A sucker punch with many moving parts, the Japanese plan for June 1942 aimed simultaneously at Midway Island in the South Pacific and at the Aleutians in the North Pacific. The Japanese hoped to ambush the American carrier fleet at Midway, and they wanted a foothold in the Aleutians. In Alaska they would occupy Kiska and Attu and, at the same time, destroy the heart of the American defense at Dutch Harbor.
The success of the sucker punch depended on surprising the Americans, but that wouldn’t happen. On May 15 a team of crypto analysts at Pearl Harbor had broken the Japanese naval code and American intelligence knew at least the outline of the Japanese plan. The American Navy wouldn’t fall blindly into Yamamoto’s ambush at Midway, and American commanders had a little bit of time to organize a defense in the Aleutians.
The Japanese dispatched two naval forces to assault the Aleutians. First, a carrier group, the brand-new carrier Junyo, the somewhat older Ryujo, two heavy cruisers, three destroyers and an oiler would bomb Dutch Harbor. Second, three troop transports surrounded by three cruisers, nine destroyers, and a screen of submarines would deliver 2500 soldiers to occupy Kiska and Attu.
Anticipating the sucker punch, Admiral Nimitz dispatched the bulk of his limited resources to Midway. To defend the Aleutians, he dispatched Rear Admiral Robert Theobald north with a token force of nine ships and instructions that amounted to ‘do your best with what you can scare up’.
American folklore offers a hoary bit of advice about the wisdom of bringing a knife to a gunfight that applies to Theobald’s mission. The Japanese were bringing carriers to the fight; Theobald was not. Luckily, in the Aleutians Mother Nature had Theobald’s back.
Peaks of a submerged mountain range, the Aleutian Islands traverse the coldest, most turbulent portion of the North Pacific. Thick fog shrouds the treeless islands all but constantly, and “williwaws”—gale force winds up to 80 miles an hour–come and go frequently and unpredictably.
Both sides discovered in June that in the Aleutians men fight Mother nature first and each other second.