War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its size,

and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history

through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Music host, James Early. Hello, welcome back to our series

Key Battles of the Pacific War in World War II.

This is James again, as always.

And we have a really exciting episode for you.

This time, I'm going to be talking

about super important and critical battle. You could argue it is a turning point. We're not going to say

the turning point, but a turning point of the Pacific Theater. That is the Battle of Midway.

We set the stage for the battle. We talked about the preparations

that both sides were making last time. And now we're going to get into the Slugfest.

Scott is with me as always. How are you, Scott?

Doing all right. I got rubbed up from the episode we did last time, seeing the very last minute

fixes on the Yorktown.

And I love crunching down three-month deadlines into three days.

And this is going to be a really good battle because after it's over, one of the admiral says

that it puts their Navy about midway to victory.

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