Since you are going to land, then land, and after you land, you will bear all the consequences!

After an altercation, a powerful resentment rose in Lieutenant General Cunningham's heart.

After the battle began, although the fleet was not attacked by Japanese planes, and the seaplanes sent to reconnoiter the nearby sea did not find any trace of the Japanese surface ship forces, Vice Admiral Cunningham was still hesitant to launch a landing operation.

The reason is simple: after receiving the report from the carrier-based aircraft unit, Cunningham had already learned that the Japanese air force on Midway was actually equipped with all fighters and a very small number of reconnaissance planes.

The US and British carrier-based aircraft and air forces were not prepared at all for such an extreme current arrangement of the Japanese army, and under the joint strangulation of the elite pilots with rich combat experience of the Japanese army and the anti-aircraft artillery fire on the island, only 17 of the 74 planes participating in the first wave of attacks returned home.

After receiving the battle damage report, Vice Admiral Cunningham couldn't help but shudder, according to this battle loss rate, even if Midway Island is captured, the aircraft carriers in his fleet will basically lose their combat effectiveness.

If the Japanese aircraft carrier formation had appeared at this time, the battle would have been a one-sided slaughter.

When Cunningham was hesitant to continue the landing operation, he was approached by Major General Johnson, commander of the 3rd Division of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Rear Admiral Johnson's intention is clear, the boys of the Marine Corps are ready, when will the landing operation be launched?

After a small argument, Major General Johnson convinced Lieutenant General Cunningham that it would be demoralizing for the troops not to attack.

With a sense of resentment, Lieutenant General Cunningham went against the inherent conservatism of the British and decided to take the risk of launching a landing battle.

Receiving orders from Vice Admiral Cunningham, the two battleships Anson and Howe led four light cruisers and six destroyers to cut through the waves and head straight for Midway.

With the 14-inch main guns and 5.25-inch secondary guns on the two battleships as the core, the naval gun group carried out a baptism of steel and fire on all the military facilities exposed to the field of vision, such as the airfield runway and the airfield buildings.

Under the gray-black smoke of gunpowder, the runway of the airport was almost completely covered with mottled craters, the airport buildings were scattered into broken pieces of wood, and several exposed anti-aircraft gun positions were also turned into craters, and the parts of the anti-aircraft guns and the flesh and blood of the gunners were scattered in the middle.

The anti-aircraft artillery fire on the British fleet was not idle, and the air force cooperated with the air force to jointly strangle the Japanese fighters in the air, and the fire of war extended from the sea and land all the way to the sky.

After more than an hour of artillery preparation, the Japanese forces at Midway were completely suppressed.

Approaching 12 o'clock in the afternoon, Lieutenant General Cunningham's vision flashed the figure of the US landing craft.

Thanks to the suppression of the Japanese artillery fire on the island by the fleet's artillery fire, the landing battle went very smoothly, and the defensive firepower of the Japanese troops on the island was very weak, and the first landing force quickly seized a beachhead, and then expanded it with the cooperation of naval guns, and continued to attack the depth of the Japanese defensive positions.

The landing battle went smoothly, and Lieutenant General Cunningham's face looked a little better, but after receiving the second battle damage report, his face instantly sank again.

Of the 78 warplanes launched in the second wave, only 26 returned.

Of the one hundred and fifty-two aircraft on four aircraft carriers in one morning's battle, only forty-three remained, less than a third of the full strength, and nine were damaged and could not participate in the subsequent battle.

There are not enough carrier-based aircraft, and the four aircraft carriers are nothing more than paper tigers that can only be used to scare people.

Fortunately, the landing was successful and no Japanese fleet was found nearby.

His fleet was relatively safe for now, and his next task was to lead the fleet back to Pearl Harbor before the Japanese fleet arrived.

For an entire afternoon, Vice Admiral Cunningham's fleet was fully cooperating with the 3rd Marine Division of the U.S. Marine Corps to suppress Japanese fire on the island.

By nightfall, the 3rd Marine Division had landed on Midway Island and had taken control of the dilapidated Japanese airfield on the island, and Major General Johnson had led the division headquarters to the island.

As night fell, the reconnaissance planes returned one after another, bringing back the good news that no Japanese surface ships had been found nearby.

Over the course of the night, the landing craft traveled back and forth between the fleet's transports and the landing site, transporting supplies from the transports to the island.

At half past five the next morning, Vice Admiral Cunningham awoke from his sleep to learn that all men and supplies had been delivered to the island and that the fleet could return.

"Our mission was accomplished, and the fleet regrouped and returned home. Let the seaplanes take off for reconnaissance, and the aircraft carriers also send reconnaissance planes, focusing on the southwest and due south directions. ”

The huge fleet regrouped, turned the ship's bow and headed for Pearl Harbor in the southeast, and in the sky, eight planes fanned out to the southwest and south.

While Vice Admiral Cunningham was having breakfast in the dining room, he didn't know that on the sea directly east of the fleet, a periscope was slowly turning as the fleet moved.

When Cunningham's fleet turns into a small black dot in the shot, the waters on the otherwise calm sea suddenly part, and a submarine rushes out of the water.

Soon, continuous radio waves flew out of the submarine.

To the southeast of Midway, about 400 nautical miles in the sea, on the aircraft carrier Zuizuru, the flagship of Japan's Second Mobile Fleet, Yamaguchi Tashi looked at the telegram in his hand and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yo Xi, Amaterasu blesses, we are not late. The British and their fleets will be our new victories, and the American troops who have landed on the islands will become the new hard labor of the Empire, and the tide of the war will be exactly according to our ······ No, it's according to the routine designed by Diablo-sama. ”

The distance from Truk Island, where the Second Mobile Fleet was based, to Midway Island was a thousand kilometers longer than the distance from Pearl Harbor to Midway, and even if it was a day earlier than Cunningham, the Second Mobile Fleet still arrived on the battlefield one day later than Cunningham's fleet, and this was also due to the fact that the transports in the Cunningham fleet were slowing down.

In the battle plan designed by Chen Dao, since it was impossible to intercept the American and British fleets halfway, he would first ask Jun to enter the urn and let the American troops successfully land on the island.

After destroying Cunningham's fleet, the second mobile fleet cooperated with the defenders on the island to catch turtles in the urn and annihilated the American troops on the island in one fell swoop.

With this idea in mind, Yamaguchi did not lead the fleet directly to Midway, but went straight to the route from Midway to Pearl Harbor, preparing to rob Cunningham's fleet halfway.

The battle proceeded in an orderly manner according to the original plan, and only the final decisive battle remained.

Nearly an hour later, an intelligence staff officer strode into the bridge of the Zuihe and excitedly shouted: "General, the reconnaissance plane has found the British fleet." ”

Yamaguchi Tawen hurriedly read the telegram, looked up and said: "Let the aviation attack, not a single one is allowed to be spared." ”

On the aircraft carriers Zuihe and Hayabusa in the fleet, 30 Zero fighters, 45 Type 97 torpedo attack planes, and 45 Type 99 dive bombers rushed out of the flight deck one after another, gathered in the sky to form a huge first attack wave, and flew in a mighty northwest direction.

About half an hour later, the same number of fighters on the aircraft carriers Xianghe and Feiying took off and formed a second attack wave to enter the battlefield.

······

Listening to the shrill sirens outside the bridge, Lieutenant General Cunningham was in despair, and the blue sky and sea instantly turned a gray that symbolized dead silence.

Turning his head to look at the adjutant, who was also pale, Lieutenant General Cunningham's voice was not emotional.

"Where did the Japanese fleet come from and why did it come so quickly?"

Cunningham was answered by a violent explosion.

Of the four surviving fighters on the four aircraft carriers in the fleet, only eleven were F4F Wildcat fighters, and the Wildcat fighters that hastily rose into the air to meet them were instantly submerged in the superior number of Zero fighter groups.

Without the interference of US fighters, the Type 99 dive bombers took the lead in attacking.

The 45 warplanes dispersed into 15 three-plane formations and rushed towards Cunningham's fleet, hitting the four aircraft carriers in the fleet.

After being attacked by two Type 99 bomber formations in succession, the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS Blauwood was the first to be shot, and a 250-kilogram armor-piercing bomb pierced the flight deck and hangar, exploding inside the hull, and then causing a fire in the hull.

The much larger aircraft carrier Indomital was hit on its heel, with four 250-kilogram armor-piercing shells in the middle and rear of the deck, one of which hit the bottom of the chimney and exploded near the boiler compartment, causing the boiler to stop working, and its speed was reduced to seven knots.

The indomitable sister ship, the aircraft carrier Dreadnought, did not escape its doom, even the serpentine movement could not dodge the bombs falling from the sky, first a bomb hit the No. 1 elevator, and then the bomb's owner, the Type 99 dive bomber, was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, crashing headlong into the flight deck, tearing a large hole more than two meters long in the deck.

The first to sink was the USS Independence-class aircraft carrier USS Copes, which was not attacked by armor-piercing shells, and it was the Type 97 torpedo attack aircraft that was eyeing it.

After successfully avoiding two torpedoes with the help of a serpentine movement, the port side engine room of the Copes, which had run out of luck, was hit by a Type 91 torpedo.

The hull, converted from the Cleveland-class light cruiser, simply could not withstand the damage of the Type 91 torpedo, and nearly a quarter of the hull was almost shattered by the explosion and quickly sank to the bottom of the sea.

The light aircraft carrier Copes had just sunk, and a series of violent explosions suddenly occurred inside the hull of the sister ship of the USS Blauwood, not far from it, flames and black smoke erupted from various cracks in the battleship, and countless large and small steel fragments flew into the sky and fell to the surface of the sea.

After the violent explosion, the Blauwwood, whose ammunition depot was detonated by a fire, followed in the footsteps of the Cowpeth and plunged straight to the dark bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

On the battleship Anson, a series of bad news reached Cunningham's ears one after another.

The USS Copes sank······

The USS Blauwood sank······

The captain of the Indomitable asks to abandon the ship······

The boiler compartment No. 1 of the battleship Anson was torpedoed and stopped······

"Let the damage management department rush to repair it, and immediately send a report to Pearl Harbor that our fleet was ambushed by the Japanese fleet and is engaged in a final battle······ The Japanese fleet came too fast, beyond our prediction, and I suspect that the enemy knew our battle plan in advance, so let the intelligence department thoroughly investigate it, and we must investigate to the end and avenge us. ”

Cunningham's last telegram had just been sent when a black dot appeared in the southeastern sky, and the second wave of Japanese attack arrived on the battlefield.

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PS: There is still a chapter at ten o'clock in the evening.