The Moscow Option (21 page)

The score was one carrier apiece.

By this time Yamamoto and Nagumo had launched a second strike from their three functional carriers, and were preparing to receive the enemy’s second blow. News of the
Hornet
’s demise was compensation for the loss of the
Kaga
. The odds, in fact, had shortened. Now it was seven against three, and planes from all seven carriers were now en route for the three Americans. It only remained to beat off the last air attack.

The sky above Yamamoto’s fleet was clear, and the American pilots had no trouble identifying the three carriers amidst the ring of warships. This advantage was offset, though, by the warning it allowed the radar-less Japanese of the approaching attack. Every available Zero was soon airborne and the scenes of the previous hour were re-enacted. The ponderous torpedo-bombers, this time arriving ahead of the dive-bombers, went down in flames one by one to the combined firepower of the fighters and warships. The dive-bombers, which had strayed off-course, arrived ten minutes later, and the Zeros could not gain altitude quickly enough to prevent several screeching down against
Hiryu
and
Soryu
. The latter managed to escape any serious damage, but three 500lb bombs hit the
Hiryu
’s flight deck, starting blazing fires. These were extinguished without too much difficulty, but the carrier’s ability to launch or receive planes was at an end as far as this operation was concerned. By 12.55 the fleet was once more in formation, the surviving American planes disappearing in the direction of their own carriers. They were not to find them. A hundred miles to the north-east the final act was beginning.

At 12.40 the last of the aircraft returning from the first American strike were touching down on the decks of
Yorktown
,
Enterprise
and
Lexington
. The flight-leaders confirmed their earlier report that an Akagi-class carrier had been rendered non-operational, and probably sunk. Halsey informed them that the second strike had reported destroying another carrier. He intended to get the other two.

Fletcher did not agree, and advised a tactical withdrawal. He was not as convinced as his superior - or not so determined to assume - that these four carriers were the only Japanese carriers in the area. Where was the rest of the known Japanese carrier strength? The score at this point was two to one in the Americans’ favour; surely this was the prudent moment to withdraw. Midway would be lost, but in the long run the three surviving carriers were more vital to the defence of Hawaii, and America itself, than one island outpost.

Unknown to either him or Halsey it was too late to avert the incoming attacks. But the fact remains that had Halsey listened to his second-in-command the catastrophe might have proved less complete. He did not listen, preferring to order a third strike on to the flight decks, thereby packing them with planes full of fuel and high explosives. It was an invitation to disaster.

At 13.09
Yorktown
’s radar -
Enterprise
’s, had been put out of action in the previous attack - picked up the Japanese planes closing in from the south-west. The American fighters scrambled into the air, but there was no time to launch the full-loaded bombers.

For the moment it did not seem to matter. The battle in the air went well for the Americans. Yamamoto’s caution had deprived the Japanese bombers of sufficient fighter support, radar had given the Americans ample warning, and the less experienced pilots under the veteran Fuchida found it hard to pierce the defences. Only a few hits were scored on the three carriers and none proved crippling. The surviving Japanese attackers turned for home, leaving the Americans with the brief illusion that the battle was going their way.

But at this moment a stunned radar operator on
Yorktown
picked up another flight of aircraft approaching from the south-east. Fletcher’s fears had been justified. It must have been little consolation. The fleet was scattered across the sea in the aftermath of the attack; its fighter cover, in any case thinned almost to exhaustion, was dispersed and lacking altitude. The three carriers were virtually naked.

The thoughts passing through Admiral Halsey’s mind at this moment will never be known. In minutes his expectations of victory must have turned to the nightmare knowledge of certain defeat. He did not have to suffer such thoughts for long. The Pearl Harbor veterans from
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
came diving out of the sun at the helpless carriers, lancing in across the waves through the broken screen of covering ships.
Enterprise
was immediately hit by at least five 500lb bombs - three on the flight deck, one on the bridge, one on the rear of the superstructure - and two torpedoes close together amidships. There were several large explosions in quick succession and one enormous convulsion. A Japanese pilot later likened the sound to that of a motorbike revving up, and then bursting into life. Or, as in
Enterprise
’s case, into death. Within five minutes of receiving the first bomb the ship was on her way to the bottom, the flaming flight deck hissing into the sea. It was the fastest sinking of a carrier in naval history. There were only fourteen survivors.

Yorktown
was slightly more ‘fortunate’. Also claimed by several bombs and at least one torpedo the carrier shuddered to a halt, listing at an alarming angle. Fletcher had time to order the ship abandoned, and to transfer his flag to the destroyer Russell.
Yorktown
went under at 14.26.

A mile away the
Lexington
was also in her death agonies. The target of
Ryujo
and
Junyo
’s less experienced pilots, she had only received three bomb hits. But on decks strewn with inflammable material it was enough. The fires, once started, proved impossible to control, and quickly spread down through the hangar deck. The engines were unaffected, but the engine-room was cut off by the flames. Explosion followed explosion, slowly draining the giant carrier of life. At 14.55 the ‘Lady Lex’ followed her sister carriers to the bottom.

Their demise was not the end of the battle. In the daylight hours still remaining, and through the next day, the Japanese planes energetically attacked the American cruisers and destroyers as they fled eastwards for the shelter of the planes based on Oahu. Four heavy cruisers were sunk, the last of which, the
Pensacola
, went down at 13.30 on 29 May, some ten miles south of Disappearing Island. It was an apt postscript to the disappearance of an effective American naval presence in the Pacific Ocean.

What is the use of running when we are not on the right road?
German proverb

I

Chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Franz Halder glanced out of the car window at the sunlight shimmering on the waters of the Mauersee and then turned back to the meteorological reports in his lap. In the eastern Ukraine the roads were drying; another two weeks and the panzers would be mobile along the entire Eastern Front.
Fall Siegfried
, scheduled to begin three weeks hence on 24 May, would not have to be postponed.

The car, en route from OKH headquarters at Lotzen to the Führer’s headquarters near Rastenburg, left the sparkling Mauersee behind and dived into the dark pine forest. Halder looked at the OKW memorandum. Apparently Rommel was to assault Tobruk the following morning. With the forces at his disposal - forces, Halder reminded himself, that he could well make use of in Russia - he should have no trouble in taking the fortress. And then Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and the meeting with Kleist and Guderian somewhere in Persia? It was possible, perhaps even probable. Halder was not a man given to ‘grand plans’ - they smacked of amateurism - but he had to admit that this one had more than an air of credibility.

It would have been strange if he had thought differently, for half the ‘Grand Plan’ was in the briefcase on the seat beside him. Based on the unconsummated sections of
Fall Barbarossa
, drafted by the OKH operations section to Halder’s specifications, redrafted to the Führer’s specifications, tested by war games at Lotzen,
Fall Siegfried
was designed to end the war against the Soviet Union and create the conditions for the destruction of British power in the Middle East. It was a lot of weight for a single plan to carry.

For five months the front line in the East had barely shifted. The first and most important reason for this was the unreadiness of the Wehrmacht to fight a war in Russian winter conditions. The enemy might have been virtually nonexistent on some fronts, but tanks do not run in sub-zero temperatures without anti-freeze, without calks or snow-sleeves for their tracks, without salve for frozen telescopic sights. The supply system could not carry these and other essentials, plus food, clothing, ammunition and fuel a thousand miles from Germany overnight. Something had to be sacrificed, and OKH preferred to forgo a few hundred square miles of snow rather than have its forces freeze to death. As a result of this policy the Germans had suffered few casualties during the winter, either from the winter or the cold.

The second reason for the Army’s immobility during these months was a need for time to make up the losses incurred in the summer and autumn of 1941. Compared to the Red Army figures Wehrmacht casualties had been light, but they still amounted to over three-quarters of a million men and a vast amount of hard-to-replace military equipment. The panzer divisions had suffered particularly badly from the appalling road conditions, and many more tanks had been written off in this way than had been put out of commission by enemy action. Bringing these divisions back to full strength occupied the tank-factories and the training instructors for the better part of the winter.

If the condition of the Army necessitated a breathing- space, its leaders were convinced that they could get away with such a period of inactivity. The revised estimates of Soviet strength submitted to Halder by General Kinzel, head of Foreign Armies (East) Intelligence, showed that the 1941 estimates had been grossly optimistic. There had been a fifty per cent error in the manpower figure, and the extent of industrialisation in the areas beyond the Volga had not been realized. But, and here was the encouragement for Halder, Kinzel reported that the losses and disorganisation suffered as a result of the German advance had dealt a temporarily crippling blow to Soviet war industry. It was true that the enemy had managed to evacuate a large number of industrial concerns to the Volga-Ural region, but these could not possibly be fully operational before the summer. It was extremely doubtful, Kinzel concluded, that any significant rise in the Red Army’s strength would occur before the autumn. The seizure of the Caucasus oilfields, he added in an appendix, would greatly retard a possible Soviet recovery.

So, Halder had reckoned, the Army in the East could afford to sit still for five months. In that time he had tried to do something about German armament production, though with little success. The German war industry, contrary to popular myth but consistent with the general economic chaos of National Socialism, was, with the exception of its Italian counterpart, the most inefficient of those supplying the war. The whole business, in true Nazi fashion, was shared about between the interlocking baronies which made up the German leadership. These worthies - Todt, Goering, Funk, Thomas at OKW, Milch at OKL - competed for resources, priority, prestige, the Führer’s ear, and between them achieved far less than their more single- minded counterparts in Kuybyshev and the West. Halder, who had no aptitude for threading his way through such a jungle hierarchy, could only attempt to win over the head monkey. But Hitler, as already noted, had no interest in such mundane matters as long-term production statistics. Porsche’s designs for giant tanks and miniature tanks excited him, but they were only designs. Halder wanted more Panzer IIIs and IVs, not super-weapons for winning the war in 1947. He would get neither. The one time Hitler deigned to speak on the subject it was to assure his Chief of the General Staff that the war would be over by 1943, so there was no cause to worry. How this tied in with Porsche’s drawing-board fantasies was not explained. Halder was sent back to Lotzen to scheme the final defeat of the Soviet Union in 1942.

The original
Barbarossa
directive had laid down that ‘the final objective of the operation is to erect a barrier against Asiatic Russia on the general line Volga-Archangel’, but had made no mention of the Caucasus. Halder, however, was committed to the conquest of the Caucasus by the Karinhall ‘Grand Plan’ decision. And he doubted if an advance to the Volga would produce results to justify the probable cost. There were no important industrial centres apart from Gorkiy west of the great Volga bend. Accordingly he ignored the Archangel-Volga line, and drafted a plan for the conquest of the Caucasus. Army Group Centre would make only a limited advance, Army Group North would take Vologda and Konosha and so cut the railways which carried Allied supplies from Murmansk and Archangel to the Volga-Ural region. Army Group South, with the bulk of the panzer forces, would move south-eastwards down the Don-Donetz land corridor, secure the land- bridge between Don and Volga west of Stalingrad, and then advance south into the Caucasus.

This plan was presented to Hitler at Berchtesgaden on 4 April. It was not well received. Unknown to Halder, Jodl had also prepared a
Siegfried
and Hitler had found his more amenable. Halder was treated to its salient points, though not the name of its author, and was told to redraft the OKH plan with the following objectives: the Caucasus and the attainment of a line Lake Onega-Vologda-Gorkiy- Saratov-Astrakhan. He should bear in mind that a further advance to the Urals might prove necessary.

Hitler gave no reasons for this obsession with miles of steppe and forest. Instead he treated Halder to a lecture on the German need for the Caucasian oil. The Chief of the General Staff noted in his diary that ‘the Führer’s accident does not seem to have dimmed his appetite for statistics’.