.“ From now on, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Fleets of the Imperial Pacific, as well as the Atlantic Fleet and the Oceania Alliance Support Fleet, will be incorporated into the Imperial Navy's Asian Expeditionary Fleet. The principal commanders are appointed as follows:

Imperial Admiral Franz. Feng. Field Marshal Hipper served as commander-in-chief of the expeditionary fleet and commander of the 1st Battle Group, commanding the former 2nd Pacific Fleet and the Jiaozhou Bay Patrol Fleet; Imperial Admiral Maximian. Feng. Spee served as commander of the 2nd Battle Group, commanding the former 1st and 4th Pacific fleets; Imperial Vice Admiral von Murray. Dalvik served as commander of the 3rd Battle Group, commanding the former Pacific Fleet;

Vice Admiral of the Imperial Navy. William Zuxiong served as commander of the 4th Battle Group, commanding the former Atlantic Fleet and the Oceania Alliance Support Fleet; Imperial Vice Admiral Karl. Vice Admiral Dönitz was the commander of the submarine battle group, overseeing all German submarines operating in the waters of Asia and the Pacific......

From now on, the Imperial Navy's Asian Expeditionary Fleet will begin to carry out the 'Age of Empires' operational plan, and set up a fleet headquarters in Qingdao, and all fleets should assemble in the predetermined combat area as soon as possible......"

In seconds, radio waves left Berlin with this secret command and flew to the other side of the earth.

In Southeast Asia, in the Far East, in the Central Pacific, in Oceania, the best German admirals immediately took out from their safes the unpretentious battle plan - "The Age of the Reich", that is, the German Reich's battle plan No. 3 of 1929.

Within 24 hours, the German warship group operating in the Asia-Pacific region received orders from the fleet flagship, and the 1st battle group with the battleship "Albert" as the core left the waters of Jiaozhou Bay and sailed in formation in the direction of the East China Sea. The 2nd Battle Group with the battlecruiser "Thessaloniki" as the core was divided into two parts, the 1st Pacific Fleet under the original command of Spee, was still on standby in the port of Korsakov on Kuye Island, while the ships under the 4th Pacific Fleet that captured the Aleutian Islands set sail south from the Aleutian Islands, and the front of the troops was directed at the Kuril Islands east of Kuye Island; The 3rd Strike Group, with the battleship "Geertz" as the core, was the strongest German fleet at present, and after the capture of Hawaii, this fleet took a short break and continued to move eastward, and within a month it was able to link Midway, Wake Island and the Marshall Islands. Dalvik's fleet quickly abandoned its strategy of advancing step by step. The main battle group composed of 7 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 4 heavy aircraft carriers and many light and heavy warships drew a beautiful arc on the sea, and the bows of the powerful battleships pointed to Tokyo Bay, Japan; The German-Turkish Combined Expeditionary Fleet with the super battleship "Kaiser Wilhelm" as the core and the 4th Battle Group with the battleship "Baden" as the core set their sights on their common goal - the Philippines; In the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the western Pacific Ocean, and the waters around Japan, the frequency of German submarine activity increased sharply, torpedoes after torpedoes pierced the sea, and Japanese ships operating in these waters sank to the bottom of the sea one after another, and Japan's sea transportation lines were once again paralyzed......

As the deployment of the various battle groups progresses, a maritime encirclement network against the Japanese archipelago is gradually being tightened. On the other runway of this race against time, the headquarters of the Japanese Army and the Navy were under the leadership of the Emperor and began the "Yamato" operation plan. According to this plan, the Japanese army and navy will first launch a cross-sea attack on the German entrenched island of Dikuya, while the overseas forces with the Kwantung Army as the main force will make an all-out advance in the direction of Qingdao by land; once these two phases are successfully completed, the German air power will not be able to pose a threat to the Japanese archipelago in a short time.

On April 25, red flares were raised on the northernmost coastline of Hokkaido, Japan, and after more than 3 months of thorough preparation, the Japanese army began the largest cross-sea combat operation in history!

500,000 troops, more than 4,000 ships, more than 1,000 aircraft of all kinds. There was also Emperor Showa who personally went to the front line to supervise the battle. In the minds of the Japanese military and civilians, this was a life-and-death battle related to the survival of the nation, and its scale and significance were comparable to the battle in which the German army landed on the British Isles 14 years ago.

After a full comparison of the strengths of the two sides. Almost every Japanese thinks it's a surefire battle.

The battle operation across the Soya Strait began at midnight, and the skies over the narrow strait quickly became the most intense battlefield, and before the Japanese attack planes could cross the strait, the German fighter groups, which had already been in high formation, met them. Hundreds of warplanes from both sides are fighting each other in the air, flares irritating the pilots' eyes, the enemy's trail is lost in an instant, the pursuit is full of unpredictable variables, and the Grim Reaper weaves a huge net of dark ballistics that can be accidentally shot down if one is not careful. The bullets that hit you could come from the opponent or your own fighters!

Under the guidance of radar, the German pilots tried not to lose themselves in this melee, but such night battles shortened the gap between the two sides due to the performance of the fighters and the quality of the pilots, and the almost savage battle ruthlessly hunted one ace after another. The first encounter seemed to be a dead end, but as the German fighter forces retreated the interception line, an even more brutal battle was fought between the German ground air defense forces and the Japanese attack aircraft group.

Dense anti-aircraft fire has cast a war-like crimson over the long coastline of southern Kuyo Island, and tens of thousands of salutes bloom at the same time, unmatched by even the most high-profile celebrations. German air defenses with radars were as effective at night as day, while Japanese fighters and bombers were unable to accurately find their targets, and all most pilots could do was try to avoid being shot down.

As the battle in the air began to take place, a large number of ships sailed out of the ports of northern Hokkaido, sharp, sleek, rough, and all kinds of bows pushing through the icy waters.

Hundreds of minesweepers were making their last efforts under the cover of cruisers and destroyers in the waters near Kuye Island - since the end of the drift ice season, German ships had re-laid a large number of mines in the Soya Strait and the crescent-shaped Aniwa Bay, and although the Japanese Navy had cleared the outermost mines before the battle began, thousands of drifting mines, anchor mines, and sunken mines in the waters near the port of Korsakov were still preventing Japanese ships from approaching the anchorage of Spee's fleet from the sea.

At this time, in the Soya Strait, which was no longer hindered by drift ice and mines, German submarines and Japanese destroyers were also fiercely fighting, and there were 60 submarines under the command of Admiral Spee, and when the Japanese launched a cross-sea attack, a total of 32 were on standby in the strait and the waters around Hokkaido, and in the next few hours. Although these 50 submarines could not repel a Japanese landing fleet 100 times their size, the torpedoes fired by the Japanese fleet at this time were nothing to miss, and the large transport ships and cruisers in the Japanese fleet were their best targets.

After a winter of emergency training and reinforcement, the Japanese Navy's anti-submarine power was finally improved, and the sonar technology secretly imported from the Americans at a high cost freed them from the dilemma of relying on imitation of German-style equipment in this regard, and more powerful depth charges were also developed and put into mass production, although 200 new sonars and 20,000 new depth charges were still equipped in time for the front-line troops before the Luftwaffe bombing.

On the Shiretoko Peninsula in northeastern Hokkaido, a group of plaster-coated planes are quietly taking off from several small and inconspicuous airports, and in the cabins of these transport planes, more than 1,600 heavily armed Japanese soldiers are about to set a record in Japan's military history - as the "rookies" of the Imperial Japanese Army, these paratroopers will carry out the largest combat operation of the Japanese Airborne Forces on Kuya Island.

Before 1914, paratroopers were very foreign to all countries of the world, and jumping from an aircraft with a so-called parachute on their backs seemed to the generals of various countries to be nothing more than a grandiose acrobatic performance, and no one thought of putting such a "toy" on an airplane. Not to mention massively airdropping soldiers onto the battlefield.

December 27, 1914. The German paratroopers shocked the world with their jump over England, and with the fall of the British Empire, people began to realize the terrifying power of this advanced German tactic. In just ten years since. The United States, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and other countries successively formed their first airborne troops, and with the help of German experts in its alliance with Germany before 1924, Japan also mastered the basic technology of airborne with the help of German experts.

In May 1916, the Japanese Admiralty announced the formation of the 1st Special Detachment of the Naval Airborne Forces.

In July of the following year, the detachment was reorganized into the 1st Special Marine Corps of the Navy, with a total of 1,070 people.

In November 1917, the Japanese Army also set up an airborne I guide team at the Hamamatsu Flying School, and hired German instructors to come to teach, and by the beginning of 1919, the army paratroopers were expanded into one airborne brigade. Japan's paratrooper units are already beginning to take shape. However, due to the fact that the Japanese were never able to introduce more advanced airborne technology from Germany, their paratrooper training and tactical development was slow, coupled with the fact that Germany did not use paratroopers on a large scale in the German-American war in 1924, and the subsequent tensions between Germany and Japan, Germany withdrew military instructors who had been teaching in Japan, and the airborne equipment that had been repeatedly delayed was completely canceled.

Despite this, in the 1927 Battle of Oceania and the War in Northeast China, the Japanese Airborne Forces had the opportunity to make their debut. During the attack on Darwin, a squadron of Japanese paratroopers was airdropped behind the Australian positions; During the attack on Cape York, the size of the Japanese airborne army expanded to more than 300 people in a brigade; In a series of battles in Northeast China, Japanese paratroopers also carried out airborne operations of different scales.

It is worth mentioning that during the attack on Vladivostok, the Japanese army parachuted a large group of paratroopers in the city of Vladivostok at night, but because the German army had abandoned Vladivostok at that time, these paratroopers did what they did to occupy the city one step ahead of the army, and although there was no substantive fighting, this paratroop unit was commended by the emperor and the military department.

After the wheel of history entered 1929, under the leadership of Emperor Showa, the Japanese Army and Navy Headquarters formulated the "Yamato" operation plan for landing on Kuya Island, and as the much-anticipated "surprise soldier", the Japanese Army's 1st Airborne Brigade and the 1st Navy Special Marine Corps, a total of more than 3,600 people, began to concentrate in southern Hokkaido. In the next three months, this mixed army and navy unit conducted a total of 25 airborne exercises, and conducted extremely detailed drills on the operations after the completion of the airborne, and the high-density and high-intensity training was of great help to improve the quality of the soldiers, but the frequent accidents during the training also made the Japanese base camp very angry, in order to avoid affecting morale, the accidents were always kept secret from the outside world, and even most of the paratroopers did not know the specific extent of the losses.

Before the implementation of the "Yamato" plan, the Japanese paratroopers preparing for battle were organized into four brigades, each with about 800 people, and the first and second brigades to be airborne were the so-called "ace elites."

Under the sparse starlight, 120 transport planes flew quickly at low altitude under the cover of 45 fighters, and the black coastline ahead was already close at hand.

"There are still 10 kilometers to go to the goal, everyone is ready to skydive!"

In order to make every soldier in the noisy cabin hear, the officer sitting at the door of the cabin put his hands into a simple microphone and shouted with all his might.

Hearing the officer's shout, Private Maki, who was sitting in the middle of the cabin, suddenly groaned in his heart. The strange feeling came from the fear of the road ahead, and although he was not afraid to fight the Germans in his heart, he knew that the more difficult the training, the more serious the challenges he faced.

"Ah, ah, come on, let's teach those German pigs a good lesson!"

Sitting next to the real wood is a low dun dun dun cao (sergeant). In fact, when it comes to pigs, his figure is undoubtedly more appropriate, with a semi-circular paratrooper steel helmet on his round head, coupled with a round and black nose with round nostrils, Maki wants to laugh but doesn't dare to laugh.

There is a landing force of millions behind him, this may be the only thing that Maki can comfort himself, you must know that the task of these paratroopers is to parachute into the rear of the enemy and attack the enemy's lines of communication and material storage points, this kind of attack is better at night, once dawn, lightly armed paratroopers are simply unable to compete with the enemy's artillery and tanks.

Thinking of this, Maki knew that he couldn't help but check the weapons and equipment on his body again - as a lowly-class paratrooper, his main combat weapon was a short rifle for paratroopers, but this rifle was not carried with him, but was divided into a cylindrical weapon barrel, and at this time, in addition to the bloated parachute bag, Maki only had a bayonet, two grenades, a water bottle and some small items in the canvas bag on his chest.

As the lowest-ranking officer, the fat soldier Cao who sat next to the real wood carried an additional Taisho 14-style pistol in his belongings, although it is an automatic pistol, but this standard weapon of the Japanese Army is notoriously bad - the close-range lethality is very strong, but the accuracy is very poor at a little distance, and the failure rate is extremely high, the penetration is extremely weak, and there are frequent jams, clip falling off when shooting and terrible misfire, these shortcomings make the Taisho 14 pistol that looks like Luger 08 is incomparably poor in performance, But despite this, the Japanese Army had no better option.

When the mood was tense, ten minutes were lost in a flash, and when the howling cold wind poured in through the open cabin door, Maki couldn't help but shiver, and then followed his companions to the gate to the battlefield under the shouts of the officers.