For Americans, the summer of 1935 was a season of disaster. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoIn mid-May, early summer had just arrived, and the island of Oahu, which had been held for more than a year, had fallen, and the United States had withdrawn 3,000 kilometers of defense in the Pacific, and the people on the west coast had to worry about the appearance of the Japanese naval fleet. At the beginning of June, under the strong push of more than 200,000 German-Italian troops and the Austro-Hungarian army, the newly established Arab alliance state collapsed, most of the tribal leaders were killed or captured in battle, and the United States' efforts to contain the Allied camp through the assistance of the Arab League came to naught. On June 11-12, a surface assault ship formation of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet was encircled and intercepted by the Allied Navy in the North Atlantic, and two of the best heavy cruisers were sunk and more than 1,400 officers and men were killed, making it the largest loss suffered by the U.S. Navy since the winter of 1934. Then the Allied forces pressed the border from the Atlantic, and the darkest day finally came, in the beaches and port towns of the southern Florida Peninsula, MacArthur and his staff team's painstakingly laid layers of defenses could not withstand the flooding of Allied troops ashore, and the emergency telegrams flew to MacArthur like snowflakes......

The lesson of the Battle of Cohen Peninsula is still vivid: in the absence of sea and air supremacy, MacArthur did not hastily mobilize reserves to launch a counterattack against the landed Allied forces, but ordered them to remain on standby in concealed areas, while at the same time requiring the front-line defense forces to rely on fortifications to resist as much as possible.

By nightfall, the Confederate forces had successfully opened seven landing sites in the southern part of the Florida peninsula, with more than 300,000 ground troops gaining a foothold on the beachhead and advancing to a depth of 3-6 kilometers, behind which were hundreds of combat and support ships and a large number of transport vessels, thousands of combat aircraft deployed in the Bahamas and Cuba. On the first day of the campaign, the US army lost not only more than 40,000 officers and men of the front-line troops, but also suffered a heavy mental blow; three divisions, seven brigades, and more than 20 independent regiment-level units characterized themselves as "completely collapsed" in their reports to their superiors, and many other units reported that "more than half of their combat strength had been lost" or "suffered a serious blow." Deserters appeared in almost every unit. It may only be a matter of time before morale grows sluggish until it collapses across the board.

The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force, announced in the spring of 1934, had an irreplaceable role to withstand the attack of the Allied forces and even to win the first battle to defend their homeland.

After losing the Battle of Bermuda, the United States and the British Commonwealth armies, on the one hand, became at odds because of mutual accusations and mutual distrust among high-ranking generals, and on the other hand, they turned to the defensive strategically, and each side defended its own territory. When the leather boots of the Allied soldiers stepped on the soft sands of the southern Florida peninsula, the Commonwealth troops who were struggling with Canada had been fighting head-on with the Allied forces for nearly seven months, during which the U.S. military maintained no less than 200,000 combat troops in Canada, but the amount of heavy weapons such as aircraft, ships, and combat vehicles was very limited, and judging from the deployment and movement of U.S. troops, they regarded Canada as a training ground, unlike those Commonwealth troops who were still loyal to the British royal family. Fight for the last free royal territory.

Since the Battle of Bermuda, the US political leaders and naval generals have reached an important consensus, that is, with the current strength of the US Navy, it cannot compete with the Allied Navy, which is in full swing, so they have begun to adopt a strategy of avoiding war, while concentrating their capital ships in the waters of California to preserve their strength, and on the other hand, stepping up the construction of new ships. By the time the Allies launched the Bahamas Campaign, the US Atlantic Fleet had 11 battleships, 2 battlecruisers, 26 aircraft carriers, 31 light and heavy cruisers, and 144 destroyers. However, the confidence that the US Navy officers and men had easily accumulated was dealt another blow in the Battle of the Bahamas, because the Allied camp not only continued to expand its naval strength, but also made great progress in the field of technology, and before the fleets of the two sides had a direct confrontation, the naval aviation of the Allied countries severely damaged the three main aircraft carriers of the US Atlantic Fleet in an air raid, causing the US commander to quickly abandon the attempt of a fleet duel and instead adopt a combat strategy combining guerrilla attacks on the periphery and laying mines at night. This helped the U.S. Navy regain some tactical confidence with relatively small losses during the Bahamas and Cuban campaigns, but as the Bahamas and Cuba changed hands, the U.S. military further lost the strategic initiative.

On the night of the Allied troops' large-scale landing on the Florida Peninsula, a peripheral alert fleet of the Allied Navy encountered the main U.S. fleet heading south in the waters of the Emerald Isles, hundreds of kilometers away. In this battle, the Allies only had 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 light cruisers, and 5 destroyers, while the outpost detachment of the main American fleet alone had 4 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers, and 8 destroyers, followed by the main force with 7 battleships, 10 aircraft carriers, 4 heavy cruisers, 11 light cruisers, and 34 destroyers. The two German light aircraft carriers flew 70 sorties during the night, and the pilots not only accurately found their targets, but also achieved the excellent results of sinking one enemy light and heavy cruiser and damaging many enemy cruisers and destroyers.

The first half of the "Emerald Night Battle" was the time for the Allied naval aviation to play, and the second half belonged to the heroic US Navy officers and men, whose outpost fleet quickly approached the Allied alert fleet with 2 heavy cruisers and 6 destroyers, and the two sides launched a night artillery battle more than 10 kilometers apart. In a fierce artillery battle that lasted for more than an hour, the new German heavy cruiser, the third-generation "Blucher", was heavily damaged, one light cruiser was seriously damaged, two destroyers were sunk, and the two heavy cruisers on the American side were only slightly damaged, and the Allied alert fleet was forced to retreat.

After receiving an urgent telegram from the alert fleet, the German admiral Gunther Lütjans, who had shined in the Battle of the Azores, immediately led a combat fleet that was maneuvering in the waters near the Bahamas to rush north, and searched for the enemy in the south of the Emerald Isle in the early morning after the end of the Emerald Night Battle, and the two sides broke out into a fierce battle again, known as the "Emerald Morning Battle". In this naval battle, which took place during the day, the accidental factors were greatly reduced compared with the night battle, and it can be said that it was a comprehensive competition in the tactical ability of the commanders, the military quality of officers and men at all levels, and the technical performance of the combat ships. In terms of the size of the fleet, there was still a big gap between the battle fleet led by Lütjans and the main fleet of the United States, which sent its elite into battle, so the German vice admiral initially adopted an aviation combat strategy, intending to give full play to the technological superiority of the naval aviation of the Allied countries -- at this time, the German naval aviation had basically completed the upgrading of carrier-based fighters, and the new Fokker G-54 and the improved Me-50T replaced the H-25 at the beginning of the war, so that the Sea Hawk/Eagle Falcon of the American and British camps lost their original technical superiority, and the Fi-111, a torpedo bomber designed for German naval aviation, performed well in terms of speed, range, and bomb load, while the highly successful classic carrier-based dive bomber Ju-17T served side by side with the newly commissioned Ju-33T.

At the beginning of the Emerald Morning Battle, the fleet of Lutyans attacked rapidly with carrier-based aircraft units, taking the lead, and the first wave of air raids severely damaged two US aircraft carriers. The Americans have learned the power of the Allied naval aviation in the naval battles of the Azores and Bermuda, and after more than a year of vigorous warfare, they have not been reborn, but they have also made great progress in their technical and tactical qualities. Shortly after the attack by the Allied carrier-based aircraft group, a large group of US carrier-based aircraft flew over the fleet of the Allied ships and launched an orderly attack in the face of the anti-aircraft fire of the Allied ships.

At this time, the experienced and quick-witted Ruetjens did not bet on the second wave of attacks by the carrier-based aircraft force, but on the one hand receiving the orderly withdrawal of the remaining ships of the alert fleet, and on the other hand, implementing active defense against the actions of the enemy's carrier-based air group. Seeing the remarkable results of the first wave of air raids, the US fleet launched the second wave of air strikes with all its might and coordinated the arrival of land-based air forces to reinforce them. In the face of two air attack echelons composed of 227 US carrier-based aircraft and 95 land-based fighters, the Lütjans fleet dispatched 104 carrier-based fighters -- accounting for 86 percent of the total number of carrier-based fighters in the entire fleet. In the airspace south of the Emerald Isle, more than 400 carrier-based aircraft on both sides launched an extremely tragic air battle, the German fleet shot down 99 American fighters at the cost of losing 43 carrier-based fighters, and the Germans undoubtedly won a beautiful victory in terms of the proportion of troops participating in the battle and the proportion of battle losses, but in the ensuing battle, the flagship of the aircraft carrier detachment, the battle-hardened Zeppelin-class aircraft carrier "Swabia", and the newly commissioned Irish aircraft carrier "Cork" were damaged one after another, and the aircraft carrier combat power of the Allied fleet continued to weaken. In this situation, Ruetjens decisively chose to retreat, and then the American fleet launched a third, fourth, and fifth wave of air raids, but no more significant results were achieved. A few hours later, the U.S. government officially announced a victory in the Battle of Emerald Sea, which attracted praise from American public opinion.

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