84 years ago today, a pilot running out of fuel made a decision that won the Pacific War. Most Americans have never heard his name.
June 4, 1942. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's navy is undefeated. Four of the carriers that burned Pearl, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, are steaming toward Midway to finish off the US Pacific Fleet.
At 7:52 AM, Wade McClusky launches from USS Enterprise leading 32 Dauntless dive bombers. Here's the detail nobody mentions: McClusky is a fighter pilot. He'd been given the air group weeks earlier and had barely flown a dive bomber in combat. Now he's leading every SBD the Enterprise has at the most important target in the Pacific.
9:20 AM. He arrives at the intercept point where the Japanese fleet is supposed to be.
Empty ocean. Nothing for miles.
The Japanese had turned. Nobody knew where. And now McClusky owns the worst math problem in naval aviation: his fuel is bleeding away, and every minute he keeps searching, he condemns more of his own pilots to ditch in open water where nobody will find them.
Doctrine is clear. Turn back.
McClusky keeps going. He works a search pattern, squeezing miles out of dying fuel tanks.
9:55 AM. Far below, a single Japanese destroyer is cutting a white scar across the ocean at flank speed. It's the Arashi, racing to rejoin the fleet after depth-charging the American submarine Nautilus. Think about that. A failed sub attack is about to give away the entire Japanese navy.
McClusky reads the wake like an arrow and follows it.
10:02 AM. The horizon fills with the entire Japanese strike force. Four carriers, their decks crammed with planes being refueled and rearmed. Fuel lines snaking everywhere. Bombs stacked in the open.
And here's the miracle: the sky above them is empty. Minutes earlier, American torpedo squadrons had attacked at sea level and been annihilated. Torpedo 8 lost all 15 planes. One survivor, Ensign George Gay, watched what came next while hiding under his seat cushion in the water. Those doomed pilots dragged every Japanese fighter down to the waves. The door upstairs was wide open.
10:22 AM. McClusky pushes over from 14,500 feet. Both squadrons follow him down onto Kaga. It's actually a mistake, doctrine said split the targets, but Lt. Dick Best catches it mid-dive, pulls out with two wingmen, and goes after Akagi alone. His single bomb pierces the flight deck into the packed hangar. It's enough.
By 10:28, Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, the third hit simultaneously by Yorktown's bombers, are floating infernos. Six minutes. Three carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, gone. Hiryu follows them to the bottom that evening.
The cost of McClusky's gamble was real. Many Enterprise bombers never made it home, some shot down, others swallowed by the sea when their tanks ran dry. McClusky himself was jumped by two Zeros on the way out, took five bullets through his shoulder, and still flew his shot-up Dauntless back to the Enterprise.
Admiral Nimitz said McClusky's decision "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway." Japan never won another major battle.
One borrowed pilot. One destroyer's wake. One choice to keep flying when every gauge said go home.
Brett Scrogham was murdered in a parking garage on May 28th.
Police confirm they had camera footage and eyewitnesses heard a shot and saw a man running.
THEY DID NOT RELEASE A DESCRIPTION OF THE KILLER
An arrest was made on June 3rd.
SIX DAYS LATER
For 6 days a murderer was free on our streets while police refused to provide a description of the suspect.
I wonder why they refused to reveal details…
The suspect could have kiIIed more unsuspecting people and could potentially have been found sooner.
The police chief is of course a DEI hire who was celebrated as the first lesbian woman to hold the position.
@bullfrog35 I will wrap up this thread for now.
But make no mistake:
Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood.
CAIR is Muslim Brotherhood.
CAIR is financed by foreign organizations.
CAIR is deep in the machine of DC politics.
The Democratic party has a foreign operative problem.
I told Senator Sheldon WhiteClub today that I won’t be listening to or caring about any of his lessons on morality knowing that he joined an all-white Rhode Island Country Club.
I’m also done with the likes of AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry, and the rest of the lying cabal that make stupid climate predictions, plunder tens of billions of tax dollars, enrich their well-connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy.
Climate alarmist AOC wants to be taken seriously while also insisting the world is imminently about to end due to climate change (Just under 5 years remain on her nutty Jan 2019 prediction that only 12 years of life are left on Earth).
Al Gore is now speaking publicly about his concern with global freezing after decades of grift talking about global warming. “Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro,” said Gore in 2006 (There’s still snow on Kilimanjaro year-round). Gore also predicted in 2009 ice-free Arctic summers within 5-7 years.
John Kerry warned in 2009 that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.
These people are dishonest, power-hungry hacks.
The GREEN NEW SCAM is DEAD!!!
🚨 HOLY SMOKES: U.S. JUST FLIPPED THE STRAIT— AND LOCKED IRAN OUT 🚨
“ZERO Iranian ships through… while global traffic MOVES AGAIN 🚢
DON’T FOLLOW ORDERS? SEALs ready to BOARD. F-35s overhead. 10,000 troops deployed 💣
Iran’s oil? CHOKED OFF. Economy? ON EDGE 📉… Even CHINA’S SWEATING 🔥
AMERICA CONTROLS THE WORLD’S OIL FLOW NOW 🇺🇸🔥
Serious question, what is the target audience you are trying to reach with this post?
Do you honestly think that there exists anyone who will see this post, who hasn't seen your Disney bubble wand picture?
Or, even worse, do you think we'll just forget you skipped town during a DHS shutdown for Disneyworld, and clap like seals because you're shooting skeet?
How stupid are you, and how much more stupid do you think we are?
Hello Brad Duplessis,
You pre-emptively blocked me here on 𝕏, so I am forced to make this "Hello" a standalone post.
You are a retired Army infantry officer. You served in Iraq and Afghanistan. You graduated from the National War College in 2018. You are now an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Thank you for your service.
But reputations are not defined by resumes. They are defined by choices.
Today, you chose to doxx @CynicalPublius.
Today, you published your debut article on War on the Rocks. You published his legal name. His profession. His pseudonym. All in one sentence. Indexed, archived, permanently searchable.
You have changed the course of his life forever, and revealed him to the leftist ghouls who will demand his blood for forever. It doesn't matter if he was planning to reveal his identity eventually. You still made that choice. And I will make sure you are remembered for this.
So, what was CP's sin such that you saw it fit to throw him to the wolves?
Last month, he dared to write an article for American Greatness, centered around nine recommendations for War College reform. The recommendations included firing most civilian faculty and ending permanent military faculty positions.
You hold a permanent civilian faculty position at a War College. You did not mention this in your article.
In short, you named him, exposed his life to danger, because you really are arguing for your job and self-preservation.
Know what is the most disgusting, hypocritical part of this is?
In the Fall 2017 issue of eARMOR (the U.S. Army Armor Branch professional journal) you published an article. You titled it "Our Readiness Problem: Brigade Combat Team Lethality." You opened with General Milley: "Our fundamental task is like no other — it is to win in the unforgiving crucible of ground combat." Your thesis: "If we are to get after GEN Milley's No. 1 priority, we must first address brigade combat team (BCT) lethality." The word "lethality" appears in your article about fifty times. You meant it as a compliment.
Now contrast to today's piece. You wrote this: "In staking out this Huntingtonian position, the cult of lethality does a disservice to service members and the American people."
The same word. Nine years apart. You were a field commander then, and lethality was the mission. You are a faculty member now, and lethality is what your critics embarrassingly worship.
Frankly - and you will never realize this - but you yourself are the living, walking example of the thesis which @PeteHegseth is proving.
Also, you named a section of today's article after Colin Powell. You called him your model of what War College education produces. Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, and publicly called Donald Trump "dangerous for our democracy." Powell, who infamously tipped the scales at the UN to start the Iraq war even after privately doubting the WMD intelligence, is your hero in an article about who gets to reform the military in 2026.
In addition to being a doxxer, you look a lot less like someone who's defending institutions, and a lot more like someone who exemplifies institutional capture in the name of self-preservation. And you disclosed none of it.
Let me reiterate.
@CynicalPublius wrote under a pseudonym and identified himself as a retired Army colonel with Afghanistan and Iraq experience. He argued about curriculum policy. You responded by putting his name on the internet.
Your career depends on the institutions you are defending. Your article defending those institutions is the same article that ended his anonymity.
You taught your students about the instruments of national power, Professor Duplessis. You are now a living, breathing demonstration one of them. And why reform must happen.
The song Bad Bunny performed tonight to open the halftime show was called “my aunt asked me”
It’s a song about how his aunt asked him why he has so many girlfriends. He says he wants to bring all of his girlfriends to the VIP section of the club.
You’ll notice the set he performed on was decorated with EBT signs and women who looked like hookers.
Because that’s what we need more of in America right? More people who don’t speak English having promiscuous relationships with multiple women and having kids they can’t afford to raise?
How about we encourage people to be in committed relationships and have one partner?
We wouldn’t need signs that said EBT accepted here and we wouldn’t need to integrate ESL programs in our schools if we stopped encouraging foreigners to have multiple baby Mommas and baby daddies which means more kids in broken homes that only become a massive burden to US taxpayers and the US education system since they don’t speak English.
Some people call it “entertainment”.
I call it the great replacement.