With the end of World War I, the United States and Japan are engaged in open and covert rivalry over the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and China's colonial interests, and the contradictions are becoming more and more acute.

At that time, aircraft carriers had not yet undergone the test of actual combat, and the strategic value of naval aviation had not yet been proven and brought into play, so the battleship duel of the Jutland style became the only form of strategic decisive battle at sea.

Before the war, when it was impossible to prove the value of naval aviation, everything returned to the same place, and the technical researchers of the Japanese Navy could only pin their hopes on torpedoes.

The Japanese expected to use the role of destroyers, light cruisers, and submarines as they did during the Russo-Japanese Battle of Tsushima to sink as many escort ships as possible of the American battlefleet before the envisaged decisive battle, or even to reduce the number of enemy battleships outright.

Let the decisive battle come, the forces of the two sides can be evenly matched - this is the famous "nine-stage gradual reduction invitation battle", and the Type 93 oxygen torpedo was developed in this context.

In 1926, Japan purchased several types of high-speed torpedoes from Britain, and then began to study new types of powered torpedoes with Britain as a teacher.

A little digression here, pay attention to the time of introduction and the country of introduction: yes, you read that right, it's the United Kingdom! Britain again!

It is such a traditional European-stirring empire, such an empire that can always make the most abnormal actions at the most critical moments, and such a country where the sun never sets for twenty years of professional pit teammates......

If a country can make a-stirring stick its profession and carry it out to the slightest degree, then this country can be regarded as a wonderful flower in international relations.

Britain happened to be such a country: it lent money to Japan at the worst of Sino-Japanese relations, and helped Japan win the Qing Dynasty.

The advanced technology it sold to Japan in 1926 led to the development of such a perverted weapon as the spear torpedo.

Then, in 1946, the year after the end of World War II, it provoked relations between the Soviet Union and the United States and delivered the Iron Curtain Speech, which kicked off the Cold War.

Almost at the same time, Britain, while scolding the Soviet Union as a country under the Iron Curtain, sold the most advanced Nien jet engine to the Soviet Union at that time......

This sent a wrong signal to Stalin, giving the Soviet top brass the illusion that Europe and the United States were not monolithic, and then resolutely stood on the opposite side of NATO.

Who knew that Britain, after selling engines to the Soviet Union, turned to unconditionally support the United States, once again sided with the United States, and began a decades-long conspiracy of obedience.

The United States was not happy for long, and in 1950, on the Korean battlefield, Chinese and Soviet air force pilots, flying Nien-engined MiG-15s, made the US Army Air Corps feel the pressure for the first time......

As for why the British always sell weapons to the enemy or hostile forces at critical times, that is an esoteric science - let's get down to business, back to torpedoes.

Japan introduced British torpedo technology in 26 years, and began to learn British torpedo design technology, and continued to digest and absorb it, until around 1935, finally came up with an oxygen torpedo in real combat state.

This oxygen torpedo, also known as the spear torpedo, was a Japanese weapon of mass destruction that surpassed traditional torpedoes in both range and speed.

Spear torpedoes have a huge advantage over traditional torpedoes in terms of range, speed, and power.

The range of spear torpedoes is generally more than 10 kilometers, while the range of torpedoes used by the German Navy, which is also a major torpedo user, is only about 7 kilometers.

If the speed of the torpedo is abandoned and the firing range is enhanced, this Japanese torpedo can reach a terrifying range of more than 20 kilometers, which is basically the same as the range of naval guns!

In terms of power, the Lance-torpedo Type 1 could carry close to 500 kg of warheads, and the Type 3 could even hold 780 kg of explosives, while the Allied torpedoes of their counterparts had only 375 kg of warheads.

Of course, these are not the greatest advantages of the spear torpedo, the greatest advantage of the spear torpedo is its terrible speed.

Generally, the speed of ordinary torpedoes is not fast, which leads to the fact that after the torpedo is discovered, many times the battleship can do evasive actions, which also greatly reduces the hit rate of the torpedo.

However, unlike the Japanese spear torpedo, the limit of this torpedo can reach 49 knots, which is very strong even in the 21st century.

With this kind of torpedo, the Japanese navy thought that it could use destroyers and light cruisers to fight the large American warships.

As long as the corresponding tactics are arranged around this torpedo, then the Japanese can sink some of the enemy's main warships at a long distance before the decisive battle of the fleet, and help their fleet establish superiority.

It was around this tactic that the Japanese navy practiced hard in artillery battles and night battles, in a vain attempt to once again stage a good show of defeating the strong in the Pacific Ocean and recreate the glory of the Battle of Tsushima.

Unfortunately, this set of tactics fell short after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and naval aviation suddenly became the new favorite of the Empire, and the torpedo assault tactics became a foil.

However, the generals of the surface ship faction obviously did not want to admit that they were foils, so they still thought about proving their existence with torpedoes and artillery battles.

It is precisely this complex that allowed the Japanese Navy to perform a strange scene of using aircraft carriers as bait and battleships to encircle and annihilate the US fleet in real historical time and space.

With well-trained gunners and a huge technical advantage in torpedoes, the Japanese Navy's detachment really wanted to lose at this moment.

After the U.S. Navy fired non-stop artillery for about a minute, the Japanese Navy finally began to return fire.

"Let's fire! Otherwise, the Americans may think that they have won! Holding his command knife, the commander of the Japanese Navy said with an arrogant smile.

Even if the boss told a joke, even if it was not funny, it was natural that he should cheer for it, and the Japanese adjutants on the bridge all laughed along.

After another minute, the 203 mm guns on the Mogami heavy cruiser began to roar and attack the American fleet in the distance.

A moment later, in the formation of the American destroyers, the huge column of water stirred up made the captains of the American fleet suppress.

The morale built up through several rounds of shelling also dissipated without a trace with these huge columns of water - the difference in caliber between 127 mm and 203 mm guns was really different from the horizontal attack......