15 Minutes Changed the World

A Tribute to The Battle of Midway from Scylla & Charybdis:

The first week of June is crammed full of historic military anniversaries. We commemorate the Allied D-Day assault against the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. The Israeli-Arab 6-Day War began on June 5, 1967. Israeli jet pilots destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981. The Marshall Plan was introduced as a Cold War defense, on June 5, 1947.

Yet a US Navy battle this same week, just 6 months after Pearl Harbor and a full 2 years before D-Day, goes largely unnoticed, lost down the memory hole; yet it certainly represents "the greatest naval victory in history” and perhaps the pivotal event in world military history since the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg in July 1863.

Read the whole thing, it's a great abbreviated account.