"Catch up, attack!"

"All carrier-based aircraft ready!"

"Commander's order, immediately assault the whole army!"

Only 30 seconds after receiving the telegram, Ozawa issued a combat order, and the combat staff officers carried it out without hesitation. He consulted neither Berlin nor Marcial, who was next to him, who was theoretically the supreme commander, right? He couldn't hold back after thinking about it, and quietly reminded him in Japanese. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

"I've asked for advice!" Ozawa laughed, "Didn't you see that I just nodded at the chief after reading my telegram, and he looked at the chart and nodded?" ”

Ito recalls it as if there was such a subtle movement, but he ignored it.

"The chief trusts you very much......" Ito said with envy, and suddenly somehow remembered King Fushimi Miyahiro Kyo, who had often spoken but repeatedly rejected him.

"Of course, trust is earned by oneself, but in the final analysis, the chief must be tolerant." Ozawa smiled, "The Führer trusts Chief Mashal very much, never points fingers at the front line, and then passes it on to the next level, and you can see later, Germany usually adopts a target management system when fighting wars - after setting tactical goals, commanders at all levels will play on the spot according to the specific situation, unlike us, either there will be no war without the commander's order, or a large group of red deer will go alone to do something to destroy the overall situation." ”

Ito nodded a little, the navy is fine, and this situation is particularly obvious in the army - the attack of large formations of armored groups, no general can specifically manage the armored company, and they must rely on the initiative of their subordinates.

Mashal interjected: "Use all the planes that work in the Azores? ”

Ozawa nodded: "Yes." And today we have to change our thinking a little, let the base fly out fighters to replace the mothership direct cover fighters to perform escort functions, the number of carrier-based aircraft of our army is not as good as that of the opponent, and the Essex class is extremely strong, and all the attack planes must be released! ”

The Japanese observers, including Junichi Ito, were excited: today I finally had the opportunity to witness Commander Ozawa's most famous cross-platform tactics live! There was also a chance to experience first-hand what it was like to be at war with Britain and the United States.

At the same time that Ozawa quickly gave the battle order, the atmosphere on the Hornet was also very high, and he finally found the German fleet, and it was still the three ships - not that the enemies did not meet.

Nimitz first ordered the fleet to turn and accelerate to the maximum -- this point was quickly carried out by the staff officers, and now the wind direction was dominated by the north and northeast winds, so that the take-off advantage could be better exploited by turning around, and the order to prepare the carrier-based aircraft was also given, but while the staff officers were nervously organizing and planning their forces, no one noticed that the expressions on the faces of Cunningham and Nimitz were very solemn.

Finally, a staff officer noticed that the commanders had solemn expressions, all of them did not know why, and they only stood behind with each other looking at each other, and after a few minutes, someone finally boldly asked: "Sir, what's wrong?" We have more planes than the enemy, we ......"

Nimitz raised his head and waved his hand, and said with a wry smile: "But our plane flies slowly......"

"What does it matter?" The staff officers disagreed, "Anyway, it's faster than the enemy fleet, and it will definitely arrive." ”

Now it was Cunningham's turn to smile bitterly: "In this case, we can only fight the enemy once, and the enemy can hit us twice!" ”

"Ahh Everyone was stunned and immediately pounced on the calculation.

The two fleets were about 800 kilometers away from each other at this time (strictly speaking, it had exceeded the norms for US aircraft carrier combat strikes, but everyone consciously or unintentionally ignored this), even if the fleet remained in place and the German fleet swooped north at maximum speed, a single attack distance of more than 700 kilometers, and the return distance could exceed 800, adding up to more than 1,500 kilometers. With such a long distance having to carry a drop tank, this will further slow down the speed.

After calculating, the staff officers were shocked to find that according to the fact that it takes nearly 5 hours to fly 1,500 kilometers (the maximum speed of TBF \ SBD is only more than 400 yuan, and the cruising speed of hanging auxiliary fuel tanks is only more than 300 yuan, and it is useless for the F6F to fly fast at all), the total take-off and landing time is calculated as one hour, and it takes six hours to strike alone. In other words, a second attack would not be launched until at least 5 p.m., and it would certainly be dark at 7 p.m., and the second attack wave would not be able to find its target at all, let alone return home.

A staff officer refused to admit defeat and quickly calculated the time of the German attack, and found that the enemy could reduce the flight time by at least one hour, which meant that the Germans could launch a second round of attacks at about 4 o'clock -- just taking advantage of the afterglow of the setting sun to launch an attack, and as for returning home at night, it was a difficult task for the American pilots, but not necessarily for the Germans. And if you take into account the tactical advantage of the German beveled deck that can take off two planes at the same time and the headwind, its sortie will be faster.

The staff officers were shocked: if this was the case, the superiority of their own carrier-based aircraft would be weakened or even overtaken at once.

The judges' judgment was like a basin of snow on the head, which extinguished the enthusiasm of the eager staff officers, and everyone now did not know how to deal with this thorny problem.

Nimitz looked at Cunningham irritably: "Andrew, what to do?" We have to make a trade-off! Either accept the reality that you can only launch one air strike, or try to distance yourself and waste time to the point where you can only attack with one attack. ”

Cunningham shook his head: "I want to do the same, but you see, the other party's reconnaissance plane is not easy to mess with!" ”

When it came to the "forcible reconnaissance" method of the Ar-352's adjacent sector, coupled with the difference in the performance of carrier-based aircraft, Nimitz was annoyed for no reason: "We are too far behind in aviation armaments, and every bit of difference is the price of blood, and those who are engaged in armaments in the back do not know when they will be able to pay attention to the reflection of the front line." ”

Cunningham shrugged: "I don't have a good feeling for the bureaucracy and the capitalists!" You know, just because of a problem of poor firing indicators, your country piled up 20,000 unusable aviation machine guns on its own soil, and then shipped the materials to Great Britain and bought back the Sispanor cannons from us...... It's been 2 years...... It's been 2 years! If I had been on an errand under Hitler, I would have stuffed such a black-hearted capitalist into a 16-inch gun and fired him the next day! Fuck the democratic system! ”

Nimitz smiled wryly: If Cunningham knew that the torpedoes used by the US Navy were not fired nine times out of ten, and then it could be resolved from the Pearl Harbor incident until the end of 1943, I don't know how he would feel.

"It's not okay to delay time, if the Germans refuse to delay, we will still be beaten unilaterally, and we can only make some trade-offs in the way of attacking." After careful consideration, Nimitz gave the order, "Let some of the TBFs hang bombs, and focus on blowing up the deck!" ”

Cunningham nodded: "That's all I can do!" ”

Then Nimitz issued a detailed combat order: "Tell the pilots that today's attack will give priority to paralyzing the take-off and landing capabilities of the enemy's three aircraft carriers, and then sink them!" ”

The staff officers nodded with a heavy heart: this means that in the end, it is very likely that there will be such a result - it is possible to sink 2 enemy ships, but for the sake of insurance, it will end up being 3 damaged and unable to destroy the opponent. But the commanders' concerns were very correct, and now there were too few British and American capital ships, and every warship had to be preserved as much as possible without the slightest squander, so in any case, the enemy's possible second-round attack should be blocked in the cradle.

At 11:13, the first batch of combat aircraft of the TF46 fleet began to take off, and 7 minutes before that, Ozawa's fleet had begun to take off the crew, especially the two aircraft carriers with angled decks, the Hyuga and the Dunkirk, which had beveled decks, to release carrier-based aircraft faster, and all combat aircraft were emptied in less than 20 minutes.

At 11:34, the German attack wave, which had taken off first, began to form the final formation, preparing to launch a wave of attacks; Although the number of carrier-based aircraft owned by the US military was higher than that of the German army, after leaving 72 planes to serve as air defense missions, the gap in the number of attack groups that could be released began to narrow, and the gap in the number of troops between the United States and Germany changed from 278 to 192 to 190 versus 168 -- the US military still had 16 SBDs for reconnaissance missions, while the German army had 24 fewer Ar-352s.

At 12:03, the group of fighters taking off from the Azores was the first to arrive at the German fleet, and everyone was cheering thunderously, and having the Azores base as a support meant that they would receive strong support. Soon, ten minutes later, more than 60 Ju-198\Ju-98 planes arrived under the cover of 36 Bf-219s and landed one by one, and they would form the second attack wave of Ozawa's fleet together with the spare aircraft on the three aircraft carriers after urgently replenishing the fuel bombs.

Seeing such a well-trained flight formation and an enviable team of pilots, Ito Junichi and the expedition team couldn't help but feel their hearts fluttering.

On the deck, he saw that many pilots were wearing iron crosses and even knight's crosses, and the firmness and composure in their eyes were exemplary officers and soldiers, even in the face of high-ranking officers like Machar, they still calmly talked and laughed, and the commanders did not think about this, on the contrary, these senior officers, including Ozawa, patted them on the shoulder, shook hands, and even hugged them to wish them victory.

He couldn't help but think of Horikiyoshi, who had been campaigning for the issue of the treatment of pilots and officers in China, and seemed to understand the reason why Ozawa was stranded in Germany and refused to return. The other members of the Japanese delegation were also infected by this emotion, and when they remembered their previous attitude towards the basic officers and soldiers, they were quite ashamed in comparison.

Now, the Azores can carry carrier-based aircraft have been dispatched, Nimitz and Cunningham never dreamed that although the Azorean aviation force could not directly pose a threat to them, but with the "cross-platform tactics", the German planes will continue to be dropped, they are not fighting with an aircraft carrier formation, they are fighting with a group of formations, which will be their biggest surprise......