Knox is a deeply, deeply conservative Republican, the wealthy head of a major newspaper chain in Chicago, (in fact, he was Landon's running mate in 1936), and he and the arch-liberal Wallace have butted heads on more than one occasion. Bob Taft has no interest in fighting dirty; it violates his deeply held political beliefs, many of which are slightly to the right of his late father, and it's bad politics to boot. Henry Wallace, however, with his extensive interest in South America, calls in the foreign ministers of nearly every nation on the continent (consulting but ignoring Hull, who he regards as a bigoted old fossil) and strongly invites them to go one step further, to declare war on the Axis powers. Angry and humiliated, the normally courtly Stimson pens a blistering attack on Wallace, which is published quite happily by Colonel Frank Knox's Chicago papers. The Food for Victory Commission is in; most people not opposed to an expanded government in general like the idea of consolidated agriculture, it promises quite a bit of profit. Instead of four carriers sunk in a matter of minutes, the IJN loses the carriers Akagi and Soryu, while the Kaga's air patrol is so thoroughly savaged that they'll be out of action for quite some time.
Fresh from the crushing at the Coral Sea, the Japanese pilots are much more aggressive, determined to avenge their brethren, and the Americans don't get the good luck of catching much of the enemy air cover on the deck, refueling. Airline "hobbyists" hack the rules of frequent flier miles to get lots of air travel without ever needing to pay. Wallace is a businessman, though, and knows how to negotiate with inferiors; he offers them something of a national bribe, lots and lots of Lend-Lease aid, to make up for the economic disruption caused by the loss of German trade. To replace him, Wallace opts to go outside the Department altogether; to Paul McNutt, former Governor of Indiana and High Commissioner of the Philippines, current director of the Federal Security Administration. Plus, he has extensive experience as the former Ambassador to Great Britain. To head the new Labor Relations Board, Taft picks Secretary of Labor Fred Hartley, the former Congressman from New Jersey. Surprisingly, Taft keeps Robert Wagner on as Secretary of War, saying (with rather pointed references to the Wallace administration) that he has no desire to change horses in mid-stream, or at least in wartime.
The riots are small, though, and poorly organized, after all, no actual politician wants to end the war, especially not with the Allied toehold in Sicily and the Russian summer offensive in the Ukraine doing so well. Wallace continues to stubbornly insist that every nation involved in the secret talks must declare war, or they'll all look weak, finally going to so far as to make intimations of "cleaning house in the Americas" to Castillo's representative. Cordell Hull comes near to resigning; in two months Wallace has undone almost a decade of his life's work, and Wallace looks, perhaps unfairly, like an idiot, more so after he continues to insist he was right all along. America in general, and President Henry Wallace in particular, with his shakeup at the Department of the Navy, looks very good indeed. After arriving in the combat area and assisting with attempted repairs of the Lexington, Captain Mason of the Hornet, the senior officer of the arriving fleet (Captain Harriman of the Enterprise being very new, he just was delivered to the ship the Tuesday before.) takes the two fresh, undamaged carriers west, to hunt the Shokaku and Zuikaku. Just before the Fuhrer was rushed out of the command pillbox, unconcious from shock and with a sucking wound to the chest, a volley from a dozen SS SG-44s took Breitenbuch in the chest, killing the young officer instantly.
Castillo, with his new, solid powerbase, takes the opportunity to purge an ambitious young colonel named Juan Peron. With Latin America messed with for no particular reason yet again, a young Under-Secretary of State named Nelson Rockefeller, already uncomfortable in the less than bipartisan Wallace administration, hands in his resignation. Two cruisers and a handful of escorts go down in a matter of twenty minutes, and wounded Shokaku is struck again and again, until, with a great groan, the engines fail entirely, just as water begins pouring in through a dozen holes. Cordell Hull comes near to resigning, yet again, when President Wallace (though not publicly, thank God, he thinks as he throws an empty bottle across the room) puts strong pressure on the British government, along with Chiang Kai-Shek, to simply grant India the independence they want, and not horse around with the Cripps offer extended earlier in the year. He could probably get away with creating many programs by executive order, but he wants his Hundred Days, he wants to show America that he's as good as FDR when it comes to handling Congress. McNutt is a very, very good administrator, (his enemies called him "The Hoosier Hitler" for his organization abilities) though, and he quickly helps rebuild the plans, so the strike is postponed until the first week of May, when the Hornet and Enterprise will launch the planes of General James Doolittle.
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