Primary Objectives
- Repel the air raid
- Sink the enemy landing fleet
- Sink the Akagi and the Kaga
- USS Yorktown must survive
Hidden Objectives
- Prevent the deployment of all Daihatsus
The mission starts with a cutscene involving a PBY Catalina spotting many planes headed Midway. Get all your fighters airborne immediately - it's an air raid!!
Repel the Air Raid
Start with the obvious - air raid means bombers, and fighters can fry bombers, so start launching every last Buffalo squadron you have. Unfortunately Buffalos are all you have; the sexy, powerful, and agile P-40 Warhawk isn't used here.
In the event you don't have much faith in your dogfighting skills, you can have your second airfield launch B-17s. Sure they won't be dogfighters, but their many machine guns can dish out damage to the enemy bombers, especially since they're all preoccupied with your bases in the first place.
Repelling the air raid shouldn't be too hard. Just mix it up and prevent any bombers from getting through. Keep it up - the enemy only has so many planes here.
Unlike other missions, where you can have fun and sink some of the allied ships of no use (in particular the Motorboat, which does not appear in any future stage; it's also amusing to hear a motorboat crew shout "Launch the lifeboats, we're going down!"), you should not waste any time at all taking down the useless allied ships. Focus exclusively on the bombers - you can have fun with the allied ships later.
The first two waves are the most important, as they target your airfields. The third wave hits your shipyard, but while it's possible to win without a shipyard, it becomes next to impossible without an airfield (especially since one of them has only bombers - if the one launching fighters gets destroyed, don't bother going any further and just restart).
There aren't many defending fighters, but they're there to distract you from the bombers, so hurry up and deal with the bombers, then mop up the fighters.