Anan Weiji knew very well that just relying on an independent mixed brigade to block the attack of the two veteran divisions under Jiang Haoran was tantamount to a fool's dream, he only hoped that they could hold on for a few days as long as possible and hold on until the reinforcements arrived, but even if it was this request, he really had no bottom in his heart. ↖

Not only did Anan have little confidence, but even the chief of staff, Isamu Kinoshita, who had always been resourceful and able to hold down the position, was a little flustered. With his strategic vision, he could clearly see the situation in front of him, and once the two divisions of the 40th Group Army reached the city of Wuhan, the 11th Army would be finished. Therefore, after dispatching the reinforcements of the puppet army, Kinoshita immediately sent a telegram to General Nishio Shouzo in Nanjing and Lieutenant General Okamura Ninji in North China, requesting urgent tactical guidance.

In fact, when the war came to this point, no one had a better solution, whether it was Nishio Shouzo or Okamura Ninji, in their eyes, the battle of Wuhan was already a sure defeat, and now the only way to retreat is to see if the complete structure of the Eleventh Army can be retained?

But no one dared to say this kind of thing, this responsibility was too great, and after receiving the telegram, the two directly reported the situation to the Tokyo base camp, so that the above officials had a headache.

At about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the Japanese army was at the Tokyo base camp.

Emperor Hirohito, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, Minister of the Navy Oikaku Yoshio, Minister of War Shunroku Hatata, and Admiral Gochi Yamamoto, Commander of the Navy, gathered together.

The people in the room were like dead fathers, with gloomy faces, so that the atmosphere in the room was also very solemn, after receiving the telegram from Nishio Shouzo and Okamura Ninji, they had a tense discussion, Emperor Hirohito's opinion was to hold on to Wuhan and urge the reinforcements to advance quickly, and he valued the face of the imperial army more. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and Minister of War Toshiroku Hata advocated the immediate abandonment of Wuhan, and the 11th Army took advantage of the retreat route of Lu'an to retreat quickly and orderly, preserving the vital strength of the Imperial Army.

The Minister of the Navy, the Great Horn Qinsheng, and the Commander of the Navy simply did not speak, watching coldly, but there was a stomach full of anger in their stomachs, they spent several months, hard work to formulate a naval battle for the raid on Midway, and they saw that they were about to succeed, but they were urgently transferred back from the front to support Wuhan, and now Wuhan may not be able to keep it, but they missed the perfect opportunity to surprise Midway, not to mention the low-hanging fruit, and let the Navy suffer a blow from the United States in vain, at this time they only had the mood of scolding their mothers. Of course, if you want to scold, you can only scold in your heart, after all, there is still the emperor of the dog day sitting above.

Just when the opinions could not be unified, a senior staff officer hurriedly arrived, bringing a piece of news that was enough for them to collapse, just half an hour ago, the first fleet of the Navy stationed in the Strait of Malacca was suddenly attacked by the carrier-based aircraft of the United States Navy, and the fleet of the Imperial Navy suffered heavy casualties, and after the first round of attacks, the reconnaissance planes immediately discovered that the United Navy's combined fleet of the United States had four aircraft carriers, dozens of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and a large number of landing ships followed. Enemy ships will soon enter the Strait of Malacca.

The news was no less than a bolt from the blue, leaving a room full of people stunned.

The Japanese high-level has long known that the US Navy has rebuilt the Pacific Fleet with the support of Jiang Haoran, and the first time is to use two empty ships without any protective firepower to scare off the imperial army carrier-based aircraft on the Burmese battlefield, and it is with this sense of crisis that the Japanese Navy decided to take advantage of the fact that their combat effectiveness has not yet been formed, and the surprise attack on Midway Island, who knew that it was so stirred up by Jiang Haoran in Wuhan, and the plan did not succeed, but the Japanese army still believed that the US Navy was still in the recovery stage, and there was still a long way to go before the offensive strength, After all, the formation of the navy is not like the army, pulling up a group of people to send a few guns to the battlefield, all aspects of the connection, weapons and equipment debugging and so on are far from two or three months of work, therefore, this time to support Wuhan, the imperial army almost all the naval forces in the Pacific Ocean, leaving only the first fleet of two aircraft carriers to serve as the defense of the Strait of Malacca, and now the United States suddenly launched a large-scale attack, which made the Japanese military high-level how calm.

The US Navy is equipped with a large number of landing ships, which is to attack the city, and for the Japanese army, the most important strategic place is Singapore, now even a fool can see that the Mi army is taking advantage of Singapore, once Singapore is lost, the logistics channel of hundreds of thousands of imperial troops in Myanmar will be cut off, and its dangerous situation is simply unimaginable.

In view of such a bad emergency, Emperor Hirohito no longer insisted on his opinion, and ordered the First Fleet to hold the Strait of Malacca no matter what the cost, waiting for reinforcements, and at the same time ordered the fleets in the East China Sea to immediately rush to reinforcements, relative to Wuhan, the position of Burma is particularly important, the loss of a Wuhan on the Chinese battlefield is not a big deal for the imperial army, but the loss of Burma, the strategic concept of the German-Japanese Indian division will be completely lost, and, once the Chinese open the Yunnan-Burma road, The illusion of strategic encirclement of China has also been completely shattered.

But these are not the most important, once Burma is lost, for the imperial army, it is basically a set of dominoes that have been pushed to, first the hard work of Southeast Asia is completely lost, and then the rejuvenated US navy reappears in the Pacific Ocean, this fierce shark angered by the imperial army may inevitably chase and fight the imperial army. And then there is the Chinese battlefield, if Wuhan is lost, the entire occupied area of Central China will no longer be stable, once the army continues to advance, Hefei and Xuzhou are in danger, the north-south passage is cut off, Central China and North China are immediately divided into two battlefields, and the land route is lost, the navy is under the threat of the Pacific Fleet of the United States, and the collapse of the whole line in Central China is a matter of time, and the pattern of the war will immediately return to the original state of 1937, but at this time the island empire has basically consumed all the strategic materials in the country, The supply of troops is also almost exhausted, and China is receiving a steady stream of various kinds of assistance from the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and is becoming stronger day by day, and the battlefields in North China and Northeast China may not be able to support it for long.

As soon as these problems were laid out, the Japanese army base camp could only choose to break the wrist of a decisive strong man and transfer all the navy back to the Pacific Ocean to deal the heaviest blow to the United States. And Wuhan, because of the loss of strong air reinforcements, has no possibility of holding on under the fierce offensive, so it can only choose to abandon the defense, and the 11th Army fully retreats.

The 18th Independent Mixed Brigade in the east, combined with the three puppet army divisions that had just been put into operation, immediately retreated, and built a defensive line between Zuoling and Wusi Lake to block the attack of the two divisions of the 40th Army.

In the west, with the strength of one division, a defense line was built at three points: Sancha Lake and Niuxing Lake, Liangzi Lake and Lu Lake, and Lu Lake and the Yangtze River, with one wing on the left and one wing on the left and two wings in the middle, blocking most of the troops in the southwest direction.