Following the occupation of the islands of New Britain and Bougainville in Australian territory, and Lae and Salamoa on the island of New Guinea, the British felt that the situation was dire because the IDF had made a direct threat to Port Moresby, located in the south-east of New Guinea. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info It is an outpost for the Australian army, and if the Wehrmacht conquers the Solomon Islands, the sea route from Hawaii to Australia for the British army is in danger of being cut off. It is a mortal threat to the supply bases of the British army in the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji Islands, Samoa Islands, etc. In the face of such a grim reality, the decision-making group of the British army also had different opinions, and even the idea of defeatism appeared. Australian policymakers intend to stop resisting while the Defence Forces continue their offensive and retreat to the Brisbane Line, giving up the northern half of Australia to the Chinese.

Long before this period, Roosevelt and Churchill had decided that Australia had to be saved in order to use it as a springboard for a counterattack against China. For this reason, the United States and Britain agreed to transfer two of the three elite divisions of Australia, which had been fighting in North Africa, back to Australia, and General Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army, also ordered the 32nd and 41st divisions of the US Army to be transported to Australia, as well as air defense detachments, engineering detachments, and support units, totaling 100,000 troops. General Marshall also ordered the rapid establishment of an Australian-based air force with eight battalions, keeping the number of bombers and fighters on the front line at 535. Chief of Naval Operations Ernest ?? Admiral King also sent six destroyers, a submarine supply ship, six S-class submarines, and stepped up the repair of 20 warships and submarines parked at bases in Australia, determined to keep Port Moresby. In order to redeem the inferiority, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral King* pointed out that the Pacific War was to a large extent a naval battle, and the Pacific Theater should be commanded by a single admiral. After joint research with Secretary of War Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Knox, Army Chief of Staff Marshall, and others, the US-British Joint Staff decided to divide the vast Pacific Ocean into two independent theaters: one was the Central Pacific Theater, which was operated by Chester at Pearl Harbor. w?? Admiral Nimitz* commanded; The other was the Southwest Pacific Theater, commanded by Army General MacArthur in Melbourne. In addition, Britain and the United States have also stepped up diplomatic coordination with Japan, trying to pull this frontier country and put a cobra on the doorstep of the Chinese, so as to contain part of China's armed forces for the two theaters. Britain was determined to turn the tide of the war from defeat to victory. It's just that they couldn't have imagined that the Chinese Defense Force, which they were waiting for, did not appear, but another vicious dog that Britain and the United States thought was containing China quietly stared at the throat of the former master.

Part of Japan's plan was to suspend trade negotiations with the United States before (and must be) before the attack. As of December 7, the diplomats of the Japanese ambassador to Washington had been in extensive discussions with the US Foreign Ministry, seemingly intending to negotiate with the US consortium not to continue sucking blood from Japan, which of course was obviously unreliable. Before the attack, the Japanese ambassador had obtained a long telegram from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had been ordered to deliver it to Secretary of State Cordell before the attack (1 p.m. Washington time). Hull. However, the ambassador's staff failed to decode and print the long letter in time. Finally, this declaration of war was not submitted to the United States until after the attack. This delay added to the anger in the United States over the attack, and it was the main reason why President Roosevelt called the day "a shameless day." Nagumo Kami* will seem to agree with this view.

On the Yamato, the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Nagumo Tadaichi did not have the joy and excitement before the sneak attack was about to begin, he just said to his chief of staff, Kusaka: "I'm afraid we have awakened a sleeping giant, and now he is full of anger." ”

In fact, this credential was decoded by the United States before it was submitted to the United States. George?? Catlett?? Marshall immediately sent an urgent warning to Hawaii after reading the letter (but it could be sent without the word 'urgent.') However, due to the confusion in the internal transmission system of the US military, the cable had to be conveyed through the Civil Telecommunications Bureau. It took hours after the attack for a young Japanese-American postman to deliver the telegram to U.S. military headquarters.

During a spring exercise in 19, when Nagano saw that the air force had achieved satisfactory results in training, he said to Senior General Nagumo: "The training was successful, and I think it is possible to attack Hawaii." From this point on, Nagumo began to envision the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Based on the strategic thinking of Heihachiro Togo's success in one fell swoop, he believed that in order to win a war with the powerful United States and Britain, it was necessary to strike suddenly, strike first, and collapse the other side at the beginning of the war. The bold idea of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was an inevitable product of China's strategic thinking of raiding the Combined Fleet.

The purpose of the attack on Pearl Harbor was to (at least temporarily) eliminate the main forces of the US Navy in the Pacific. Minoru Genda, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, himself believed that a successful attack would bring only a strategic advantage for about a year. From January 20, Japan began planning an attack on Pearl Harbor to gain a strategic advantage, and after some discussion and controversy within the Navy, the Japanese Navy began to conduct rigorous training for this operation from mid-year.

Pearl Harbor is located in the Hawaiian Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean between Japan and the United States, about 3,500 nautical miles from Japan and about 2,000 nautical miles from the continental United States, and is the most important base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. On January 7, the twentieth year of the Taichu Dynasty, Minoru Genda wrote a letter to the Minister of the Navy and Shiro Kawako, formally proposing the idea of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. After that, together with several staff officers, he secretly worked out the "Z" combat plan. In June, when the formal plan was proposed, there was a debate in the upper echelons of Japan, with some people not believing that the huge fleet would cross 3,500 nautical miles without being detected, and doubting the feasibility of the plan. Japan approved this plan in mid-October in order to "move eastward". As a result, Tadaichi Nagumo, under the instruction of the Military Command Department, commanded the Combined Fleet to choose Kagoshima Bay, which is similar to Pearl Harbor, and began thorough preparations and rigorous simulation training.

In the early morning of December 7, the twentieth year of the first century, 183 planes of the first attack wave took off from six aircraft carriers, pierced through the clouds and fog, and pounced on Pearl Harbor. At 7:53, a signal of "Tiger, Tiger, Tiger" was sent back, indicating that the surprise attack was successful. After that, 168 aircraft of the second attack wave attacked again. The American troops, who rushed to the battle, suffered heavy losses, of the 8 battleships, 4 were sunk, one ran aground, and the rest were seriously damaged; Six cruisers and three destroyers were damaged, 188 aircraft were destroyed, and thousands of officers and men were killed or wounded. Japan lost only 29 aircraft and 55 pilots, as well as several pocket submarines.

A Japanese naval fleet of six aircraft carriers left Japan for Pearl Harbor under the command of Vice Admiral Tadaichi Nagumo. On the way, the fleet maintained complete radio silence. In addition to these six aircraft carriers, the Japanese fleet included two battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers, and three submarines. In addition, eight tankers and two destroyers sailed to the North Pacific to wait.

The fleet's planes bombed all U.S. airfields on Oahu and many ships anchored in Pearl Harbor, including the battleships there. Almost all the aircraft on the ground were destroyed, and only a few were able to take off and return fire. 12 battleships and other ships were sunk or damaged. 188 aircraft were destroyed, 155 aircraft were damaged, and 2403 Americans were killed. Thousands of people died when the battleship Arizona alone exploded and sank.

And the first shot and the first casualty of this battle was the attack of an American destroyer on a Japanese mini-submarine. That miniature submarine was sunk. The Japanese dispatched a total of five mini-submarines that intended to cast torpedoes on American ships after the air raids began, all five of which were later sunk, and only four of them were later found. Only one of the ten sailors on the five ships survived, and Kazuo Sakumaki, the first American prisoner of World War II, was captured.

The Japanese aircraft carriers that participated in the attack were the Akagi (flagship), Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shozuru and Zuizuru. The six aircraft carriers carried a total of 414 carrier-based aircraft, including fighters, torpedo bombers, dive bombers and horizontal bombers, of which 55 were destroyed. The planes attacked in two waves. Lieutenant General Nagumo decided to abandon the third wave of attacks and withdraw the main forces.

13:00: The captain of the Japanese flying team discusses the possibility of a third wave of attacks with Lieutenant General Nagumo.

13:30: Nagumo orders to return.

16:25: The Governor of Hawaii signs the Wartime Act, the smoke of Pearl Harbor clears, and Japan is on the same path as the previous one in the Pacific War.

"Target confirmed, CV2 USS Lexington."

"Target confirmed, CV3 USS Saratoga."

"The attack command is confirmed, and the countdown to the attack is 30 seconds."

In the waters of the Aleutian Islands, far from Pearl Harbor, two American aircraft carriers were sailing south in battle formation, and they already knew what had happened to Pearl Harbor, and at the moment they were surrounded by only 2 cruisers and 6 destroyers. The Combined Fleet has returned to the west, and the US aircraft carrier formation should be very safe; in fact, these two aircraft carriers have won many awards in several naval battles that have followed, and although they have both sunk in the ocean, they have also achieved fruitful results. But now they have been included in the cross mirror by a group of undersea killers, and there is no chance to conquer the sea frontier again.

Eight "Tigerfish" 533-mm heavy wire-guided torpedoes hit the starboard side of two aircraft carriers, and thousands of tons of seawater filled the watertight compartment on one side in a matter of minutes, and the hull was tilted up to 24 degrees, leaving no choice but to abandon the ship. By the time several destroyers were dropping dozens of depth charges in all directions to set off monstrous waves, the four general-class submarines belonging to the "Whale Shark" special submarine formation of the Chinese National Defense Forces: the 648 "Meng Tian," the 649 "Wang Qian," the 650 "Yingbu," and the 651 "Zhang Han" had quietly withdrawn with the ocean current to the southwest.