"What the hell do you want?" Yamamoto Isoroku was very patient, and after seven days, it was not until the evening of October 5, when the enthusiasm brought by the naval celebration had basically dissipated, that he went to see Horikichi again, but the first words of the meeting were very polite. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

"Can't you understand my thoughts?"

"I understand, how can I not understand it? Even if others don't understand, it's not that I don't understand. Yamamoto's tone was sincere, "I understand your eagerness for change, but you are asking for too fast and too quickly, and you should take your time, and many of the methods you have taken seem too dangerous and rash to me. ”

"So you still don't understand." Horikichi replied slowly.

"You!" Yamamoto Fifty-six was immediately angry, but the next second immediately became calm, "Okay, I don't understand, you tell me what to do?" ”

"This is a little bit of what I wrote on the road, and I plan to hand it over with the right to play on the curtains." Horikichi is not verbose with Yamamoto, and he doesn't care about the other party's attitude - the two are so familiar that they don't need hypocritical politeness many times, and since they have been appointed as the marshal and admiral, this curtain will naturally have to be used.

"On the Reform of the Wartime System of the Imperial Navy." Yamamoto Isoroku unconsciously began to read, "In order to conform to the trend of the world, enhance the combat power of the navy, and ensure the future survival and development of the empire, I propose the following proposals for the reform of the naval system......

After a few minutes, he finished reading it, shook his head and said with a wry smile: "You finished the work that should be done for me, or I will resign tomorrow, and you will take over this replacement?" ”

"Hehe, it's impossible......"

"It's almost impossible for you to ...... these reform regulations," Yamamoto Fifty-six flicked the report paper, "If you don't say anything else, the first one can't be passed, you're digging up the lifeblood of the fleet faction." ”

The first idea of reform proposed by Hori was to extend the scope of officer selection to the Naval Aviation School, stipulating that graduates of the school could enjoy the same qualifications as graduates of the Naval Academy, and at the same time requiring that the scale of teaching in the aviation school be expanded by two to three times on the existing basis.

As the cradle of Japanese naval officers, the Etajima Naval Academy has fewer than 200 graduates a year, and in many cases even less than 150 people, and it is these 100 or so people who have to take on various positions including administrative staff positions, navigation, torpedoes, gunnery, and submarine units in the surface fleet. At present, many of the pilots who serve as officers in the air force are created after they have become monks halfway through their careers, and this has given rise to a very strange situation: Due to the great loss of aviation personnel, many of the officers in charge of aviation operations in the combined fleet are not from aviation sections, in other words, they are completely laymen who command insiders.

To put it mildly, there was a mine warfare expert like Nagumo Tadaichi who served as the commander of the mobile fleet, but to put it mildly, a large number of aviation officers, including shore-based air forces, were actually trained according to traditional surface ship officers. This is not to say that surface ship officers must not be able to command air forces, otherwise there would be no possibility for Yamamoto, Horikiyoshi, Tsukahara, and so on, but in Hori's view, the consumption of pilots has risen in a straight line, and the consumption of officers, especially experienced middle- and low-level officers, is extremely high -- the rate of loss far exceeds the rate of loss of officers of surface ships, and if we insist that aviation officers can only be selected from naval academies, two evil consequences will occur.

First, the level of aviation officers is getting worse and worse, they are becoming more and more inexperienced, and even their qualifications are getting younger and younger;

Second, excellent aviation non-commissioned officers have not been promoted for a long time, which not only buries talents, but also causes command failures.

"You can imagine such a scenario, if the old system is continued, it seems natural for an excellent pilot like Sadaaki Akamatsu to obey experienced officers like Genda and Murata Shigeharu, and he himself will not have any opinions, but if he is asked to obey a newcomer who has just graduated and becomes an officer just because he has a naval academy diploma in two days, will he have no guilt in his heart?"

Horiyoshi's thinking is very clear: in peacetime, the promotion of soldiers depends on qualifications and diplomas, but in wartime, there is only one standard for the promotion of soldiers, which is to look at war merits! As long as you have the ability and achievements, regardless of whether you have a formal diploma or not, you can become an officer or even a general.

It seems that this is a one-size-fits-all principle, but in the Japanese Navy, which has long adhered to the system of annual merit and hammocks, it is obviously extremely deviant. More importantly, Yamamoto knew very well that King Fushimi Miyahiro Kyoshi would never agree to such an operation, and the maintenance of the system was just an excuse, and the deeper reason was that if the graduates of aviation schools were also qualified to serve as naval officers in the future, then the foundation of the fleet would be hollowed out - less than 200 sailors graduated a year, and at least 1,000 aviation schools graduated a year, so you don't need to think about it to know whose world it is in the future. What's more, the naval academy is not monolithic, there are also many aviation factions.

In a word, if this resolution passes, the naval traditionalists will be completely finished.

The second reform proposed by Horiyoshi was to suspend the rotation system for officers below the rank of general in wartime unless necessary. In peacetime, in order to enhance the practical and comprehensive ability of officers, the navy usually implements a multi-post rotation system, which basically lasts for two years, and rotates posts in a few months at a short time, and the starting point is good; in peacetime, a large number of all-rounders have been trained, and a small but capable team has been maintained, but the drawbacks brought about by wartime are very serious.

Taking the Yamato as an example, only 2 years after it became an army, it actually changed 4 captains like a marquee, and Takayanagi Yoshi, who participated in the South Pacific Campaign with Horikichi Yadaisa, is considered to be the longest tenure, but only a little more than a year. How could such an unprecedented new warship and such a rapid rotation of officers be able to fully grasp the essentials of operational command? This is true for surface ships, as well as for aviation units, where commanders are basically switching between carrier-land-based and training aviation units one position a year.

Horikichi believes that some rotations are unnecessary, and even rotates for the sake of rotation. He keenly discovered that in the later stage of the operation, although a large number of new members from the shore base and the country were replenished, because the original command and operational structure remained unchanged, the principal officers remained unchanged, and the level of cooperation and tacit understanding among the members increased, and the combat capability continued to improve, and the practice of concentrating on a certain post made it easier to enhance the overall combat effectiveness in wartime.

"Does an aviation officer need to know engineering, gunnery, and navigation?" Horikichi said in a sarcastic tone, "It is better to have this spare time than to forge the aircraft technology, combat skills, and formation command skills to perfection." ”

Yamamoto Fifty-six smiled helplessly: Now the fleet only knows that there is Hori Yoshichi and does not know the military command department, if the rotation is stopped, I am afraid that the military command department will not be able to completely command the combined fleet in the future, how can King Fushimi Miyahiro Gong agree? (To be continued.) )