Sunday, June 7, 1942. The Yorktown goes down, the Chicago Tribune blabs, Attu occupied.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success. 

Isoroku Yamamoto to Japanese cabinet minister Shigeharu Matsumoto and Prime Minister Fumimaro before World War Two.

This day is regarded as the official end of the Battle of Midway.

Yorktown after she had rolled over on her port side

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Lots of interesting items are mentioned by Sarah Sundin, on her blog, including the following.

Today in World War II History—June 7, 1942: In the Battle of Midway, carrier USS Yorktown sinks due to damage from the previous day, but the US is victorious in the major turning point of the Pacific War.

The Yorktown had sustained battle damage during the battle, and had been hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese submarine the prior day.

The Yorktown started to list rapidly to port on the morning of June 7. She had already been abandoned due to battle damage by that time.  She rolled over to her port side, revealing the torpedo hole from a Japanese submarine.  The ship sank at 07:01 at which time the ships in the vicinity were all flying half-mast for her, and the crewmen mustered and at attention, heads uncovered.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the US had knowledge of the Japanese plans to strike Midway before it occurred, revealing sufficient information that had the Japanese studied the article, they would have realized that their codes had been broken.  Secretary of War Frank Knox demanded that the authors be prosecuted, but when it was soon noticed that the Japanese failed to change their codes, the matter was quietly dropped so as to avoid pointing the story out.

As Sundin also reports, Maj. Gen. Clarence Tinker, who was the commander of the U.S. Seventh Air Force, died when an LB-30 he was flying went down off of Midway. Tinker was leading a squadron of bombers in action in pursuit of the retreating Japanese forces.

The number of aircraft deployed from Midway during the battle is impressive, but U.S. Army Air Corps bombers, which included B-17s, LB-30s (B-24s) and B-26s were singularly unsuccessful in the action, largely disproving the prewar theory that multi engine bombers would be successful as a ground based threat to surface fleets.

Tinker had been born in Indian Territory and was of Osage extraction.  He was the first U.S. general officer to be killed in World War Two.  His Army service dated back to 1912.  Like several other generals in the Second World War, during World War One he'd served stateside.  He transferred to the flying service in 1922 and had reached the rank of Brigadier General in 1940.

The Japanese sweep in the Aleutians continued, with the Japanese landing on and taking Attu.  There were no military personnel on the island.  Three Aleuts were killed when the Japanse landed. It's 42 surviving Aleut residents were interned by the Japanese on Hokkaido, where 16 of them would die during the war.  Charles Jones, a resident of the island and a radio operator was murdered by the Japanese for his refusal to fix his radio for their use.  His wife Etta, a teacher on the island, survived the war and was interned with Australian nurses who had been taken on Rabaul.

The former residents of the island were resettled on other Aleutians islands after the war. 

The Japanese had intended the invasion of the island as a type of raid, intending to leave it by winter, but they ended up garrisoning it instead.

Attu village, 1937.  Note the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Germans ordered Jews in occupied France to wear yellow Stars of David.

British Commandos raided German airfields on Crete.

Saturday, June 6, 1942. The Japanese land on Kiska.

Events from the Battle of Midway continued to play out, as Sarah Sundin details on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 6, 1942: In Battle of Midway, SBD dive bombers from US carriers Enterprise and Hornet sink Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma. Japanese occupy Kiska in the Aleutians.

As she also noted, the Japanese diversionary and precautionary action in the Aleutians continued. 

Japanese after landing on Kiska.

The only American presence was a small Navy weather station which was manned, at the time, by ten men.  One man escaped the assault, two were captured, and the balance killed.

Friday, June 5, 1942. The aftermath of Midway.

June 5 saw the aftermath of the Battle of Midway play out.  At 0215 two Japanese cruisers spotted the approaching US submarine USS Tambor and started zigzagging, hitting each other, and resulting in 92 deaths aboard the Mogami.  At 0450 the Akagi was scuttled.  At 0510 the Hiryū was scuttled by torpedoes from destroyer Makigumo.  Hiryū’s Captain Kaku and Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the 2nd Carrier Division, went down with the ship in a pointless death.

Things went better for the Tanikaze, a destroyer, that managed to avoid being hit in an attack by no less than 66 dive bombers on this day, following up on the Battle of Midway.

Japan, on the same day, began raiding in the Mozambique Channel.

The British attempted a counterattack against the Afrika Korps that failed, with the Germans resuming the offensive that afternoon.

The United States declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

Thursday June 4, 1942. US prevails at Midway, the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

The Battle of Midway was being fought in earnest.

Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu shortly before it sank.

The Japanese launched aircraft to attack Midway Atoll at 04:30, the same time that the Yorktown launched ten aircraft to search for the Japanese fleet. AT 0534 a PBY from Midway itself sighted Japanese ships.  At 0710 aircraft launched from Midway, including six TBF's and four B-26s bombers attacked the Japanese.  Over the course of the entire day, various strikes and countries would occur, mostly from carriers.

The Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were all lost to the Japanese due to planes from the Enterprise and Yorktown.  The Yorktown had to be abandoned after it was hit by planes launched from the Hiryu, which itself was hit by U.S. carrier planes subsequently.  It would be scuttled the following day.

While the Japanese seemingly didn't appreciate it, the battle was the turning point in the war in the Pacific. The Japanese had been decisively defeated and would never regain the initiative nor be able to make good their losses.  The turning of the tide essentially came down to a single day.

A second day of raids occurred at Dutch Harbor.

A meeting between Hitler and Finnish general Mannerheim, effectively the Finnish head of state, results in the only known recording of Hitler speaking in a conversational manner.

Hitler at meeting that was recorded.

June 3, 1942. The High Water Mark for Japan.

On this day in 1942, at approximately 09:00, a PBY from Navy patrol squadron VP-44 spotted the Japanese Occupation Force heading towards Midway, some 580 miles distant.  Thinking, erroneously, that this was the main Japanese naval task force, he reported it as such.

At 12:30 Nine B-17s took off from Midway Island, found the occupation force, and attacked it unsuccessfully.

The Battle of Midway was on.

Part of the Japanese plans involved a diversionary attack in the Aleutians, which also served as a Japanese effort to block a possible invasion route into Japan via the northernmost portion of the Pacific..  Not surprisingly, that began on this day with carrier launched air raids on Dutch Harbor.

This day can be regarded as the high water mark of the war for the Japanese.  I.e, this is the last day of the war in which they would not be, effectively, losing the war in a strategic sense.

The British government announced it was taking over the coal and dairy industries for the balance of the war.

Tuesday, June 2, 1942. The BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews.

Members of the Death's Head SS, Germans who ran the death camps.

Today in World War II History—June 2, 1942: 80 Years Ago—June 2, 1942: BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews. Henry J. Kaiser proposes building auxiliary carriers; the Navy awards him a contract for the Casablanca class by the end of the month.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes that news broke in the West, and indeed the world, of one of the biggest crimes ever committed in human history, the German efforts to exterminate the Jews.

This has been controversial, in terms of "when did they know" and "what could have been done", ever since.  But in retrospect, the news actually broke relatively quickly after the effort truly became industrial.  Up until that time, the Germans had been killing Jews on a large scale, to be sure, but it had been mostly done by deployed SS field units with that specific task, which accomplished it largely via small arms fire. A lot of people were killed in that fashion, and also by Eastern European unofficially allied bands, but it had taken place in conditions which precluded the news from being much more than rumors.  SS, and Eastern European, murders of this fashion had taken place either in chaotic conditions as the Germans marched in, or in actual field conditions just behind the lines.  As a result, they took place in areas where reporting was limited to what the Germans chose to report.  As the only significant opposition force in these regions was the Red Army, which had not recaptured any of these areas by this point in the war, news getting out simply didn't.

Industrial scale murder, however, was impossible to keep a secret.  The Poles reported it first, in an underground opposition newspaper.  The BBC picked it up the next day.

On the same day the Germans deployed an 800mm (31") railroad gun at Sevastopol.  For comparison, battleships typically had 16" guns.

The insanely large gun was a devastating weapon, but the crew required to man it was also insanely large.

Size comparison to Russian OTR-21 rocket launcher, which delivers a similarly sized payload.

The gun would be part of a five-day artillery barrage of the city, which also featured large raids by the Luftwaffe.

In North Africa the Afrika Korps was threatening to have its most recent offensive halt due to logistical problems.

U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific rendezvous at Point Luck, uniting Task Force 16 and Task Force 17, which are then under the command of Admiral Fletcher. They are there in anticipation of a Japanese assault on Midway Atoll, which they know is coming due to breaking the Japanese code.

Thursday May 14, 1942. "AF" to be attacked.

The US Navy partially decoded a Japanese message concerning a large force preparing to invade "AF".  Navy Cryptanalyst Joseph Rochefort suspected it was Midway Island, but as AF was not known with certainty, a message in the clear was subsequently broadcast from Midway that its desalination plant had broken down, which the Japanese picked up, and rebroadcast as an intelligence report in regard to "AF".

The Mexican oil tanker Petrero del Llano was sunk by a German submarine.

Today in World War II History—May 14, 1942: US Navy begins full convoys on East Coast as the first convoy departs from Hampton Roads, VA, for Key West, FL.

So notes Sarah Sundin's blog.

She also noted that Australia commenced rationing of food and clothing on this day, something I had never considered, in the Australian context, before reading about it on her site.