Yamamoto Isoroku is a tragic figure, and his life is a great war after the good luck has been exhausted, and then there is a continuous tragedy.

Contrary to what many people boasted in later generations, underneath Yamamoto's fifty-six aura was an embarrassing shadow. In fact, in the original history, Yamamoto Isoroku was the one who did not win in the naval battles of the Pacific War, except for Pearl Harbor, as long as he personally followed and mixed in.

Yes, I won once on Pearl Harbor and then lost all the way.

Originally, in history, Yamamoto Fifty-six was a typical person who was miserable by gambling thinking. At first, in order to attract him, God first let Yamamoto win a small game at Pearl Harbor, and then, he lost for the rest of his life until he was hunted by the American army.

Of course, compared to Marshal Balbo in Italy, Yamamoto Isoroku had good luck, at least he was not killed by his own people.

The Japanese are already a big gambler, and in the Russo-Japanese War, they won the Tsarist Russia once by gambling on the fortunes of the country. In the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese won the Qing Dynasty again. As a result, they are more and more fond of this kind of profiteering method of using small things to make big deals.

And Yamamoto Fifty-six is a representative figure in the Japanese military gambling world.

Whether playing bridge, Go, or betting, Yamamoto Isoroku is an expert. He gambled with his colleagues, with his subordinates, and often with geisha, and gambled very seriously, and was a reputable gambler.

In 1910, Yamamoto gambled 3,000 yuan with a friend of his named Horikichi for a small matter, which was a huge amount of money at that time, and he could buy a good house.

As a result, Yamamoto lost that rare time. Although Horikichi laughed at it at the time and didn't take it seriously, Yamamoto insisted on repaying the debt, deducting it from his salary every month until the beginning of this year, when he paid it all back.

As for Horikiyoshi, he is also a legendary fierce man, he is in the 32nd phase of the Naval Academy, and he is still a classmate of Yamamoto Fifty-six.

Because Yamamoto often recommends him, some people may think that he is very awesome. But judging from the results alone, he was a melon-eating mass who stayed behind in the rear, and did not play an important role in the course of the war.

However, although he played a small role in the war, he was often called by Yamamoto to chat and talk, and he was Yamamoto's closest friend.

"Yamamoto-kun!" Dressed in the uniform of the Japanese Navy, Horikichi sat on his knees in a room decorated with tatami mats, bent down and greeted Yamamoto Isoroku: "I still think that at this time, we should not take too much risk, if we can, we can start to learn the aircraft carrier technology of the Germans, and after we have mastered it completely, we can use it against the US Navy." ”

For the Japanese, there is no shame in learning from the strong. When ancient China was strong, they paid tribute to China and learned China's advanced technology and even culture. After the rise of modern Europe, the Japanese "broke away from the East and entered the West", claiming to be a Western country geographically located in the East.

This time, when I saw that Germany's newly developed navy actually overtook in a corner, it actually defeated the British Navy, which is internationally recognized as the world's first!

One can imagine how huge the position of the Japanese navy was.

As a result, many people, including Horikichi, have the willingness to learn new tactics. After all, many of their old tactics are similar to the fighting style of the British Navy's artillery giants, and the unexpected rise of aircraft carriers has fundamentally changed the tactics that many Japanese Navy have repeatedly studied.

It's a pity that the opportunity is in front of him, and Yamamoto can't listen to Horiyoshi's advice at all: "No, the Americans don't have much time left for us!" The country's oil reserves can last for a year at most, and after a year, we won't even have the capital to sit on the table! ”

"Taking advantage of the obvious laxity and weakness of the US Army's combat readiness at Pearl Harbor, we are gambling here after all. But if the Americans reacted and strengthened their combat readiness and expanded their army, even if we completely learned the aircraft carrier tactics of the Germans, we would not have had the opportunity to use them to the fullest. ”

Yamamoto, after all, is not a gambler who relies purely on luck. His gambling is often based on a large number of scientific calculations.

After receiving information that the US military was lax in combat readiness at Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto Isoroku immediately wrote a letter to the Japanese Navy Minister and Shiro Kawako, formally proposing the idea of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the letter, he proposed: "The first strategy that our military should adopt in the war between Japan and the United States should be to smash the enemy's main fleet as soon as the war begins, leaving the US Navy and the American people in an irreparable place and demoralizing them. In this way, we can occupy the key obstacles in East Asia and ensure an invincible position, so as to build an East Asian co-prosperity sphere. ”

It can be seen from this that what Yamamoto Isoroku is pursuing is not to destroy US imperialism in one fell swoop and get rid of future troubles once and for all, but to first want to hurt US imperialism and use this opportunity to build his own Pacific barrier and confront the United States.

This is similar to the German strategy of taking Britain and building an Atlantic barrier.

But the difference was that the German army only needed to defeat the British army, which had lost the main naval and army forces in the North Sea and Dunkirk, and then use the Atlantic Ocean to face the US imperialism across the sea.

And the Japanese army wants to achieve their strategic goal of the Pacific barrier...... It is necessary to directly beat the US imperialists, and they must also beat the US imperialists at one time, and then they have to occupy Southeast Asia in the second step, which can be regarded as the completion of the entire strategy.

By sneaking up on Pearl Harbor, which was laxly prepared, killing the main U.S. fleet, and then quickly moving south, snatching the production of raw materials from the British who had already been beaten by the Germans, and finally using these seized resources to attack the Combined Fleet to implement mobile defense in the Pacific Ocean and hold back the United States, so that the United States had to admit the established fact that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere had taken shape -- this is the complete strategic system that Yamamoto Isoroku had in mind.

In Yamamoto's view, the Japanese navy could form a temporary advantage after eating the main fleet of the United States, and then take advantage of this advantage to widely deploy long-range and lightweight Zero fighters between the islands in the Pacific Ocean to provide timely and rapid support in the subsequent naval battles and maintain local superiority.

Once such a deployment takes shape, if the US forces want to attack, they will be attacked by a joint attack by Japanese fighters and fleets in the island chain set up by the Japanese army, and the enemy will be attacked on the flank.

In response to the concerns of his old friend Horikiyoshi, Yamamoto Isoroku gave an answer that was quite "Yamamoto Isoroku characteristics": "If Japan has God's blessing, our operation at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii will definitely be successful, and if it fails halfway, that is, without God's blessing, then we will give up the entire operation and bow to the United States."