May 27th, 1942...USS Yorktown and the rest of Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17 arrives in Pearl Harbor. Yorktown, with blackened sides, twisted decks, and trailing oil, is wounded from an 800-lb. bomb hit at Coral Sea, that killed 60 crewmen. She is surely a dockyard case for three months. The ship has to sail in three days. But Nimitz orders a maximum effort repair job, with dockworkers in action 24 hours a day. The list of replacement supplies for Yorktown, radioed ahead, is endless, ranging from pneumercator gauges to arresting gear to a new soda fountain. Yorktown enters Drydock No. 1 at 2:30 p.m. Yardmaster Gillette goes without sleep for three days to get Yorktown repaired. The Hawaiian electrical authorities, to keep power flowing to the yard, stage sequential blackouts across Oahu. Yorktown will sail to Midway without all her boilers functioning, her flight deck still scarred and battered. 1,400 men work nonstop to repair Yorktown.
On the anniversary of Adm. Heihachiro Togo's great victory over the Russians at Tsushima in 1905, the First Carrier Striking Force under Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo sorties as scheduled to commence the attack on Midway. As the Japanese sail, Cdr. Mitsuo Fuchida, aboard Akagi, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, doubles up in excruciating pain. The flight surgeon, Dr. Tamai, first thinks that Fuchida has had too much sake. But when Fuchida worsens, Tamai diagnoses appendicitis. Nagumo, Rear Adm. Ryunosuke Kusaka (the chief of staff), and Cdr. Minoru Genda (the air officer) convene at Fuchida's bunk to decide whether to send the ailing aviator back home. Fuchida won't desert his buddies for the big battle. Even if he can't fly, he can help. He insists that Akagi's sickbay can do the surgery. Tamai operates at 10 p.m. Later that day, Genda himself staggers down to sickbay, weak and feverish, suffering incipient pneumonia. The man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor and the man who planned it are both out of action.
The Japanese are sailing to Midway with six aircraft carriers loaded with some of the finest aircraft and aviators in the world. The Americans have three carriers, manned by inexperienced pilots using torpedo bombers so old the fabric comes off their wings in a dive. The Japanese have 11 battleships committed, the Americans none. The Japanese have 12 cruisers, 43 destroyers, and a swarm of supporting vessels and transports, departing from three main bases, scattered across 2,000 miles of sea, to trap the Americans, who have only 27 ships. The Japanese force is led by Yamamoto himself, one of the world's naval geniuses. The Americans are led by an admiral who has never commanded a carrier in his life.
The Imperial Japanese Navy is about to sail to the greatest naval battle in history...and its greatest defeat.
In New Caledonia, a new Army division is created. It comes from three National Guard regiments that have lost their divisions in the Army's reorganization from "square" (two-brigade four-regiment) divisions to "triangle" (three regiment) divisions. They have been sent to New Caledonia to protect its valuable nickel and chrome deposits. They are now organized into the "Americal Division," the only American division of World War II that will bear a name instead of a number.
The siege of Sevastopol rages on into extra innings. It is the only incident of a formal siege of a modern fortress being pushed through to final reduction. (Corregidor surrendered before its forts fell) Sevastopol is the premier port on the Black Sea, and its defenses include three zones of trenches, pillboxes, and batteries. The strongest defenses lie in the middle zone, which includes the heights and the south bank of the Belbek River. Among these hills are "Fort Stalin" on the east, and the massive western anchor of "Fort Maxim Gorki I," with its turret of twin 305 mm (12-inch) guns sweeping the length of the Belbek valley. 105,000 men defend this port.
Against this the Germans and Rumanians range 203,000 men and some of the most powerful siege artillery ever disposed by any army in World War II. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein aims 305 mm, 350 mm, and 420 mm howitzers at the Soviets, along with two of the new, stubby "Karl" and "Thor" 600 mm mortars. Also on had is the 800 mm (31.5-inch) "Big Dora" from Krupp, which has to be transported to position by 60 railway wagons. "Big Dora" is commanded by a major general and a colonel, protected by two flak regiments, and periodically fed with a 10,500 lb. shell.
U-boats continue to prey on Allied merchant shipping in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. The Navy admits the loss of six ships, including a 200-ton US fishing trawler, a medium-size British cargo ship, a small Greek freighter, and a medium-size US merchantman
As dawn breaks at Bir Hacheim, the 1st Free French Brigade is dug in. This colorful force consists of two battalions of white-kepied Foreign Legionnaires, Marines, colonial infantry, Senegalese and Chad infantry. The French are backed with obsolescent but quick-firing 75mm guns, the "soixante-quinze" of World War I, overhauled in Beirut workshops, and British Bofors guns. Worried about gas attack, Gen. Jean Marie Koenig, 1st Brigade's CO, has ordered his Foreign Legionnaires to shave their beards so they can fit on gas masks.
At 4 am, the French can hear the squeaky rattle of advancing tank treads. The battle is on.
3rd Indian Motor Brigade signals "The whole bloody Afrika Korps is drawn up in front of us like a bloody review." The brigade is overrun by 6:30 am.
The Afrika Korps hits the 7th Motor Brigade and purses them to the Retma box, isolating them there, crushing through sangars, overrunning foxholes and rifle pits. By 9 am, the Retma box is gone, and 90th Light Division races on, capturing the Tac HQ of 7th Armoured Division. In the ensuing melee, the Desert Rats' CO, Gen. Frank Messervy, slips on a private's jacket, and he and his senior staff officers escape to continue to lead the division.
As the 4th Armoured Brigade moves up to battle, the Afrika Korps slams into it. 15th Panzer Division wipes out the 8th Hussars' Grant tanks in half an hour, then cuts the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment down to 10 Grants. Behind the advancing Germans is a desert littered with wrecked tanks belching flame, towering clouds of black smoke, smashed lorries, and PoWs.
1st Armoured rushes to help the Desert Rats and runs smack into two panzer divisions, and loses 30 tanks.
At Bir Hacheim, the French are standing to at 8 a.m., when the Italian Ariete Division shows up. 50 M13/40 tanks crash the southern French defenses at 9 a.m., attacking with determination and panache. The French hit back with mines and Boyes' anti-tank rifles, but six tanks bear down into the French positions. Legionnaires deal with those with their 75mm guns and by scrambling onto the rivetted monsters, firing revolvers into the tanks' observation slits.
The Italians try again with 30 tanks, and fail. They pull back at 10 a.m., having lost 32 tanks, and 60 PoWs, including the CO of Ariete's 132 Armoured Regiment, who had to change his tank three times. Only one Frenchman is wounded.
The Italians don't attack again that day, having used up their supplies, and the French troops take time to pillage the wrecked Italian tanks, finding them well-stocked with blankets, ham, preserves, and eau-de-cologne.
Meanwhile the main battle continues, and Rommel notes, "Unfortunately our panzer units attacked without support, although I had constantly been at pains to impress them not to do so until our artillery had opened fire. There was also a British surprise awaiting us here, one which was not to our advantage -- the new Grant tank, which was used in this battle for the first time on African soil. Tank after tank, German and British, was shattered in the fire of the tank guns. Finally, we succeeded in throwing the British back to the Trig el Abd, although at the cost of heavy casualties."
That afternoon, the Afrika Korps strikes again, chopping up the 22nd Armoured Brigade, losing the 2nd Battalion of the 104th Infantry in the process. However, the Germans are using up their fuel and ammunition at a high rate of speed, and the German forces are being widely scattered.
At 2:30 pm, the British 2nd Armoured Brigade counterattacks, joined by 1st Army Tank Brigade's Matildas. All hell breaks loose as the British ambush the Germans. 2nd Brigade's crews discover that the Grant is a reliable machine, well-armoured, and packs a wallop with its 75 mm gun. The counterattack cuts Rommel off from his striking force, leaving him worried at dusk, with his two panzer divisions nearly out of fuel and ammunition. The good news for Rommel is that British generalship is hitting bottom, with lethargy and slowness as its keynote.
In Syria, intelligence reports and briefings on the battle at Gazala arrive on the desks of the 2nd New Zealand Division. They say the Allies are winning. Relieved, General Bernard Freyberg goes off to inspect Iraq. Brig. Howard Kippenberger conducts a TEWT, a 'tactical exercise without troops'. Officers are taken out into a suitable area, divided into groups of four or five, and given imaginary situations, and asked how to deal with them with imaginary troops. The groups must work out their own solutions to the same problems, and do so amid rain or cold wind.
The US Senate Naval Affairs Committee decides that the liner Normandie's construction, lack of compartmentation, and "known instability" made it an unwise choice as troop transport. The fact that it capsized at its pier in New York City doesn't help much, either. Rear Adm. Adolphus Andrews, commandant of the New York Naval District, is cleared of all blame. Then his promotion is confirmed.
Before dawn in Libya, the Afrika Korps has breakfast, its troops having moved up to their startlines unobserved. At 7 a.m., the massive advance begins, as the Luftwaffe attacks British and French positions ahead of the panzers.
The US Army accepts the applications of 13,600 women as candidates for WAC officer training school. 450 of those applicants will be chosen for training. The War Manpower Commission announces plans that are being draft to "freeze" workers in critical war industries at their present jobs to halt "pirating" of workers by employers.
In Prague, two Czech patriots, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, parachuted earlier into Czechoslovakia by the RAF, finally carry out Operation Anthropoid, a feat that will have horrible consequences.
The plan is to assassinate the Reichsprotector of Bhemia- Moravia, Reinhard Eugen Tristam Heydrich, known to Allied editorial writers as "Hangman Heydrich."
Heydrich wears many hats, the biggest of which being head of the Gestapo under Heinrich Himmler, charged with carrying out the Final Solution. However, when Baron Konstantin Von Neurath, Reichsprotector, fails to carry out orders to massacre civilians and Jews -- Von Neurath is an old-school diplomat -- Heydrich is sent in to replace him in September 1941. Heydrich wastes no time. He arrests 10,000 people, and kills 450.
This day, Kubis and Gabcik intercept Heydrich's Mercedes as it slows down to take a corner in the suburb of Holesovice, and hurl hand grenades into the open car, blasting Heydrich and his entourage. The Reichsprotector loses both his legs, and the wounds are mortal. He doesn't die until June 4th.
In Berlin, Adolf Hitler is infuriated by the assassination and orders the arrest of 10,000 hostages. Heinrich Himmler orders 100 intellectuals shot that evening, as "they are our main enemy." Karl Hermann Frank, Heydrich's deputy in Prague, is happy to oblige. He has a pathological hatred of Czechs, and arrests 3,188 over the next few days, shooting 1,357. 657 more die "under police investigation."
Josef Goebbels writes that the attack on Heydrich, mastermind of the Holocaust, will have no difference to the policy of extermination. "Ten Jews either in a concentration camp or six feet under, are preferable to one roaming at large. There is no room for sentimentalism here."
May 28th, 1942...USS Enterprise and USS Hornet, accompanied by five cruisers, nine destroyers, and two oilers, stand out of Pearl Harbor, bound for Midway. Hornet's air group has never been in action. First aviator to land on Enterprise is Lt. Cdr. Gene Lindsey of Torpedo Six, who skids over the flight deck and into the drink. All three are saved, but it's a bad omen.
On Guadalcanal, Martin Clemens gets word from his scouts, the Japanese are ashore at Tenaru, 15 miles to the west. On the island's western tip, Snowy Rhoades and Leif Schroeder pack again and move two miles into the interior. He relies on a cluster of Catholic missionaries and Bishop Jean Marie Aubin for information. They tell him the Japanese have come ashore and are looting houses, joyriding on horses, and shooting cattle, which they dress and take back to the officer's mess on Tulagi.
In Hashirajima, the superbattleship Yamato sorties as scheduled with the Main Body force, headed for Midway. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto himself stands tall on the flag bridge as the ships leave harbor. The Japanese are sending 11 battleships, eight carriers, 23 cruisers, and 65 destroyers out on the Midway and Aleutian expeditions, some 190 ships altogether. The Americans are ranging 27 ships against this armada.
War rolls in on China and Burma as the Japanese advance, taking Kinhwa in the former, and Kengtung in the latter. In the New Hebrides, US troops arrive to build an airfield at Espiritu Santo, to support a plan being called "Operation Shoestring," which is to invade the Japanese-held Solomon Island of Guadalcanal, where the enemy is apparently building an airbase. The Americans plan to deny this airbase to the enemy.
Mexico declares war on the Axis powers. It will send a squadron of P-47 fighter aircraft to the Italian front later in the war.
The Gazala battle rages on. 1st South African Division, on the coast, holds off four Italian divisions. Rommel's armor continues to move north, with Rommel leading his tanks from the front. His tanks continue to head north, reaching the edge of the escarpment of the Coast Road, and attack Commonwealth Keep, a mixed garrison of less than 150 South African and Yorkshire infantrymen, who fight with small arms and six old Italian 47mm guns before being overwhelmed. Meanwhile, British armor fails to counterattack, as 8th Army officers bicker over what to do, and poor Allied communications snarl up the battlefield. However, when the British finally counterattack, they cut through Rommel's supply columns and overrun the Afrika Korps headquarters. Rommel isn't there (as usual). But his codebreaking team is, and they are all killed, thus depriving the Germans of a key intelligence resource.
The Luftwaffe tries to pound Bir Hacheim into submission, but the RAF fights back.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson, aware of the impending descent on Midway, warns that Japanese air raids on the US are an "almost inevitable sequel" to the Doolittle Raid on Japan but that "we are doing everything that we can to prepare for the return blow." Stimson is right. Lt. Nobuo Fujita of the Imperial Navy is being trained to fly a seaplane from a Japanese submarine and drop incendiary bombs on Oregon. Overzealous Japanese officers believe that strike will start a massive forest fire that could burn down Seattle.
The Nazis show no sentiment for Jews, or many other people either. Today more than 200 Poles are taken from Warsaw to the village of Magdalenka, and shot. Among them are three women brought on stretchers from Pawiak prison hospital.
May 29th, 1942...USS Washington arrives in Scapa Flow and takes on 518,096 gallons of fuel from the British oiler San Zotico.
As USS Enterprise heads for Midway, Rear Adm. Spruance walks the decks with officers for hours, asking Halsey's staff the hard questions about naval aviation. The Americans have excellent carriers, radar, a superb dive bomber in the Dauntless, but are new (like everyone else) to the field of carrier warfare, and Spruance, a cruiser admiral, is the newest of the new.
At 11 a.m., USS Yorktown's drydock is flooded and the carrier moves into the harbor. Hundreds of workers are still repairing her. The harbor signal light blinks, "Expedite repairs!" over and over again.
Early in the morning, supply convoys (led by Rommel himself) reach 15th Panzer Division, and Rommel can maneuver again. He is between the British armor to the east and British infantry to the west. Rommel orders the Sabratha Division to attack 1st South African Division. The Italians run into a tremendous artillery barrage and fall back leaving 400 PoWs with the South Africans.
Rommel attacks 2nd Armoured Brigade. The British have two more armored brigades, but do not commit them, failing again to concentrate armor to achieve a decisive result. Both sides take heavy casualties. Crusader tanks explode regularly. Grant tanks suffer from a gun that is too low and a silhouette that is too high. The battle rages amid a terrible dust storm, and men die from the heat.
Rommel is now in a dire situation, surrounded by minefields with the 150th Brigade to the west and British armor to the east. The presence of the 150th is a surprise to Rommel.
To make his life harder, he cannot resupply himself, as the Bir Hacheim crossroads is still held by the French. 150th Brigade stand astride the direct route. And Gen. Cruwell, one of Rommel's subordinates, has been shot down while flying across the battlefield and captured by the British. With his troops now in "The Cauldron," Rommel masses his armor to attack the 150th Brigade, leaving his 88mm anti-tank guns to screen the British armor.
At Bir Hacheim, the French shell passing German convoys. Gen. Koenig apologizes to his captive officers for the poor accommodations. And 600 Indian troops stagger into the position, from 3rd Indian Motor Brigade. These men have been captured by the Germans, but as the Germans lack supplies to feed themselves, have turned the captives loose. Koenig sends them north through the fluid battlefield to Tobruk.
Adolf Hitler returns to Berlin and agrees with Josef Goebbels that all Jews should be removed at once from Berlin. As Goebbels' range of titles includes Gauleiter of Berlin, he is in position to carry out the Fuhrer's will. In Paris, that day, Jews are ordered to sew a yellow star on the left side of their coats or jackets. A French collaborationist newspaper, Je Suis Partout (I Am Everywhere) writes, "The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder, but it renews the most strictly Catholic tradition."
In Poland, 3,000 Jews are rounded up for slaughter. A group of young men organize a breakout. As they run, the Nazis shoot down 1,500 Jews. The others reach the immediate safety of a nearby forest, but most are soon rounded up and killed.
May 30th, 1942...On USS Washington, the ship's mischief-makers face Captain's Mast in his in-port cabin. Capt. Howard J. Benson punishes eight men charged with smoking during the movie with six hours of extra duty. A 2nd seaman draws five days in the brig on bread and water for using obscene language to the master at arms. A sergeant, corporal, and six privates from the Marine Detachment are awarded 18 hours extra duty for gambling.
In Hawaii, repair crews are still hammering nails on the carrier Yorktown. Nimitz comes aboard to promise the carrier's weary crew that after the battle, Yorktown will be sent to the West Coat for full repair, and "I don't mean peanuts." That afternoon, Task Force 17 heads out to sea, Yorktown escorted by two cruisers and five destroyers. The Pacific Fleet band serenades Yorktown by playing "California, Here I Come." Aboard is Cdr. James Laing of the Royal Navy, armed with a notebook, to report to London on American carrier operations. Fletcher will be in overall command of the battle, and his orders are to "inflict maximum damage on enemy by employing strong attrition tactics. In carrying out the task assigned of Op Plan 29-5G, you will be governed by the principle of calcluated risk, which you shall interpret to mean the avoidance of exposure on your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting, as a result of such exposure, greater damage on the enemy." Pilots are replaceable. Carriers are not.
At sea, USS Enterprise and USS Hornet refuel from tankers Cimarron and Platte, and wait for Yorktown to arrive.
The final portion of the Japanese fleet, the Aleutians force, sails as scheduled.
The first part of the Midway battle takes place in Oronjia Pass Harbor in Madagascar (of all places). A Japanese fleet submarine cuts a midget submarine loose in the harbor to attack British shipping, as a diversion. Other submarines are proceeding to do the same in Sydney, Australia.
The midget submarine at Madagascar fires two torpedoes. One sinks a British oiler, the other hits the battleship HMS Ramillies, which has to be docked at Durban for repair. The two-man crew takes refuge in Cape Amber, hotly pursued by No. 5 Commando, and shoots themselves rather than surrender.
150th Brigade, consisting of 4th Battalion of East Yorks and 4th and 5th Green Howards, awaits the Afrika Korps, backed by 25- lbr. guns and Matilda tanks. The Germans send in engineers to cut a path through the vast minefields and finally achieve a link with the Italian forces on the other side. "We were really in a desperate position, our backs against the minefield, no food, no water, no petrol, very little ammunition, no way through the mines for our convoys, Bir Hacheim still holding out and preventing our getting supplies from the south," Gen. Fritz Bayerlein recalls years later. Rommel's men are getting half a cup of water per day. If the British attack, Rommel fears the destruction of his forces.
But the British do not attack.
Hitler is still in Berlin, and he tells Goebbels again that "all restraint be dispensed with, and that the interests of the security of the Reich be placed above the interests of single individuals from whom we can expect little good."
After that, Hitler addresses a group of recently commissioned German officers. The Fuhrer tells the new lieutenants "I do not doubt for a single second, that we shall win in the end. Fate has not led me this far for nothing, from an unknown soldier to the Fuhrer of the German nation, and the Fuhrer of the German Army. She has not done this simply to mock at me and to snatch away at the last moment what had to be gained after so bitter a struggle." A thousand years earlier, Charlemagne used harsh measures to create a German Empire; the German Army, Hitler warns, must use harsh measures in the East if it is to win the space needed for the new German Empire to survive and flourish.
After the ceremony, the young lieutenants get their orders. Most are bound for the Russian front, to replace other young officers killed in battle.
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, and a leading anti-Hitler plotter, sends one of his colleagues, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on a flight to Sweden. There he meets secretly with Bishop Bell of Chichester. Both clergymen are dissenters from their rival systems. Bell opposes strategic bombing, Bonhoeffer opposes Hitler. Both believe peace and reconciliation are possible amid world war. Bonhoeffer tells Bell of the crimes his nation is committing, and assures Bell of growing resistance in Germany to such acts.
At High Wycombe, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris pulls a packet of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, flicks the bottom with his thumb, selects his cigarette, and moves his forefinger slowly across a giant wall map of Europe. His finger comes to rest on a town in Germany, and he turns to his senior officers, and says, with his face expressionless, "The 1,000 Plan tonight."
His finger is pressing on Cologne.
That night the Royal Air Force launches Operation Millennium, the first "1,000-bomber raid." Harris, known as "Bomber" Harris in the press and "Butch" Harris to his crews, will hurl 1,046 bombers, including training squadrons, at the city, using something new in war: Lancaster bombers, the RAF's latest heavyweight, and Gee, a radar-based navigation system.
The RAF pilots and crews are briefed at 53 bases across Britain at 6 pm, and greet the news of a raid of this magnitude with cheering. The bombers take off at 10:30 pm, heading for the Dutch coast.
Around the main force, some 88 nightfighters and bombers harass Luftwaffe bases to little impact. The bombers fly above a blanket of thundery cloud until 60 miles from Cologne, when the cloud is suddenly withdrawn, leaving the ground clearly lit by a full moon.
The lead bombers reach their aiming point, the Neumarkt in the center of the old town. They find the city in braille-like relief under the moon, streets, buildings, and railroads easily visible. The pathfinders drop their incendiary markers -- 4-lb. bombs of benzol, rubber, and phosphorous, and start Cologne's 105th air raid alert of the war.
Hundreds of searchlights and guns go into action while the citizens take shelter. As soon as the pathfinders turn around, the Luftwaffe lights dummy fires to try to spoof the incoming main force.
The bombers swing and enter a sky full of chaos -- searchlight beams, buzzing night fighters, exploding flak shells, glittering marker flares. Despite the tight formations, the RAF only loses four bombers to collisions.
The bombers drop 1,455 tons of bombs in 90 minutes, spewing tons of incendiaries and high explosive on Cologne, starting thousands of fires, shredding water mains, power and phone cables, puncturing gas mains. 17 major rail centers report damage as stations, goods depots, locomotives, freight cars, and rails are wrecked. Bombs whack factories, industrial estates, empty city offices, crowded hospitals, empty churches, and crowded shelters.
As the bombs rain down, German defense crumples. Flak batteries run out of ammunition. Searchlights meander across the sky like drunken men, cut off from their flak guns. The twin-spired cathedral's towers stand amid a field of destruction.
The burden of defense falls upon the bewildering variety of civil Defense forces, ranging from Technisches Nothilfe battalions of engineers, to RAD nursing services, to Hitler Youths, who act as messengers on their bicycles. Hundreds of people are trapped in cellars, many are killed or suffocated. In one cellar where 150 people are trapped, a high-explosive bomb penetrates the cellar ceiling, but miraculously does not explode. Rescue workers give that extra effort, and all are saved just before the bomb goes off.
Overhead, the fires combine for a spiral of smoke 15,000 feet high. Aircraft at lower altitude can be seen against the smoke and flames.
At 4 a.m., an RAF Mosquito takes of for a photo-recce pass, and finds Cologne a huge pall of smoke. No opportunity for photographs. It will take a week to get the pictures.
Even so, the damage is immense. 600 acres -- including 300 acres of the city's center -- are destroyed. 3,330 homes completely wrecked, 6,000 badly damaged, 45,000 people rendered homeless. 12,000 fires rage amid wrecked water pipes, gas mains, electric lines, and telephone cables. The streetcar system is out of action and will not be operative for a week, not back to normal for months. German efficiency in civil defense keeps casualties down to 85 military and civil defense deaths, and 384 civilians. Almost 5,000 people need first aid. Cologne is not destroyed, but its industry is paralyzed for a week and seriously inconvenienced for at least six months.
RAF casualties are 39 bombers lost of the 910 that reached Cologne, most lost to nightfighters. This is a 4 percent loss, all Bomber Command can withstand over a period.
