Midway depended on intersecting strokes of luck

Would Tone's scout launching on time necessarily have produced an earlier Japanese sighting at Midway?

Not necessarily; several other chance movements and search decisions also determined who found whom and when.

The viewer challenges the assumption that an earlier launch by Tone's scout would necessarily have produced an earlier sighting. Nautilus drawing away a destroyer and an American box search are offered as other contingencies in the contact sequence. The response accepts that several interpretations of those movements are possible. Chance remains part of war even when individual decisions can be reconstructed.