‘Midway the Middle’—wartime map showing distances to Midway (courtesy NARA San Bruno)Chart based on December 1941 hydrographic survey, revised June 1943 (courtesy NARA San Bruno)Aerial view of Midway ca. 2008. The runways on Eastern Island appear to have faded from disuse. The Navy left Midway in 1993. The atoll and the waters around it are now part of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. (Photo courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service/NOAA)The submarine/seaplane basin, 29 January 1944. Based in Hawaii, these PB2Y Coronados were using NOB Midway as a staging area for 2,100-mile roundtrip bombing raids on Japanese-occupied Wake Island at the time. Rearming boat No. 3, manned by Edward Pitta and Ernest Samed, may have been ferrying men to these planes in preparation for the return flight to Hawaii when they were told to look for Macaw survivors in the channel the morning of February 13. (USN photo courtesy NARA)Same day, different angle. The Macaw lay pinned to the reef at the mouth of the channel, just out of view to the right at the time. The Contractor’s tower, the converted water tower from which Captains Connolly and Edmunds monitored the sinking of the Macaw, appears at the center of the bottom edge of this photo. (USN photo courtesy NARA)In this photo, taken 29 September 1943, at least four submarines, three to port and at least one to starboard, lie alongside a submarine tender docked just outside the small-boat basin at the eastern end of Sand Island. The small-boat basin was an enclosure within an enclosure, the outer one being the reef that encircles the lagoon. On the evening of 12 February 1944, as the Macaw was sinking, a tide gauge in the small-boat basin registered two-foot swells. (USN photo courtesy NARA San Bruno)Undated wartime photo showing the small-boat basin on the right, the submarine and seaplane basin on the left. At the upper left corner of the photo a ship is negotiating the entrance channel. The feint white transverse line in the near distance marks the reef. (USN photo courtesy NARA San Bruno)Submarines and sub tenders docked pointing toward the small-boat basin at the eastern end of Sand Island, 18 December 1943. (USN photo courtesy NARA)Wartime view of Midway from the southwest. Exact date unknown, but the finger of what appears to be foam projecting more or less horizontally from the eastern edge of the channel entrance may be a wave washing across the largely submerged Macaw. (USN photo courtesy NARA)
