His citation for the Distinguished Service Medal states: "His judicious planning and brilliant execution was largely responsible for the rout of the enemy Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway."

During that time he performed additional duty on the staff of the commander of Light Cruiser Division Two of the Scouting Fleet (USS Trenton, flagship).

The new monoplane fighters Browning and others piloted went through numerous upgrades in both structure and function, every design change hotly debated by men whose lives were at stake.

Unfortunately for Browning and his like-minded colleagues, the Bureau of Aeronautics continued to emphasize maneuverability, climb rate, and flight ceiling at the expense of speed and other characteristics that the progressives argued were more important.

If the bureau had been more receptive to an emphasis on speed, the United States Navy might have entered World War II with a more advanced high-performance fighter.

Upon completion of his junior year in 1937, he became one of the first naval instructors at the Army Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama, training a new generation of fighter pilots while continuing his advanced studies in combat theory, national security policy, airborne command and control and joint military operations.

In 1936, the year that Nazi Germany allied with Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, Browning laid out his tactical logic in a 13-page, single-spaced, typewritten memorandum on carrier warfare prepared at the Naval War College.

From the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II, Browning provided tactical recommendations to Admiral Halsey from the bridge of the carrier USS Enterprise.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, the Enterprise was en route to Hawaii after delivering a Marine Corps fighter squadron to Wake Island.

The carrier reached the devastated harbor on the evening of 8 December, the day after the attack, refueled and resupplied through the night, and put to sea again early the next morning to patrol against any additional threats to the Hawaiian Islands.

With the United States Pacific Fleet nearly destroyed, USS Enterprise and her battle group took up forward defensive positions west of Hawaii.

With the battleship force crippled, defense against further Japanese attacks on the United States and its territories was left to the three aircraft carriers stationed in the Pacific: USS Enterprise and the converted battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga.

So dramatic were these air raids on Japanese island bases that Life magazine dubbed Browning "America's mastermind in aerial warfare.

Admiral Halsey suffered a severe attack of dermatitis on the Enterprise on the way back from launch of the successful Doolittle bombing raid, and was hospitalized in Hawaii.

[5][6] Military historian Samuel Eliot Morison referred to Browning as "one of the most irascible officers ever to earn a fourth stripe, but he was a man with a slide-rule brain.

As chief of staff for Task Force 16, Browning was charged with supporting Rear Admiral Spruance during the impending battle as the Imperial Japanese Navy, undefeated for over 350 years,[10] bore down on Midway Island.

Although the Japanese Navy was not aware of this breach in its radio security, it did change its codes in accordance with protocol as its fleet steamed across the Pacific toward the strategic U.S. air base at Midway.

Yamamoto's intent was to draw whatever was left of the American fleet into a battle so that any remaining U.S. warships could be destroyed, then occupy Midway and use it as a base against Hawaii and as leverage for a negotiated peace.

Yamamoto's second-in-command, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the hero of Pearl Harbor, also expected to achieve complete surprise at Midway.

He failed to anticipate attacks from any of America's remaining carriers,[8] and presumed that the heavily damaged Yorktown had been sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

According to naval historian John Lindstrom, "Morison misunderstood the time expressed in the TF 16 war diary" and "created the fiction of Spruance's supposed desire to delay the launch.

Browning prepared an ambitious attack plan, to arm dive bombers with the heaviest bombs available and launch the planes at the extreme limit of their operational range.

Air Group Six commander Wade McClusky and two of his senior pilots objected vehemently to this unrealistic attack plan, which provided no margin for error.

But Captain Browning resumed combat duties in October 1942 when Halsey was given command of the South Pacific theater, where Allied fortunes had gone from bad to worse.

Browning's tactical advice as chief of staff helped Halsey achieve the command miracle in the Solomon Islands that did much to turn the tide in the Pacific.

The first major offensive by combined Allied forces against Japanese-held territory, it was a desperate ongoing sea, air, and ground campaign that required continual, almost daily, aircraft action.

Audacious strikes by air, land and sea, and the tenacity and sacrifices of thousands of soldiers, sailors and marines under Admiral Halsey's command led to the historic naval victory at Guadalcanal in early November 1942.

Admitting that his chief of staff was "decidedly temperamental", Halsey begged Nimitz not to break up "this partnership" between himself and Browning, writing, "I am almost superstitious about it.

On May 20, 1922, Browning married San Francisco socialite Cathalene Isabella Parker (1906–1987), stepdaughter of Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward.

During that time, his only daughter, Cathalene Parker Browning, was born in San Diego (her son is the American comedian Chevy Chase).