If Kusaka Ren still doesn't understand all of Horikichi's command ideas, then he is a complete fool who is not worthy of being the chief of staff of the Combined Fleet at all, and if he considers everything together, he understands the careful arrangement of the other party one after another:

The first step is to attack Kuah Island at night. Of course, the large-scale fleet shelling was to cover the retreat of the Kuah Island Army, but more importantly, it was necessary to completely destroy the Kuah Island airfield and completely lose the US military's reconnaissance field centered on Kuah Island -- the reason why more than 200 203mm caliber naval guns were used to carry out the artillery bombardment mission was, of course, to make the Kuah Island airfield unusable for a longer time.

The second step is to conceal the mobile fleet. At present, Tsukahara 243's mobile unit is still hiding in the triangular waters between the three islands of Bougainville, Munda and Choiseul, and it is not hiding behind the shelling fleet at all, as in conventional thinking, but is located 260 nautical miles northwest from the shelling fleet -- it is difficult to guess and makes it more difficult for the enemy to reconnoitre.

The third step is to go out to shell the fleet. By luring the enemy's aircraft carrier formation to take the lead in attacking by the main force formation with 3 battleships, 9 heavy cruisers, and more than 30 destroyers as a huge formation, the enemy aircraft carrier formation was taken advantage of the opportunity to deduce the approximate range and distance of the enemy fleet -- the shelling fleet would take a great risk, but the risk was reduced to a minimum because of the arrangement of a land-based zero fighter group to cover it.

At this moment, if visitors from outside the sky use satellites to look down, they will find that the US TF16\17, the Japanese mobile fleet, and the artillery fleet are exactly outlining a roughly equilateral triangle. TF16\17 is 290 nautical miles from the mobile fleet and 240 nautical miles from the shelling fleet. The artillery fleet was 260 nautical miles away from the mobile fleet -- except for the position and distance between the Japanese artillery fleet and the mobile fleet, which were clear from each other, the rest of the distance and relative position were not clear.

TF16\17 At this moment, the course has turned to the southeast and is slowly advancing. The fleet had a good line of sight around the fleet, with only occasional cumulus clouds at a low altitude of 300-450 meters, and the South Dakota escorted the escort not far from starboard behind the Enterprise, but Kincaid was in a very bad mood: on the one hand, because the attack aircraft group had not yet arrived at the scene, the TF64 formation was in a difficult situation - he wanted to blame Rear Admiral Li for knowing that the enemy had 3 battleships and stupidly crashed into them (Rear Admiral Li cried: I am wronged, how did I know that I would run into such a pervert as Nagato and Yamato. I can't hide from other Japanese battleships); On the other hand, reconnaissance planes of the TF64 formation were sent to detect the enemy's landing fleet 50 nautical miles west of Kuah Island.

Kincaid's mind had always been plagued by the false information that the Japanese would launch a counteroffensive in a chosen location, so after receiving the telegram, he took it for granted that this was the Japanese fleet that covered the landing of the army troops by shelling Kuah Island last night. As to why the course was from east to west, he thought that the landing had been completed and was on the way back - he did not expect that it was the retreating Japanese troops. The situation reported before the destruction of TF64 exacerbated his confusion: the enemy battleship fleet was supported by aircraft - this strengthened the idea that the enemy aircraft carrier fleet was just behind the battleship formation, and it was nothing more than that it could not be found for the time being.

After thinking about it for a long time, he hesitated and gave the third order. The Enterprise SBD formation, which was currently attacking the Japanese battleship force, was asked to detach 12 aircraft to search in depth. Do not participate in the attack on battleships for the time being - unless you cannot find the enemy carrier, you can turn back and continue to attack the enemy battleship forces. As a result, the 61 aircraft formation of the Enterprise, which was supposed to attack the artillery fleet, became a formation of 49 aircraft, and due to the difference in the speed of the TBF and SBD, these 49 formations were also divided into two offensive echelons, the front and rear.

Immediately after that, he issued a fourth order, since the SBD search force that had taken off from the Hornet early in the morning had not found anything so far, and asked them to attack the Japanese landing fleet according to the results reported by the No. 4 reconnaissance plane of the TF64 formation, and then he sent a telegram to Halsey in the rear -- asking him to send land-based B-17 bombers to deal with the landing fleet and the Japanese troops on Kuah Island, and the carrier-based planes were really unable to spare their hands.

In the opinion of later military observers in combination with the actual war situation. Every order Kincaid gave from the morning was wrong—not big in each case, but fatal enough to add up.

The first mistake was that he had only sent the Enterprise formation to attack the Japanese artillery fleet and not all the planes to attack - if he had made up his mind to carry out an all-deck attack at the first opportunity. A large formation of more than 130 aircraft (TF16\17 has a total of 165 carrier-based aircraft available, and more than 130 can be dispatched after leaving the necessary cover fighters) is likely to inflict heavy damage on the Japanese artillery fleet, and at least 1 of the 3 high-power battleships can be killed;

The second mistake was to dispatch 16 SBDs of the Hornet to search for the enemy in other directions - since it was believed that the Japanese aircraft carrier formation was behind the battleship formation, then the enemy search formation should at least work in that direction, and if they could not find a target, they could return to cooperate with the Enterprise formation to attack the Japanese battleship formation, so that the first wave of attacking the artillery fleet would not have 61 aircraft, but 61+16, a total of 77 aircraft;

The third mistake was that TF64 reported that the enemy battleship formation was covered by aircraft and assigned 12 planes to carry out the task of seeking the enemy again - since the enemy fleet was covered by fighter planes, it should not weaken the offensive force of the Enterprise, which originally had only 61 aircraft, and after the execution of this order, there were only 49 aircraft left in the short-term offensive force;

The fourth mistake was to abandon the reconnaissance mission of the 16 SBDs of the Hornet and go to deal with the "landing fleet" -- since reconnaissance planes had been dispatched in other directions, they should have persevered to the end; later generations found through analysis that the plane in the northwestern sector of the 16 SBDs could make contact with the Japanese mobile fleet as long as it flew for another 20 minutes, and whether it could be discovered or not was one thing, but at least it retained the possibility of discovery, instead of putting the cart before the horse to attack the so-called "landing fleet."

Taken together, these four orders finally completely ruined the hope of the TF16\17 formation that the enemy would discover the Japanese mobile fleet, but the evil consequences of these circumstances are still unknown to everyone, and everyone only sees the mistake of Rear Admiral Lee - but in the end he diluted the public perception with his heroic feat of self-sacrifice (he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor), and no one can blame him too much. Of course, there are also military analysts who plead for Kincaid, believing that this kind of analysis is entirely based on the fact that the mobile fleet is not behind the shelling fleet and is judged elsewhere, which is unfair to the person concerned - when the battlefield is in a dark fog, Kincaid's strategy is not too problematic!

At 5:41 a.m., under the unified command of Nobutake Kondo, the huge artillery fleet set up a circular anti-aircraft array, and the cruisers and destroyers lined up in three circles, respectively, tightly centering the three battleships; at the same time, the 36 Zero fighters that had been hovering over the fleet threw away their auxiliary fuel tanks and prepared to do their best to intercept the US aircraft group.

"Fire at the air trio bomb!" With Nobutake's order, the main guns of the Nagato, Mutsu, and Yamato ships were raised high, and the famous Type 3 anti-aircraft shells were fired at the group of aircraft flying from the Enterprise, which was considered a threatening shell before the invention of the proximity fuse of anti-aircraft guns.

The huge shells of the "Boom" continued to explode in the air, and although they did not hit any enemy planes, they at least succeeded in dispersing the US plane group. At this time, the Zero Fighters swooped down on the interception desperately, and the F4Fs who served as cover fought hard against the Zero Battle, while using all their resources to open the offensive channel for the SBD and TBF. As a result of their efforts, at least 8 SBDs and 8 TBFs broke through the interception ring and entered the skies over the shelling fleet.

Compared to other warships, the largest, most formidable-looking and flagship-bearing Yamato was undoubtedly the most attractive target, and the SBD and TBF swooped down like moths to the Yamato, which was in the center of the fleet. Under the operation of veteran American pilots who had participated in the two battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, two 250-pound bombs were accurately dropped on the rear deck of the Yamato, damaging four 127mm anti-aircraft guns and killing more than 20 sailors. However, the good fortune of the two SBDs also ended here, just as they tried to pull up and disengage, because of the slowdown, they were torn to pieces by the dense 25mm anti-aircraft gun group on the left and right sides, and crashed into the sea on the spot.

Taking advantage of the successful bombing of the SBD and the chaos, the other 4 TBFs also dropped torpedoes on the left and right sides respectively, and the captain of the Yamato, Takayanagi Yi Hachidasa, flexibly controlled and commanded the warship to avoid the front 3, and the last one really couldn't dodge, and everyone in the command tower only heard a "bang", and felt that the hull shook slightly, and then there was no other feeling. Of course, the torpedo still successfully exploded, but the Yamato defense was thick enough, and this bit of damage could still be resisted, neither affecting the speed nor destroying the defense, only allowing the damage management team to toss more.

With the exception of Yamato, Mutsu was hit by three near-misses (the unfortunate Mutsu was near-missed), the destroyer Kaikaze was hit by one bomb (almost sunk on the spot), and the rest of the warships were the same. The first wave of the attack group of the Enterprise paid a heavy price for this attack, 8 F4F were shot down, 7 SBDs were shot down, the loss of the slowest and most inflexible TBF reached 11, it was a large formation of 49 when it came, and only 23 were left when it returned, and half of them were still wounded, and the zero fighter group that served as a cover lost 9 aircraft, but except for 1 pilot, the rest successfully parachuted out, and finally was successfully rescued by the destroyer. (To be continued.) )