Just when the U.S. forces on Kuah Island and Maruyama fought to the death, in the waters near Kuah Island, the Japanese Combined Fleet also fought a decisive battle with the U.S. Navy. In this battle, which is known as the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the brutal Halsey fought a battle with the Japanese Combined Fleet, which was stronger than him. As a result, the US forces sank one aircraft carrier and one destroyer, damaged one aircraft carrier, one battleship, one cruiser, and one destroyer, and lost 74 carrier-based aircraft. None of the Japanese warships were sunk, only two aircraft carriers were damaged, one cruiser and one destroyer, and 100 carrier-based aircraft were lost. Looking at the comparison of data alone, the Japanese army seems to have achieved a brilliant victory, but the injured aircraft carriers of the Japanese army need to return home for repair, and with Japan's industrial strength, these two aircraft carriers will not be able to perform combat missions for a considerable period of time. Naturally, the Japanese army's blockade of Kuah Island was broken. Due to the existence of the Kuah Island airfield and the Cactus Air Force, the air supremacy of Kuah Island is still firmly controlled by the US military, and the blockade of the Japanese troops on the island is still tight. It can be said that General Halsey gained a strategic advantage through a tactical defeat, like a chess grandmaster who played a beautiful game of discard.

After the failure of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and the general attack on Maruyama, both the Japanese and American sides assessed the current situation on Kuah Island. Two diametrically opposed views have been reached.

The Japanese base camp believed that after the Battle of Santa Cruz, the situation of the war was developing in favor of the Japanese army, and that it was only necessary to further strengthen the strength of Kuah Island to achieve the final victory. So these guys decided to transfer the 21st Brigade of the Independent \ 1 \ Ben \ Read \ Novel xstxt stationed in the East Indies to Rabaul and belong to the 17th Army, and also transferred the 51st Division in the Chinese theater to the South Pacific theater and transport the war materials needed for Kuah Island as soon as possible. On October 27, Takushiro Hattori, chief of the Operations Section of the War Department of the base camp, and Denhachi Kondo, chief staff officer, landed on Kuah Island to assist Hyakutake in formulating a battle plan and organizing the third general offensive. It is planned to send the main force of the 38th Division to Kuah Island in early November and the 51st Division to Kuah Island in early December, and then concentrate a considerable amount of heavy artillery and sufficient ammunition to launch a third general offensive in mid-to-late December.

It has to be said that the base camp that can make such judgments and plans, and the level of thinking they have reached is really beyond the reach of normal human beings. With the logistical capabilities of the Japanese army, it is extremely difficult to maintain the basic survival needs of the existing army on Kuah Island under the condition that the Cactus Air Force continues to exist, and they still want to send so many troops in one go. Do they think that the Japanese Imperial Army has chloroplasts in their bodies, and they don't need to eat every day, just drink some water and bask in the sun, and photosynthesis is enough? Don't they know the old saying that "the emperor is not a hungry soldier", or do they think that if there is an extra word "heaven" in the honorific name of Hirohito in Japan, they can ignore all the laws of the special plane of the earth?

In fact, if we look at the past records of the Japanese base camp, we can see that this is not the first time that the Japanese army, which has extremely despised logistics, has made such a decision, and Imphal is a precedent.

In the United States, whether it is Chief of Naval Operations Knox, Army Chief of Staff Marshall, or Army Air Force Commander Arnold, they all unanimously believe that the battle on Kuah Island consumes Japanese aircraft, ships, and soldiers, and will greatly weaken the Japanese defenses in other parts of the Pacific, so Kuah Island is of decisive significance to the entire war situation. The U.S. military should make good use of Kuah Island, make it a wound that can never be bandaged, and let the Japanese slowly shed their blood here. If the decision of the Japanese base camp had been known to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, they would have been willing to issue a one-ton medal to the group of Martians in the Japanese base camp.

In fact, after the victory in the naval battle, the situation of the Japanese troops on Kuah Island did not improve at all. On October 26, the Maruyama Division began to retreat. However, of all the methods of warfare, retreat is almost the most complex and dangerous. Of course, the 1st Marine Division will not let the enemy slap its ass and leave. Instead, he followed behind the ass of the Japanese and chased all the way to the tail. As a result, Maruyama lost more than half of his men on the way to retreat.

However, the number of people Maruyama brought back is smaller, which is not necessarily a bad thing for Hyakuzum: there are fewer people who go back, and there are fewer mouths to eat.

The U.S. military realized that the key to the first battle on Kuah Island was the airfield and the cactus air force on the airfield. As soon as the Battle of Santa Cruz ended, General Halsey began organizing a convoy of convoys to Kuah. In order to restore the combat effectiveness of the Cactus Air Force as soon as possible. On October 28, a group of transport ships successfully arrived on Kuah Island, unloading a batch of construction machinery, a large amount of fuel oil and aviation ammunition. On 30 October, another group of transport ships arrived on Kuah Island, bringing 155 mm M1 "Long Tom" howitzers to the Marines. The delivery of this batch of goods also further expanded the firepower advantage of the Marine Corps over the Japanese 17th Army on Kuah Island. And brought a new aircraft for the cactus - the F4U Corsair.

This is a super versatile fighter, and its arrival suddenly made those Marine pilots who envied the P-38 of the Army Aviation happy. This guy with a special inverted seagull-shaped wing has a huge 4-bladed propeller (2 meters in diameter) that no one has ever seen before. On its wings, it is equipped with four 20mm rifled guns - the Python's cannon has been famous since the P-38 on the island of Kuah made a name for itself with its 20mm Vulcan. The Navy is also envious of this, but unfortunately the Navy does not have an aircraft with an empty nose that can fit this big guy. Fortunately, the Anaconda also has a breech gun specially designed for aircraft that can only have weapons on the wings. The ballistic performance of this cannon is basically the same as that of the 20mm Vulcan, as a single-barreled cannon, her rate of fire is as high as 1300 rounds per minute, which cannot be compared with the Vulcan's 6000 rounds per minute, but compared to other single-barreled guns, this is already a high and amazing rate of fire. Even faster than the M2 aviation machine gun of a much smaller caliber. The Corsair can be equipped with 4 guns, so that all 4 guns can be fired together, and the rate of fire can also reach 5200 rounds per minute. Although this rate of fire is still a little worse than that of Vulcan, it is already a very terrible rate of fire. And due to the fact that such a gun was mounted on the wing, this also led to a significant difference in the fire of the Corsair and the P-38: the shells of the P-38 were very dense and maintained a sufficient density of fire even at great distances. The pirate's firepower will be very dense before and after the shell convergence point. However, after the converging point of the shells is exceeded, they will gradually disperse. This would have been a disadvantage, but it brought an unexpected benefit: in a small area in front of the convergence point, pirate shells would cover a sizable area, and enemy aircraft would be rained down on this area. That is, against small, highly maneuverable targets, the Corsair will have a higher hit rate than the P-38. And the flight performance of the Corsair was even more enviable: it was close to the climb rate of the P-38, and the level flight speed of up to 680 km/h (the later modifications were even faster), which was unrivaled at the time. This, combined with excellent roll and acceleration, a fairly good hovering (certainly not comparable to the Japanese planes that only circled) and excellent dive performance, all this makes it a very formidable fighter, and the Corsair's merits are by no means only, it also has the potential to be a bomber, even a dive bomber. He can hang a 1000-pound bomb and dive to bomb the target at a large angle of more than 70 degrees. In this way, even if the opponent is a battleship with thick skin and thick flesh, you have to be careful when you see it.

At the suggestion of the HNA and Marine Corps Aviation, the Army Airlines' P-38 and their newly acquired F4U conducted a series of confrontation exercises. At first, the Army was able to take advantage of the opponent's lack of understanding of the aircraft's performance, but as time went on, the side using the F4U gradually began to gain an advantage. Later, as long as air combat was conducted at altitudes below 20,000 feet (in the Pacific, air combat was at medium and low altitudes), the P-38 had little chance of winning, even if it was piloted by Army Avian ace Ron or Captain Foss.

Of course, if you are like the staff officers of the Japanese General Staff Headquarters, you will only be in front of your own people, and it is nothing. In front of the Japanese, the cow is the real cow. Such an opportunity soon appeared: at 2:35 p.m. on 7 November, reconnaissance planes spotted 11 Japanese destroyers in the "trough sea" ready for evening transport, and the pirates had an opportunity to test their skills.

Just after Maruyama's defeat, the 1st Marine Division launched a counteroffensive, relying on ample supplies and strong firepower, to capture a Japanese position at Cape Cruise in one fell swoop. In the face of the offensive of the American army, Baiwu had to ask the base camp for more personnel and supplies. However, because the air supremacy of Kuah Island is firmly in the hands of the US military, it is basically impossible for transport ships and the like to arrive safely. The Japanese could only use high-speed destroyers to use the night time to do the work of transport ships. But the load of the destroyer is limited, and there is very little that can be carried through, and there is not a single heavy weapon. From 2 to 10 November, the Japanese dispatched 65 destroyers and 2 cruisers to transport troops and supplies to Kuah Island. That's what the destroyers that have been spotted now are doing just that.

Ron gave an order, and 8 SBDs, 8 TBFs, and 15 new F4U all set off to watch the Japanese warship with bombs. Ron himself had to bring six P-38s to escort them.

By the time the reconnaissance planes appeared, several Japanese destroyers were already feeling bad. They have already begun to retreat slightly to the east. But they did not dare to really give up the transport mission, if a fleet of 11 warships was scared away by a reconnaissance plane, then the navy would not have to be laughed to death by the army.

As the old saying goes, "To die is to lose face, but to live to suffer". At 3 p.m., the group of attack aircraft spotted the formation of Japanese destroyers.

First of all, the torpedo machine launched the first round of attacks, in the face of high-speed and flexible destroyers, the attack of the torpedo machine did not achieve any effect except for disrupting the enemy's formation, but the attack of the SBD and the pirates is different, the bombs they dropped just did not hit directly, and the bombs that missed in close range can also cause damage to the destroyers with super agility and low blood skin. And if the two 500-pound bombs they dropped hit even one directly, the destroyer would probably not be far from death.

While the Japanese destroyers were busy dodging torpedoes, the SBD and pirates swooped over. Marine Corps pilot Captain James fell in love with the pirate when he first came into contact with it, and now he is taking control of this formidable warhawk whizzing down at a wide angle of 70 degrees. The enemy ship grew bigger and bigger before his eyes, and when he pressed the bomb drop button, the two 500-pound bombs left the airframe, and then James jerked the lever to level the plane. The huge overload pressed James firmly to his seat, and his eyes began to blacken. Fortunately, the process was short, and with the help of dive flaps, he quickly leveled the plane. This was from his headphones, and he heard the shouts of his comrades: "Good James, hit one directly!" ”……

When Ron left with the group, there were 4 destroyers sinking on the sea, two of which were F4U pirates. The Japanese destroyers abandoned their evening operations, and the Japanese troops on Kuah Island were going to continue to starve.

However, bombing is not a pirate's business in the end, and the real place to show the strength of pirates is air combat. And the next air battle is actually not far off.

As soon as he returned, Ron was informed that a big man would be coming to Kuah Island tomorrow to inspect it.