FDR - Jean Edward Smith [349]
Once again, as at Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto and Nagumo counted on surprise. But this time the tables were turned. Thanks to code intercepts, it was the American Navy that had advance warning, not the Japanese. With foreknowledge of Yamamoto’s intent, and fully aware of the enormous firepower he could bring to bear, Nimitz instructed his task force commanders to seek out Nagumo’s carriers but dodge his big guns.
The Japanese invasion force commenced its assault on Midway on June 4. At dawn Nagumo launched his first air strike, unaware that three American carriers—Enterprise, Hornet, and a quickly refitted Yorktown—stood off to the northeast. Believing his position secure, Nagumo ordered a time-consuming change of armament for his second attack wave just as his first wave returned to refuel. At that point, with his flight decks cluttered, American bombers and torpedo planes attacked. But Japanese antiaircraft fire and Zeros kept the attackers at bay, and by 10:24 Nagumo felt he had weathered the storm. None of his ships had been hit.
The next five minutes would change the course of history. Arriving at the precise moment when Nagumo’s protective screen of Zeros had been drawn down to refuel, two squadrons of American dive-bombers, one from Enterprise, the other from Yorktown, poured through the open sky to unload their bombs on the exposed Japanese carriers. Three were sunk and the fourth so heavily damaged the Japanese scuttled it. Deprived of air cover, Yamamoto reversed course and sailed the Combined Fleet back to Japan.
The Battle of Midway proved to be the decisive battle in the Pacific. With the loss of four large carriers, their aircraft and their pilots, Japan never regained naval superiority. In the two years following Midway the Japanese were able to launch only six battlefleet carriers. The United States added seventeen, as well as ten medium carriers and eighty-six smaller escort carriers. As Princeton professor Marius B. Jansen observed, “Technology and materiel may have sealed the ultimate verdict, but the months ahead required grinding determination and immense hardship in battles that produced some of the highest casualty rates in United States history.”52
Meanwhile, the situation on the Russian front remained grim. Hitler resumed his offensive in the spring of 1942, pressing southeast toward the oil fields of the Caucasus. Von Manstein overran the Crimea, a Soviet counterattack in the Ukraine failed dismally, and two German Army Groups crashed forward to the Don. Russian losses were staggering. By the end of May the Germans had killed or captured an additional 700,000 Red Army troops and destroyed more than 2,000 tanks and 6,000 artillery pieces.53
Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Washington May 29 to plead for assistance. Like Churchill, Molotov stayed as FDR’s guest in the White House. Unlike Churchill’s, the visit remained secret (Molotov bore the code name “Mr. Brown”) and the White House press corps scrupulously adhered to Steve Early’s request that nothing be published. Unaware of what he might find in Washington, Molotov traveled with basic necessities: black bread, sausage, and a loaded pistol tucked into his luggage, plus a secretarial pool that evidently did more than take dictation.54
“I am terribly busy with a visiting fireman from across the water,” FDR told his cousin Daisy Suckley. “He comes from Shangri-La and speaks nothing but Mongolian. We speak through interpreters: one, a Russian who speaks perfect English [Vladimir N. Pavlov]; the other, an American who has lived for years in Russia [Harvard professor of Slavic Languages Samuel H. Cross]! Two and two equals four.”55
Molotov wasted little time on social niceties. As soon as he met FDR in the Oval Office, he put the case for a second front. The balance of forces in Russia was slightly in Hitler’s favor, said Molotov. If the United States and Great Britain could mount a cross-Channel attack, it would drain away forty German divisions. These might not be first-line troops, but it would diminish