On December 7, 1941, planes from six Japanese carriers destroyed the U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor. Their success opened the way for Japan to conquer Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Yet by early 1942, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commanding the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was confident he could strike, too. Superb radio intelligence derived enough data from coded Japanese messages to begin forecasting the enemy’s strategic moves. In early May 1942, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, Nimitz’s forces sank or disabled three carriers against the loss of one U.S. flattop. Japan had suffered its first strategic setback of the war.

Shrugging off the reverse in the Coral Sea, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the innovative commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet, aimed to complete in early June what he had begun at Pearl Harbor. By assaulting tiny Midway Island northwest of Hawaii, he hoped to draw out the remnants of the Pacific Fleet and destroy them. Although much weaker, the pugnacious Nimitz was more than willing to fight. Forewarned by his code breakers, he set up a careful ambush. The Battle of Midway on June 4-6, 1942, cost Japan four of its big carriers. Nimitz lost just one carrier. If not the Pacific War’s turning point – that came at Guadalcanal later that year – the victory evened the odds and enabled the United States to seize the initiative.

Midway is one of history’s most spectacular military victories. It featured extraordinary heroism and self-sacrifice worthy of a Herodotus. Fortune’s favors flitted from one side to the other as if fickle gods actually controlled events. Like an act of providence, two groups of U.S. carrier-based dive bombers launched two hours apart on the morning of June 4 converged over the Japanese carriers when they were at their most vulnerable. Three went up in flames in minutes. It was America’s first great victory of the war, and Midway rapidly became the stuff of legends. Historians must still sift truth from pervasive supposition and outright error.

One of battle’s most dramatic aspects was the gallant attack by 51 American torpedo aircraft – operating both from Midway Island and from the three U.S. carriers, Hornet, Enterprise, and Yorktown. Flying low in four separate waves against fierce fighter opposition, 44 of the planes were shot down, and none of the 51 scored a hit on a Japanese ship. Of the 21 planes from Torpedo Squadron 8, split between the Hornet and Midway itself, only one aircraft and three men survived. Bad timing and unfortunate lapses had contrived to send the torpedo planes into action without proper support. No other comparable force of U.S. planes ever suffered such horrible losses. Despite the torpedo planes’ ill fortune, the conventional view is that they played a crucial role in the Midway victory. They drew the defending fighters down close to the water, thus inadvertently clearing the way for the U.S. dive-bombers coming in at high altitude.

Alvin Kernan, a professor emeritus of Princeton University, served on the Enterprise during the battle, as a young ground crewman in Torpedo Squadron 6. In his new book, “The Unknown Battle of Midway” (Yale University Press, 208 pages, $26), Mr. Kernan tells the story of the torpedo squadrons and their vital role in U.S. carrier aviation. Well aware the “tin fish” was the most powerful weapon airplanes could employ against ships, aggressive squadron leaders like John C. Waldron of Torpedo 8 did everything they could to score hits. In Mr. Kernan’s view, “everything” was still not enough for the carrier based torpedo crews: all but 10 of the attackers “never had a chance.” They were doomed by their obsolete aircraft – the slow and vulnerable Douglas TBD-1 Devastator – by the criminally deficient Mark 13 aerial torpedo, by poor training, fatally flawed carrier aviation tactics, callous admirals who sent the planes beyond their range, and by non-existent or timid fighter escort. For Mr. Kernan, this was simply a suicide mission from the start.

Some of Mr. Kernan’s trenchant criticisms hit the mark, but others are purely the result of hindsight. The old TBDs indeed were inadequate. Production of the new Grumman TBF-1 Avenger was already under way, and six flew in the Battle of Midway – with equally dire results. The aerial torpedoes were unreliable, a scandal equal to the submarine torpedo fiasco, but in June 1942, it was not yet understood just how bad they were.

Mr. Kernan trivializes the experiences the month before in the Coral Sea, where TBDs twice attacked Japanese carriers without a combat loss while the dive-bombers suffered severely. On May 7, in one of the finest torpedo attacks of the war, the TBDs scored seven hits on the light carrier Shoho by Japanese count – and so not just pilots’ exaggeration. The next day the TBDs missed the Shokaku, although they were credited with as many as eight hits. On both days, moreover, the TBDs flew much longer missions than they were assigned at Midway. Only one ditched from lack of fuel. Thus the admirals had every reason to believe the TBDs would also perform successfully at Midway.

The Achilles’s heel of U.S. carrier aviation was coordinating air strikes. At Midway the attackers were supposed to go in together to divide the defense, but due to a complicated series of events, the TBDs charged alone. It is true that in two cases the brass denied the TBDs direct fighter escort, and the leadership of many of the fighters in the air proved wanting. Yet Mr. Kernan does great disservice to the six brave Yorktown fighter pilots, led by John S.Thach. They not only did their best to protect their TBDs, but fought one of the epic fighter actions of the war by engaging more than a dozen defending Zeroes themselves. In 1942 the Wildcats proved more than a match for the opposing Japanese Zero fighters.

Alvin Kernan’s book is a warm and heartfelt tribute to his dead shipmates, but it also obscures the truth. The real reason behind the destruction of the torpedo planes was that the Japanese, not having yet launched their own strike against the U.S. carriers – their fatal mistake – had Zero fighters in overwhelming numbers for defense. The torpedo planes succumbed, but soon after so did the Japanese carriers.

Mr. Lundstrom’s “Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal” will be published in April by the Naval Institute Press.