At night, the TF48 fleet slowly sailed through the perimeter of Port de France, the closest port to Antarctica in the southern Indian Ocean and part of a French overseas possessions, an island 3,000 kilometers from Madagascar with few people. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info After getting around the island, the journey to Perth, Australia is almost halfway there.

It was bitterly cold, overcast, and visibility was extremely low, and everyone except the necessary personnel on duty was huddled in the cabin to sleep.

"The Japanese occupied Midway?" Nimitz, who was on the bridge, hung his head and asked in a low voice.

In order to maintain maximum secrecy, the entire TF48 fleet strictly implemented radio silence, only receiving messages and not sending them to the outside world.

Smith knew he was sad and relieved, "This is to be expected. Apart from more than 100 aircraft and several thousand ground troops, there is nothing else on the island that can hold back the main force of the Combined Fleet. Now that the Pacific Fleet has adopted the method of aviation weakening, successively dispatching B-29 and B-17 heavy bombers to attack the Japanese fleet, and has sunk more than 10 enemy ships in a row, including four oil tankers that are very important to Japan, I think the situation is not as pessimistic as you think. ”

This method of "rebombing and replacing ships" was summarized by Turner, and it barely achieved some results: the US Army and Navy launched successive sorties and sank nearly 100,000 tons of Japanese ships and more than 40 Japanese fighters at the cost of nearly 300 heavy bombers.

It's hard to say whether the deal was a good deal, as nearly $200 million in U.S. planes and bombs were lost, and the results they achieved were just over $100 million at most. In addition, behind the 300 heavy bombers shot down, there were hundreds of planes that barely flew back to base, scarred and nearly scrapped, which was also a significant expense.

In addition to the unfavorable economic losses, the loss of personnel was also greatly unfavorable to the United States, with nearly 3,000 personnel lost by the 300 bombardment crews and other personnel, while at least half of the Japanese pilots and crew members who fell into the water were successfully rescued, and the total Japanese personnel losses were only more than 1,200 people

Midway is more than 2,400 kilometers away from Hawaii, and the heavy bombing group is not escorted by a single fighter plane, and this kind of attack is even more tragic.

Ingram, Halsey, and the others watched as the pilots came from the West Coast to support, attacked from base, and then came back in a sparse manner. Each crew member was asked to write a suicide note before the attack, and if the crew members thought they were not mentally prepared, they could slow down the attack again. However, under the inspiration of patriotic fervor and the imitation of his comrades, the US air force did not disobey the order for the time being, gritted its teeth and carried out a high-intensity offensive for five consecutive days.

Compared to the desperation of losing hundreds of planes a day in the Icelandic, Newfoundland, and Caribbean campaigns, this war of attrition now is more like a blunt knife cutting flesh: the Americans are using nearly 5:2 economic losses, human losses, and Japanese attrition.

In the eyes of ruthless and rational people, this exchange ratio is relatively high, but it is still worth it: 400 heavy bombers are only a week's output after Boeing is at full capacity, and if it can destroy 100,000 tons of Japanese ships and related supplies every week, and fight out 40 aircraft of its opponents, Japan will never win this war -- Japan will not be able to build 5 million tons of warships in a year.

Not to mention a 5 million ton warship, even the most ordinary ship of 5 million tons cannot be built in Japan. As long as we persist in fighting, the final victory will definitely be the United States, but we don't know when this turning point will come -- at least for now, there is no hope, only the air force that will never be able to return after striking one stubble after another.

In this war of attrition, the lives of crew members are measured in days and hours.

After the Midway airfield was repaired and deployed, the land-based Fw-190A8 and Do-412 all appeared, electric twin 128mm anti-aircraft guns and 88mm anti-aircraft guns were also erected, and the 90mm anti-aircraft guns left by the United States were also used by Japanese officers and soldiers.

However, if the United States still maintains such a high-intensity bombing frequency and does not have the cover of a mobile fleet, it is impossible for the island to rely on the more than 100 planes and some antiaircraft guns on the island alone to survive the continuous air raids in Hawaii.

The Tokyo base camp has urgently requested Germany to increase the purchase of Do-412 and new Ta-152, and asked the army to provide pilots and tankers to fight in the Pacific. Considering that Horikichi has won a lot of benefits for the army on the Guinea issue, and even Gustav and K5 can get it, the army thinks that this face should be given. With a stroke of his pen, Ishihara transferred a total of 400 fighter pilots from three flight divisions and regiments from India, China, and the Kwantung Army, as well as 12 oil tankers of varying tonnage, to prepare them for the use of the navy -- the aircraft, fuel oil, logistics, and sailors on the tankers were all contracted by the navy.

Everyone couldn't understand why the Americans were fighting like this -- didn't it mean that the Americans valued human lives the most and were the least willing to fight hard? Why do you start fighting this kind of rotten battle of killing 2000 enemies and losing 5000 yourself? Even if the US imperialists are rich and don't care about consumption, doesn't their president even care about human life and votes?

If you can't figure it out, you can't figure it out, the opinion of the army and navy in the base camp is unanimous, and it is impossible to give up if Midway is taken, otherwise the combined fleet will not have enough foothold. If the supply line is cut off, the entire Combined Fleet will be at risk of losing its life overseas, and no matter how difficult it is, it will have to grit its teeth and withstand it.

Lieutenant General Takijiro Onishi, who served as the head of the Aviation Headquarters and is now the deputy director of the Military Command Department, made an impassioned statement at the headquarters meeting: "Since the Americans are not afraid of death and send heavy bombardment to engage in unescorted operations, how can we be greedy for life and afraid of death? We should be brave enough to show our courage and tenacity to the enemy! Let's see who can't stand it first! ”

Nimitz did not know the strategy of Truman and Marshall's preparations for a great shift, but only knew that there was a personnel adjustment in the South American theater: he was relieved of his concurrent post as commander of the South American theater and was temporarily replaced by Clark. And Clark's agency time will not be very long, because Lieutenant General Stilwell has already left Chongqing for Irkutsk, preparing to return to China via Kamchatka and Aleutian as soon as possible. In recognition of his many years in the Chinese theater of operations and his contribution to leading the Allied "Reconquista," Truman decided to promote him to the rank of Army general.

Knowing that Stilwell was leaving, the Chongqing authorities rejoiced, and although the Americans were now too busy to take care of themselves, everyone thought that the United States was still powerful, and when it came to the current position, the Axis only dared to say that the United States would cease the war and not let the United States surrender, which showed that they were afraid of each other for the United States. The establishment of Pakistan also greatly surprised the Chongqing authorities, and many people thought that there was something to be done in between. Chongqing has sent secret diplomats to ask Germany to mediate the Sino-Japanese conflict -- although China and Germany have declared war, everyone knows that this is a superficial article, China and Germany have not fought each other in the slightest, and relations before the war were very good.

With the end of the Indian War, the former Southeast Asian Theater was disbanded, Chief of Staff Weidemeyer replaced Stilwell in China, and the stranded American troops in Pakistan were also cut off with the British side - this was also the content of the Anglo-Japanese armistice.

Due to the special nature of the Anglo-American wartime alliance and fighting side by side, Mountbatten, who was in charge of the overall situation in Pakistan, could neither detain the Americans as he did at home, nor hand them over to the Japanese, nor could he continue to take them in. In the end, Mountbatten proposed to send Americans out of the country to China, and Japan agreed to this. Although several Pakistani military leaders, including Slim, Auchinleck, and Wilson, had always been unruly, their rights immediately atrophied when they did not fight, and Edward VIII apparently placed more trust in Mountbatten, his adjutant in his youth, and had inextricable ties with the royal family.

In terms of coordinating the relations between all parties, Mountbatten is obviously better suited to deal with the self-government of China, Iran, Japan, and Pakistan than several military leaders.

Under his mediation, the vast majority of American troops left Peshawar for Chongqing by plane, while a small number of grassroots officers and soldiers who could not and did not want to leave continued to stay in Pakistan.

Japan is also aware of the small moves made by the British on the issue of the US military, but Japan now hopes that Britain will pay compensation materials as soon as possible, and at the same time hopes to cooperate in other economic, trade, and technological fields. In order to ease relations, Yamashita even took the initiative to release a group of British and Pakistani officers and soldiers who had been wounded in the Indian campaign.

As a result of these efforts, the situation in India began to settle down.

The day after the Japanese occupation of Midway, the main German fleet arrived in Brazilian waters, Machar split the fleet in two, and most of the army continued to march towards Rio under the protection of four escort aircraft carriers, preparing for landing, while the main fleet went straight to El Salvador.

In the afternoon of the same day, the main German formation entered the 800-kilometer air defense circle of El Salvador, and after repelling the last round of air raids of the day by the Salvadoran Army Air Force, Field Marshal Machar, commander-in-chief of the South Atlantic Theater, decided to use a completely new tactic to deal with the US forces entrenched in El Salvador.

"Does this tactic really work?"

Ozawa shook his head: "I don't know, I'm the same as you, it's the first time I've seen it, and I never knew that a battle could be fought like this." ”

"Then try the Führer's strategy today, it doesn't matter if he fails anyway, he always has a lot of unbelievable and deviant ideas." "It's strange that a lot of ideas are right in hindsight." ”

All the staff officers laughed......