Wake Island Significance

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The battle of Wake Island was the most significant battle of World War Two. It was the most significant for the following reasons. It was a fight between Japan's Navy and the United States that led to an important turning point between both of them. The battle was over an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean named Midway island, the battle took place six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on June 7, 1942. Lastly, due to the fact the United States was up against a fleet that was close to twice their size but still ended with victory made the battle even more significant.
Before attacking the Island Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto wanted to destroy the American fleet all together, he planned on confusing the United States navy into thinking …show more content…

But not all went to plan, American fleet admiral, Chester W. Nimitz, led his airforce to where the Japanese ships were meant to be, when he seen nothing decided to keep his air forces going farther which was risky due to the fact they might not make it back to the carriers with the little fuel they had left. As soon as Nimitz was about to tell his fleet to turn around he spotted a submarine in the water, realizing it was Japan's he decided to secretly follow it hoping it would lead him to the rest of the Japanese fleet. Following Japan’s submarine direction, they ended up head back with the United States Navy Carriers ready to fight. With the United States now being able to see japanese ships they sent out a first attack on ‘Akagi’, causing fuel to ignite and then detonating its torpedoes on the ship ending with ‘Akagi’ destroyed, then a second attack came to Japan's other ship ‘Kaga’, this ended with the same result of ‘Akagi’. Soon after these two attacks, ‘Soryu’ was attacked but only hit with three bombs but still leading it to sink and have Japan's navy abandon it. Where Japan lost three ships at this time American only lost one, ‘Yorktown’ which was already damaged and had been recently fixed to the best of engineers ability after the first bombing of Japan at Pearl Harbor. This left one ship left of Japan, the ‘Hiryu, but sadly the ship was found and ended with