That order comes too late for the carrier Hiryu, which has burned all night. Her captain, Tomeo Kaku, and the admiral commanding Hiryu and Soryu's carrier division, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi, lag themselves to the flag bridge compass as the ship keels into the water. Both are paying in samurai tradition for the loss of their ships. Yamaguchi and Kaku ignore requests to save their own lives. Yamaguchi says to Kaku, "Let us enjoy the beauty of the moon. "How bright it shines," Kaku responds. "It must be in its 21st day." This conversation, baffling to Westerners, is the two officers' way of signifying to each other that they have much in common.

Hiryu is disposed of by Japanese destroyers at 2:30 a.m. Yamaguchi and Kaku go down with her, costing Japan one of her brightest admirals and four of the carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor.

Yamamoto's order also comes late for Cruiser Division 8, the tough heavy cruisers Kumano, Mogami, Mikuma, and Suzuya, which are assigned to bombard Midway. They turn around and are picked off by the submarine USS Tambor. An emergency turn to port is ordered, and Mogami, the rear ship, collides with Mikuma, reducing the former's speed to 12 knots, and both captains' careers to the dustbin. Mikuma and Mogami, with two destroyers, limp on while Kumano and Suzuya continue to make the great escape.

All that day, the Japanese retire, and Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance cautiously inches USS Enterprise and USS Hornet forward, probing for targets. They find none.

However, land-based bombers from Midway, 12 Marine Vindicator dive bombers, catch Mikuma at 8:05, trailing the cruiser's oil slick. The Marines fail to achieve direct hits, but Capt. Richard E. Fleming crashes on Mikuma's after turret, sending petrol flames down into the cruiser's starboard engine room, killing the entire black gang.

The two cruisers limp on slowly away.

Meanwhile, USS Yorktown drifts crewless through the night, surrounded by escort ships.

In the Aleutians, Japanese and American forces grope in the fog for each other. Six new B-17s spot a radar target on their screens and drop several tons of bombs on it. The target turns out to be the uninhabited Pribilof Islands. Five days of naval hide-and-seek begins, but nobody wins. Given the difficult Arctic climate, everyone loses.

On the Aleutian island of Kiska, Chief Aerographer's Mate (AGC) William C. House and his nine-man weather team, including their dog "Explosion", await Japanese invasion. On the nearby island of Attu, the island's 40 Aleut Indians and American schoolteacher, Foster Jones, wait in the village of Chicagof, for the Japanese. When nothing happens, Jones and his wife take to the hills, as they are broadcasting weather reports to Dutch Harbor.

The technology of killing millions of people is a problem occupying German minds. A Nazi civil servant in Berlin gives details of "technical modifications of special vehicles put into service." These are vans that drive through Poland, killing occupants with carbon monoxide. Since 1941, the memo says, "using three vehicles, 97,000 persons have been 'processed,' without any defects occurring in these vehicles." He adds, "The explosion which is known to have occurred in Chelmno should be considered an isolated case, caused by technical failure. Special instructions have been sent to the depots involved, in order to prevent such accidents in the future." One other problem, the "merchandise" in the gas van, displays a regrettable if natural "rush to the light" which hampers the efficiency of the killing procedure. This fault must be "rectified".

Gas is on the American mind, too. The US government announces that if the Japanese use poison gas (as they have in China), the US will retaliate. The Japanese are, not known to the US, researching the possibilities of bacteriological warfare in China, with Special Unit 731, that is carrying out experiments on Soviet POWs, Chinese and Manchurian civillians, and later, American, British, Dutch, and Australian POWs

Operation Birdsong kicks off between Roslavl and Bryansk, as 5,000 German troops pursue 2,500 partisans. In four weeks, 1,198 partisans are killed, for a loss of 58 dead. Even so, the Germans are not happy. "The partisans," a German officer reports, "continued their old tactic of evading, withdrawing into the forests, or moving in larger groups into the areas south and southwest of the Roslavl-Bryansk highway and into the Kletnya area." Although no further partisan attacks are reported in the area, "mines continued to be planted" and several German vehicles damaged.

The British 8th Army finally attacks the Afrika Korps in the Libya "Cauldron," in Operation Aberdeen. The attack involves several armored brigades, none of which coordinate their assaults with each other. Insufficient infantry is used to support the armor, and there is no controlling authority.

22nd Armoured Brigade's Grant tanks advance straight into a wall of steel, as 88mm Krupp guns make short work of the Grants, with their high silhouettes. 32nd Army Tank Brigade loses 50 of 70 Matilda tanks to enemy mines and guns. A German general calls this "one of the most ridiculous attacks of the campaign."

"This unpleasant turn taken by the battle," reads the British official history, "was soon realized at the Tac HQs of the 7th Armoured and 5th Indian Divisions, but each was occupied by its own problems and there was nobody in sole command to concert their actions."

That afternoon, Gen. Erwin Rommel plays his favorite card, the counterattack, and 21st Panzer Division shatters the 30th Corps, overrunning the two tactical HQs of 7th Armoured and 5th Indian. Rommel's panzers surround three Indian battalions and four artillery regiments. The Indians do indeed fight to the last man, and the 10th Indian Brigade is almost totally destroyed. Allied casualties are 6,000 men and 150 tanks. Rommel claims 4,000 PoWs.

At Bir Hacheim, the French are still holding out, after 48 hours of continuous bombardment. A German truck drives up under a white flag to demand a parley. The Foreign Legionnaire on guard is a German and he gives the Afrika Korps officer some choice vocabulary. The Nazi drives off, quite angry, and hits a mine, flipping the truck in the air. Officer and driver escape the blazing truck and flee on foot, as the Foreign Legionnaires add more derisive commentary in German.

Rommel reacts by sending in the 15th Panzer Division. The Germans and French trade artillery salvos, but the German 155 mm guns have the range. German Infantry of the 90th Light Division try to attack, but are stopped 1,500 yards away by French 75 mms and mortars.

June 6th, 1942...Spruance, noting that the only targets left are Mikuma and Mogami, hurls his remaining aircraft (24 from Enterprise, 10 homeless Yorktown planes, and Hornet's air group) at the two cruisers. The dive bombers have a field day, sending Mikuma to the bottom, and wrecking Mogami so badly she barely makes it back to Truk. US search planes find the sinking Mikuma and bring home graphic pictures of the wrecked vessel, her upperworks ablaze, torpedoes hanging out of her tubes.

Repair crews try to save USS Yorktown. The minesweeper Vireo arrives to tow away the battered carrier, and a team of volunteers goes aboard Yorktown to stop the leaks.

The Americans are doing well, when Cdr. Tanabe's I-168 pops up a periscope nearby. I-168 has been despatched by Yamamoto to administer the coup de grace to Yorktown, and with three torpedoes, exacts a small revenge for the American victory, fatally wounding the battered carrier and sinking the destroyer Hammann next to her.

At sundown, Spruance turns his force back eastwards to meet his supply tankers.

In Scapa Flow, Adm. Harold "Betty" Stark, Commander US Naval Forces Europe, conducts seabag inspection of the crew of USS Washington. All hands are in full dress. Stark walks the decks, followed by Capt. Benson and the ship's senior officers. The inspection goes off without a hitch, and Stark remarks, "Perfectly splendid!"

SS Col. Adolf Eichmann, in charge of the "Final Solution," orders the deportation of 450 Jews from Koblenz, Germany. The inmates of a nearby mental home, he adds, are to be included. He notes in his orders, to maintain secrecy and deception, that "deportation to the East" not be used in the paperwork, but the phrase, "people who emigrated elsewhere."

At Gazala in Libya, both sides gasp for breath after the Aberdeen fiasco. Rommel is down to 120 German and 60 Italian tanks, but is determined to destroy Bir Hacheim, securing his flank, before pressing on to crush the British 8th Army.