It's just amazing the US even won that battle.
Here is a great time-lapse breakdown of the battle.
There are few events throughout history which can claim to have "changed History" - the Battle of Midway was one of those events.
The Battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific War. The march of the Imperial Japanese Navy across the Pacific was halted at Midway and never restarted and the victory at Midway aided allied strategy worldwide.
Japan's top strategist, Admiral Yamamoto, convinced that America's Industrial Might would prevail in a long war, had planned the Pearl Harbor attack to be a knockout blow. But it wasn't. And so, Yamamoto circling the island of Midway on his map, laid new plans to draw the American fleet into a decisive battle and finish it off.
Yamamoto's plan would fail because American code breakers were able to provide details of it to the Navy's top Pacific Commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and it would fail because there are times when the human instinct for survival is overcome by a mysterious thing called pride. At Midway, there were many such mysteries. On June 4th, 1942, American torpedo bombers from Midway and from the carriers Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet went up against newer, faster Japanese planes. Against the carriers themselves in uncoordinated attacks against overwhelming odds.
Of the first 63 torpedo bombers to go in without air cover, 48 were destroyed. Of the 132 men who flew those planes, 100 died. They flew into walls of flak and swarms of Zeros, knowingly and without hesitation, toward almost certain death.
But by sacrificing themselves they prevented the zigzagging Japanese carriers from launching new attacks - by keeping the zeros busy at low altitudes. They made it possible for American dive-bombers to fall upon the Japanese fleet almost unnoticed. Within 5-minutes, the four Japanese carriers and other ships were reduced to flaming wrecks and were going down with more than 3000 men.
Some of the enemy planes found the Yorktown and scored with two torpedoes. The carrier was abandoned but some men, trapped in a watertight compartment below decks, couldn't get off. An officer who spoke to them on the ship's phone asked them if they knew what kind of a fix they were in and a voice said, "Sure. But we've got one hell of a card game going on down here." And then the voice added, "One thing though. When you scuttle her, shoot straight. Aim the torpedoes where we are. Make it quick."
The torpedoes weren't needed. In time, the Yorktown rolled over and with battle flags still flying went down with those men in 3000 fathoms of water. They are still there. That ship and those men fused by the sea into an unseen monument. To a mysterious thing called - pride.
“Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.”
― Walter Lord, Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway