Battle of Midway - Classic war Movie 1976 (Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda)

The film stars including Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, supported by a large international cast of guest stars including James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Ed Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Robert Webber, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Pat Morita, Dabney Coleman, Erik Estrada and Tom Selleck.

On April 18, 1942, a daring and unexpected bomb raid on Tokyo stuns the Japanese. The commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Admiral Yamamoto, uses the threat posed to the Japanese home islands by the American Pacific Fleet to have his plan to invade Midway Island approved. At Pearl Harbor, Captain Matt Garth is tasked to gauge the progress of American intelligence gathering. Commander Joseph Rochefort's staff, partially able to read Japanese Navy communications, learn their next target is code-named "AF". Yamamoto plans the Midway attack, with Admirals Nagumo and Yamaguchi leading the Japanese carrier forces and Admiral Kondo the amphibious invasion force.

In a sub-plot Garth is asked by his son, naval aviator Ensign Tom Garth, to help free his American-born girlfriend Haruko Sakura from internment. Garth calls in favors to accomplish it, but damages his relationship with his son by talking to Tom's commander, who transfers him out of his squadron.

After the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, Rochefort uses a simple ruse to confirm that "AF" is Midway. Admiral Nimitz orders the carriers USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, augmented by USS Yorktown, hastily repaired after being damaged at Coral Sea, to a point north of Midway code-named "Point Luck" and lie in wait.

On June 4, the American carriers launch their planes when scouts detect the enemy fleet. Nagumo's carrier planes, unaware of the presence of US carriers, attack Midway Island, damaging installations but leaving the airstrip usable. Nagumo orders his planes rearmed with bombs to attack the airfield again, but when a scout reports the presence of Yorktown he orders the bombs changed for anti-ship torpedoes. American torpedo bombers desperately attack without fighter protection and are destroyed by the Japanese Combat Air Patrol, leaving only a single survivor, George H. Gay Jr. When American escort fighters cover another wave of torpedo bombers, Tom is wounded and severely burned. The Japanese fighters have been drawn down to low altitude by the torpedo planes when American dive-bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown find the Japanese fleet following the lucky hunch of a squadron commander. As the Japanese prepare to launch their second wave, the American bombers, unopposed by Japanese fighters far below them, reduce three of the Japanese carriers – Kaga, Sōryū and Akagi– to burning wrecks.

Aircraft from the remaining Japanese carrier Hiryū follow the returning American bombers and severely damage Yorktown. Below decks, Matt reconciles with the wounded Tom. Due to a shortage of pilots, Matt joins the counterstrike against Hiryū but its planes have already launched. Yorktown is crippled and abandoned and Hiryū reduced to a burning wreck. Yamamoto orders a withdrawal. Matt is killed crashing his badly damaged plane on Enterprise. At Pearl Harbor, Haruko watches Tom carried off the ship and Nimitz and Rochefort reflect on the battle. Nimitz suggests Matt would have concluded Yamamoto "had everything going for him", and asked "were we better than the Japanese, or just luckier?". Spruance and Browning appear, Nimitz gives a firm salute to them.