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WWII On This Day: September 2

What happened on September 2 during World War II? This date brings together 2 events from 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1944
Radosław Group insurgents after emerging from the Old Town sewer route at Warecka Street in the early morning of 2 September 1944.
Radosław Group insurgents after emerging from the Old Town sewer route at Warecka Street in the early morning of 2 September 1944. Jerzy Tomaszewski / Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe 37-1601-10 · Public domain (Poland) Source
The Warsaw Rising

Two insurgent districts are lost

German troops occupied the Old Town after the organised insurgent force completed its withdrawal through the sewers. Wounded insurgents and civilians left in hospitals and shelters were murdered at several locations during the takeover. Sadyba also fell on 2 September, shrinking the southern insurgent perimeter around Mokotów. The Rising now depended on Żoliborz, the two Śródmieście sectors, Mokotów and the remaining river-side positions.

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1945
USS Yorktown under attack by Japanese torpedo bombers during the Battle of Midway, 4 June 1942.
USS Yorktown under torpedo attack, 4 June 1942 · US Navy · NARA · Public domain · Source
The Battle of Midway

What Midway did and did not decide

Midway ended the Japanese offensive phase and removed the striking force that had run unchecked from Hawaii to Ceylon in six months. After it, Japan never again mounted a carrier operation of that weight, and the initiative in the Pacific passed permanently to the United States. It did not by itself decide the war. That was settled by industrial capacity and by the attrition of Guadalcanal and the Solomons over the following eighteen months, where Japanese naval aviation was actually destroyed. The United States commissioned more fleet carriers in 1943…

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