Battle of Midway: The Wildest Turning Point
The man literally tricked the Imperial Japanese Navy with a fake report about a broken water boiler.
I’m sitting here, coffee cold, absolutely losing it over the sheer audacity of Captain Joe Rochefort. Most history podcasts treat codebreaking like a dry math problem—you know, algorithms, ciphers, the boring stuff that makes you glaze over. But in History That Doesn't Suck, episode 198, Greg Jackson paints it like a noir detective thriller. A windowless basement in Pearl Harbor. The "Dungeon." A guy in a smoking jacket obsessing over two letters: "AF."
It’s the pivot point of the entire Pacific War, and it hinged on a lie about fresh water.
I’ve listened to a lot of WWII content. Too much, probably. Usually, it’s a lot of "flank speed" this and "tonnage" that. But Jackson does this thing—he drags you right down into the grease and the oil. He starts us off not with the generals, but with a kid named Bill Liu deep in the bowels of the USS Neosho, wondering if the torpedo that just hit is going to be the end of it. It’s claustrophobic. You can almost smell the fear and the bunker fuel.
The "Taco" Metaphor You Can’t Unsee
There’s a specific moment in this episode that I can’t get out of my head. We’re deep in the Battle of Midway—chaos, fire, Zeroes swarming everywhere. The Americans are finally landing hits on the Japanese carriers.
Jackson recounts the testimony of Dusty Kleiss, a dive bomber pilot. Dusty doesn't just say "the ship exploded." He describes the flight deck of the Hiryu peeling back "like a giant hand rolling a taco."
a taco.
It’s such a bizarre, specific, violent image. It completely strips away the sterile "military history" veneer and reminds you that these were just 20-something-year-old guys seeing things no human brain is really wired to process. The episode is full of these jarring, high-definition snapshots. It’s not a lecture; it’s a hallucination.
Calculated Risk vs. Blind Luck
What really struck me, though, isn't just the combat. It’s the unbearable tension of the gamble.
Admiral Nimitz isn't portrayed as some stoic statue. He’s a guy rolling the dice on a "calculated risk." The narrative weaves between the terrifying silence of the Japanese fleet moving under radio silence and the frantic, messy scramble of the American response.
And the tragedy. Lord, the tragedy of Torpedo Squadron 8.
Jackson doesn't gloss over the fact that an entire squadron was wiped out, leaving just one survivor, Ensign George Gay, hiding under a seat cushion in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while the battle raged around him. The way this episode handles the shift from the slaughter of the torpedo bombers to the sudden, miraculous arrival of the dive bombers... it’s pacing that Hollywood wishes it could nail.
The Verdict
This isn't background noise for your commute. It demands attention. Jackson’s present-tense narration style creates this urgency that makes you forget you already know who wins. You’re there, sweating in the cockpit, hoping your fuel gauge is lying to you.
If you think you know Midway, you don't know this version of it. It’s visceral, heartbreaking, and weirdly human.
Golden Nugget: "The Coral Sea proves that the once mighty battleship is now a dated technology. Sea battles are now air battles... Air power has not displaced sea power; air power is sea power."
Go listen. But maybe skip the "mulch" (the Japanese pre-battle meal of rice, chestnuts, and sake) if you have a weak stomach.
Listen to History That Doesn't Suck: https://podranker.com/podcast/history-that-doesnt-suck