The Catastrophic Mistake Japan Made Hours Before Midway

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ June 4, 1942. Nagumo has a choice and not enough time to make it correctly. His aircraft are returning from the Midway strike needing to land and rearm. Below deck, a second wave sits loaded with torpedoes — the right weapon for ships. But no American fleet has been confirmed. Then the contact report arrives. Carriers. He orders the torpedo loads switched to land bombs. Then a second report corrects the first. Switch back to torpedoes. The deck crews work frantically, pulling weapons off planes and stacking them loose on the hangar floor instead of sending them back to the magazines. Fueled aircraft, armed aircraft, and unsecured ordnance packed together below deck. When McClusky's dive bombers arrive minutes later from out of the sun, they don't sink three carriers. The carriers sink themselves. Nagumo's own rearming order had turned every hangar deck into a bomb waiting for a spark — and the Dauntlesses provided it.