorktown), but it's nice all the same.