The Battle of Midway was decided in four minutes. At 10:22 on June 4, 1942, American SBD Dauntless dive bombers rolled into their dives over the Kido Butai, and by 10:26 three of Japan's fleet carriers were burning out of control. The carrier fleet that struck Pearl Harbor would never sail again.

This documentary traces how an outdated American dive bomber broke Japan's carrier fleet: the perforated dive flaps designed at El Segundo in the 1930s, the enclosed hangars of Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, the lessons of the Coral Sea, the codebreakers who sent three carriers to Point Luck, the three-day repair of USS Yorktown, the sacrifice of Torpedo Squadrons 8, 6 and 3, and the minute-by-minute attack by the dive bombers of USS Enterprise and USS Yorktown on June 4, 1942.
Built from after-action reports, loss tables and squadron records, not the legends, including why the famous "five fateful minutes" story does not survive the Japanese records.

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