While Captain Plank was pinning his hopes on the destroyer Yukikaze, a reinforcement named Harada, who had just been assigned to the Yukikaze as a sailor, was honestly scrubbing the warship's teak deck. The destroyer Yukikaze was a lucky battleship, from the beginning of the war to the present, she has never been hit by the enemy, and the soldiers who served on her have never been killed. If it weren't for an unlucky guy who blew himself up when he went home to visit his family, he wouldn't have had a chance to get on this auspicious rui at all.

After wiping a section of deck, he looked up and found himself now standing in the bow of the ship. So he looked into the distance: in the distance was the vast black sea, and the half-moon in the sky cast the white moonlight on the undulating waves. The moonlight can be seen twinkling at the tip of the waves, which allows the sea to be distinguished from the sky.

Suddenly, he saw a thin silver line appear on the surface of the sea, and this silver line quickly stretched forward, straight towards the bow of the Yukikaze.

"Enemy attack! Torpedo! Harada shouted.

The American torpedoes are not like the 93 oxygen torpedoes of the Rì himself, and when they sail, the gas released does not melt into the seawater, so they have a more obvious track. However, in the dark night, the sailors relied on their own eyesight, and it was not easy to find it. So when Harada spotted it and screamed, the torpedo was already very close to the destroyer Yukikaze, and it was too late to make any more dodge moves. Harada watched as the torpedo slammed into the bow of the Yukikaze, and then there was a loud bang......

After the loud bang, Harada was surprised to find that the Yukikaze had not been blown in two, not even violently shaking. He was a little surprised, but the light of the fire that rose nearby immediately made him realize that the loud noise was not from the destroyer Yukikaze when it was torpedoed. Although he saw with his own eyes that the torpedo hit the Yukikaze, apparently, the torpedo malfunctioned and did not explode.

However, the enemy's submarine was not going to fire a torpedo, and not far from the Yukikaze, the Taiwa Maru was constantly burning and exploding. At the same time that the torpedo that did not explode hit the Yukikaze, another torpedo also hit the Taiwa Maru transport ship and detonated smoothly. And the ship, which was loaded with hydrogen peroxide and ammunition, immediately after such a blow, started a fire. Hydrogen peroxide quickly produced a large amount of oxygen in the fire, which made the fire more and more unstoppable, and after a while, the whole ship was plunged into a sea of fire, and then the fire detonated the ammunition loaded on the ship. The transport ship exploded right in front of Harada, and then the torn hull sank almost instantly.

The Yukikaze began to turn at an accelerated pace and rushed in the direction where the torpedo came - anti-submarine is the basic task of destroyers. At this time, a series of explosions came from another direction, obviously, there were also US submarines in the other direction, and the current transport fleet had fallen into the encirclement of the US submarine wolf pack, in the face of such wolves, the two destroyers were absolutely not enough, but it was impossible to come up with more destroyers.

It was a long night of fishing, and by the time the sun rose again over the sea level, there were only two boats left in the original formation of nine transport ships and two destroyers, the destroyer Yukikaze and the 800-ton wooden ship requisitioned from China. The rest of the ships, including another destroyer, were sent to the bottom by American submarines.

There is no way to clean the deck of the destroyer Yukikaze anymore because the deck is full of people. After the flotilla was attacked last night, the Yukikaze first threw depth charges at any position where it could be, and then, estimating that the enemy had left, it began to venture to turn on its searchlights and rescue the shipwrecked sailors.

The Yukikaze was not a big ship, and after scooping up one hundred and sixty-two sailors who had fallen overboard, her already small deck was so crowded with people that there was no place to stand. The captain had offered to transfer some of the sailors to the small wooden ship that had survived. But this decision was opposed by almost all the rescued sailors. They said one after another that they would never leave the destroyer Yukikaze, and that they would die on the Yukikaze. The legend that the Snow Wind is "auspicious" has already reached the ears of these army sailors.

Captain Terauchi Masamichi shook his head, he knew that within the navy, there was already a legend that the Yukikaze would suck the luck of his teammates, and it was said that the Yukikaze was protected by a strange force and would not be sunk no matter what, but the other friendly ships with the Yukikaze would become the substitutes for the Yukikaze, and there were noses and eyes, and this statement was really not completely unfounded, at least Terauchi Masayo had never thought about it recently, What other boat can go out with me and come back safely? Terauchi asked himself, if he was in the state of these seafarers now, he would definitely not leave the Yukikaze.

"Forget it, just let them stay on the ship." Terauchi thought, "Anyway, Iwo Jima is not far away. ”

……

This time the fleet didn't bring anything at all, and the only wooden boat that remained was a little bit of food. On Iwo Jima today, food is not the most scarce material, but the oxidizer that can be used to make oxygen and the steel and cement used to build fortifications are the most important. However, all these things sank on the road.

"It's only a little bit of it by boat, and the chance of the fleet sending it directly is too slim." Kuribayashi thought so, but he also knew that the capacity of the small boat was very limited, and it was really a big problem how many supplies could be transported to the island before the arrival of the American fleet.

Kuribayashi could only count on the small sampans that carried out the transport mission, these things were too small, and the small whole ship plus the items on it were not necessarily much more expensive than torpedoes, so the American submarines were reluctant to use torpedoes against them. But their capacity was so small that before Kuribayashi could gather enough supplies to build a bunker, the American bomber group appeared, and then the American fleet appeared.

Only three days after the New Year, Spruance's fleet attacked the mainland of Rìben. This was the first time since the Doolittle air raid that a U.S. carrier-based aircraft attacked the mainland of Rì. The purpose of the attack was to strike at the Rìben air force in the local area and prevent them from playing much of a role in the U.S. occupation of Iwo Jima.

In fact, the strike force of carrier-based aviation on airfields is very limited. Because at any given time, it is always easy for planes to find new ones, and if they do not eliminate the enemy's pilots, they will not really solve their threat to the American fleet near Iwo Jima. Therefore, Spruance did not focus his main jīng force on the ground attack at all, and his real goal was to destroy Rìben's plane and the pilots in the air.

In order to achieve this goal, and to reduce the threat to the fleet from the enemy's "kamikaze" aircraft, the cautious Spruance changed the ratio of carrier-based aircraft on the carriers, and of his twelve fleet carriers, each carrier carried an average of only 30 bombers, and the rest were almost all fighters.

However, the effect of this trap is not good, and Rì's own counterattack is very weak. So much so that Spruance finally made the judgment that it would be a waste of time to remain near the native of Rì.

Just as Spruance was teasing Rì himself near the native of Rì, William. Rear Admiral Brandi led a fire support formation consisting of 6 battleships, 12 escort carriers, 5 cruisers, and 16 destroyers also reached the waters of Iwo Jima.

……

On the morning of January 6, 1945, more than a month earlier than in history, the American artillery formation approached Iwo Jima.

The weather on this day was good, the visibility was very high, so, at a great distance, the observation posts set up on Mt. Oriba spotted the American fleet from a great distance. And issued a jǐng newspaper.

Kuribayashi Tadamichi came to the mouth of a fortification on Mt. Oriba, raised his glasses and looked out to sea. He saw that dozens of US warships were coming in a column at high speed from a distance. He could see the snow-white waves on the bows of those warships, and the black holes of the guns of the giant guns on the American warships.

"It's finally here!" Kuribayashi Tadamichi put down the binoculars and muttered.

The American warships began to turn at a distance of about seven to eight kilometers from the coast of Iwo Jima, and the column became a horizontal formation, and at the same time the speed dropped from about 20 knots to about 8 knots. If the speed is too fast, it will affect the jīng degree of shè hitting.

"General, the enemy's shelling is about to begin, you better go to the headquarters and arrange resistance in a unified manner." A young sa said to Kuribayashi Tadamichi.

Kuribayashi nodded and led the officer towards the headquarters, which was buried deeper.

At this time, the U.S. fleet was already in place, in order to ensure the shelling of the jīng degree. The battleships had already stopped, and even dropped anchor. On the battleship USS Tennessee, the barrel of the 355 mm caliber was already turned to the side, pointing towards Iwo Jima. At 8:35 a.m., the first shot of the battle was fired from the 355 mm barrel of the battleship Tennessee.

The 12 355-mm guns moved the ship to the other side for a long distance, and then returned to its original position under the tow of the anchor chain. At this time, the 14 127-mm secondary guns on the battleship also began to fire at Iwo Jima.

The shells from the battleship's main guns smashed heavily on the island after more than ten seconds, and then rose clouds of black smoke. It took a while for a dull explosion to be heard. By this time, the battleship had flattened its barrel, and the gunners were busy reloading it. Prepare for the next round of shelling.