Ozawa resolutely supported the rotation of fleet operations, and his reason was very simple: On the premise that land-based attack planes could still be cooperated, this fleet must be destroyed as much as possible; as long as the other side is defeated, the British and American mobile forces in the Atlantic that can pose a threat to the German fleet will be gone for the time being, and they can go to break diplomatic relations with confidence and boldness. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 If you don't defeat the other party, the next battle will be endless, because you don't know when the enemy hiding in the shadows will pounce on you and bite you.

"A simple aircraft carrier fleet vs an aircraft carrier fleet is not good for us, because Europa is a special aircraft carrier for cruise ship transformation, with a large tonnage, but poor defense capabilities, and cannot give full play to the true value of fleet aircraft carriers, and is even weaker than the aviation combat capabilities of light aircraft carriers, so ......"

"Let's discuss, should we go back to deal with this fleet or continue to go to the South Atlantic to break diplomatic relations?" Although breaking diplomatic relations is the primary task assigned by the Admiralty, containing the British and American fleets is also an important part of it, Ozawa explained the positive and negative factors very thoroughly: regardless of it, if you insist on going to South America to break diplomatic relations, it is very likely that you will not be able to meet the enemy fleet, but once you encounter it, your own side will have the upper hand; It is not a small risk to return to the battle, but if this fleet is defeated again, the enemy's mobile forces will be eliminated, and not only will the Azores be able to buy more time, but the situation will become very favorable when Gibraltar is conquered and the naval forces of the Mediterranean axis are rushed...... Moreover, there must be risks in the matter of war, how can it not be risky?

"This fleet is coming at us, and we have no reason to back down. Sooner or later, the Navy will have to face off against the enemy's aircraft carrier formation, and it is more advantageous to fight it once when they have only two aircraft carriers and their strength is greatly weakened. After thinking about it, Cranke said, "Intelligence shows that the enemy can get more than 10 new aircraft carriers this year, and we only have 2-3 at most. ”

Vice Admiral Pei was also eager to try: "When crossing the North Sea, we were afraid of the interception of the Royal Navy, and the results were actually quite good, although the warships that came this time were much stronger than those old goods in the North Sea, but I don't believe that the Americans would be much smarter than the British, and the level of their carrier-based pilots was even inferior to the British." ”

Kumetz was the only one of the major generals who advocated prudence, and the final key was to see what Mashal said, he himself was inclined to fight, but before the operation, Raeder sent a telegram to warn him to be careful, not to attack indiscriminately when he was not sure, and the chief of the naval staff, Flick, also sent several telegrams, telling him to be cautious. He hesitated a little, but he certainly couldn't ask Raeder or the Führer about this matter - the fighter plane was fleeting, and if he asked for advice on everything, how could he serve the people in the future? How can he be promoted to marshal? At this moment, the mentality of making achievements took over his brain again.

At 7 o'clock that night, the fleet reversed course and moved from the southwest to the northeast -- Ozawa believed that this was the most likely route for the enemy fleet to pursue him, and judging from the information reported by the Azorean defenders this evening, the center of the enemy and our fleet was more than 800 nautical miles away from each other, and he believed that the most likely time to meet the enemy would be tomorrow afternoon or evening. Of course, it is not excluded that the enemy fleet may turn north and flee back to Britain, so that the gap between them will not necessarily be narrowed.

At nightfall, Spruance received a telegram from Admiral King, who on the one hand expressed comfort in the situation of the day's battle, and on the other hand, praised his courage in daring to continue the pursuit of the enemy fleet. At the end of the message, Admiral King expressed his desire to sink the two German aircraft carriers in a negotiating tone, "even at some heavy cost." Spruance understood the implication at once: now that he was holding British warships, Admiral King was not particularly distressed about the loss of them, and he was more concerned about using them in exchange for the results of the battle.

Of course, Brown and Chris had different ideas, but they were also really fired by today's air strikes, and with Admiral King's such conclusive instructions, they would not be able to raise objections for a while. For the fleet, it is now in a very dangerous situation, according to the standard of division of the 500-nautical-mile air defense circle, it is currently at the convergence point of several air defense circles such as the Azores, the west coast of Portugal, Madeira, etc., and must get rid of it as soon as possible.

One thing they did not expect was that the patrol range of the German army's daily reconnaissance planes was not so large, and in fact it was difficult to fully grasp all movements on the sea. Under the cover of night, the American fleet was advancing in a southwesterly direction at almost 25 knots, hoping to get out of the unfavorable situation as soon as possible, unaware that the German fleet was advancing at 18 knots, in an almost-for-tat direction - if the two sides kept that speed and course constant, they would enter each other's air attack circles after daybreak.

On the island of San Miguel, the ground crew was busy until late at night, hanging up all the planes' fuel and special mines, and preparing to attack tomorrow as soon as the target was discovered, Schiller obtained the consent of Warnes, and allocated all the 36 joint attack planes that had been transferred from the latest field today to his own use, so that the number of joint attack planes he could master was as high as 63, but there were only 40 BF-219s that covered the attack -- 4 of the 44 planes that came back were seriously damaged, and it was difficult to carry out the mission again without comprehensive maintenance. And the new BF-219 will take a few days for reinforcements to arrive. However, the fighter pilots did not take this matter to heart, believing that with the performance and pilot level of the American carrier-based aircraft today, 40 aircraft were enough to deal with them.

At 5:45 a.m., the sky began to light up, and Spruance and Ozawa invariably released the reconnaissance plane, and 15 minutes later, the Azores released a land-based reconnaissance plane. Originally, Warnes wanted Schiller to take out 12 joint attack planes as reconnaissance planes, because they were not only fast but also long-range, but Schiller looked at his treasure to the death, and refused to say anything, and only agreed to use the AR-272 to reconnoitre. In his view, the joint attack planes can only give full play to their might after they have been hung with mines, and it is completely condescending to serve as reconnaissance planes -- if there were 63 joint attack planes yesterday instead of 36, the US fleet would have been reimbursed a long time ago, so how could it be used to attack again today?

After releasing the reconnaissance planes, the two aircraft carrier formations took off one after another to cover the aircraft group, and Ozawa fine-tuned the order of sorties, and because the efficiency of the Zeppelin flight was reduced, he increased the frequency of the release of the Europa, and of the total 24 escort fighters, 14 took off from the Europa and 10 from the Zeppelin. Unfortunately, the results were not good when they were in a hurry, and by 9 o'clock in the morning, the reconnaissance planes of the two armies, which had been tossing for more than three hours, had found nothing. (To be continued.) )