The "Omi" was torpedoed by the US troops, its skin was rough and its flesh was thick, and it was still able to fight with wounds, and the light aircraft carrier "Sea Hawk" could only sail back to Manila Harbor under the towing of a tugboat for overhauls; seven light ships were sunk in battle, three were seriously damaged, more than 700 crew members died before they could get out of the division, and nearly 2,000 people survived, leaving a psychological shadow that is difficult to erase. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Suffering such a sudden and heavy blow, the atmosphere in the command room of the flagship of the Combined Fleet, "Kii," was particularly solemn, and the faces of the commanders, from Commander Koga Beeichi and Chief of Staff Fukurushi, to ordinary staff officers, were gloomy and depressed, but they did not fall into complete despair -- Influenced by Admiral Togo's decisive battle of victory in the Tsushima Strait, Koga Bee had the concept of winning a decisive battle from the day he took office, and at the same time, he was a practical person. It was very clear that with the current state of the Japanese Combined Fleet, there was not much certainty of defeating a formidable enemy, but winning a decisive battle was indeed the best way to save Japan from a great calamity, so on the day the Combined Fleet was launched, he made it clear to his subordinate officers that as long as the US fleet entered the Philippine waters again, the Combined Fleet would go all out to meet the battle, and would not look to the left or the right. On the way to the Philippines, the fleet's staff team formulated a detailed battle plan for the decisive battle against the US fleet in the Philippine waters.

Lacking an effective response to the high-performance U.S. submarines and the new torpedoes they used, the Combined Fleet did not really break free from the shark hunting group until it was getting dark, and Koga had two routes in front of him: either through the open Luzon Strait in the north, or by the narrow land and water of the Sibuyan Sea in the south. According to the conclusions of the staff officers through various calculations, it was ideal to take the Sibuyan Sea, and after this night of horror, the situation changed 180 degrees, and Koga and his chief of staff, Furushi, exchanged only one glance with each other, and then decided to go north, under the cover of land-based aviation, through the Luzon Strait, to follow the trail of the American fleet.

Without a "Omi" that was originally used as a meat shield and a death squad, and a "Sea Hawk" that served as a pathfinder and bait to lure the enemy, the combined fleet commanded by Koga Beeichi is still alive, as long as the tactics are properly used and the timing is in place, it is still possible to achieve victory in the decisive battle, but the lesson of this night is too painful, in his heart, the duel with the American fleet has changed from an inappropriate night battle to an inappropriate night battle, after all, in the case of the continuous blockade by Western countries, the Japanese Navy's electronic reconnaissance technology has never been able to break through the bottleneck, As a result, the practicality of the equipment has not been able to reach the ideal state, and this gap was fully demonstrated in the previous stage of the battle between the two sides, and the defeat of the Kurita fleet has reminded Koga that he cannot make the same mistake again with a heavy responsibility!

The following day, the main force of the Combined Fleet, consisting of 47 combat ships, carefully sailed the waters north of Luzon, and the Japanese air units stationed on Luzon and Taiwan provided thorough air cover at Koga Beichi's request. After the Japanese Army urgently replaced the communication codebook, Koga did not have to worry about the fleet's whereabouts being leaked due to the Army's communications - even if the Americans had the ability to independently crack the Japanese army's communication code, it would not be possible to do so in a very short time. After the fleet successfully passed through the Luzon Strait, Koga was worried about the gradually darkening sea outside the porthole: If it fails to crack the mystery of the precision attacks carried out by US planes and ships at night, Japan's hope of winning this war will become increasingly dim, and once the United States is no longer satisfied with regaining control of the Philippine Islands, then I am afraid that it will be a terrible and unstoppable catastrophe that will befall hundreds of millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians......

After nightfall, Koga ordered the Combined Fleet's route to be adjusted at the expense of time and to reduce the potential of the fleet being ambushed by the Americans along the way. At the same time, he anxiously hoped that the reconnaissance ships would bring unexpected good news that would change the current embarrassing situation of the Combined Fleet, but it backfired, and all night, the Philippine waters seemed to have ended the war, and there were no encounters or firefights against the enemy. This is often very deadly on the battlefield.

At dawn, bad news came from the garrison headquarters on Luzon Island, and a large number of US warplanes once again came to Manila Bay to launch a fierce bombardment of ships anchored in the port and in the dock for repairs.

Instead of being annoyed by enemy planes bombing Manila, Koga became happy. The enemy planes attacking Manila must have been carrier-based planes taking off from aircraft carriers, and a large number of enemy planes meant that a number of enemy aircraft carriers had arrived at the same time, and it seemed that the "wild bulls" not only did not accept the good news, but actually held back enough strength to wrestle with themselves -- thinking of this, Koga Bee immediately ordered the fleet to move at full speed toward the estimated position of the enemy aircraft carriers, and took off two squadrons of Zero fighters for long-range reconnaissance.

The wounded beast was excited by the presence of the enemy, and hundreds of kilometers away, Halsey was calmly eating breakfast. The fact that the carrier-based aircraft group that launched a major attack failed to catch the big fish in Manila was both expected and reasonable. The top brass of the Japanese army was looking forward to winning with one blow, so why not the top brass of the United States not want to follow the example of Soviet Russia, use the support of Europe and the tempering of the war to quickly strengthen its own strength, and then decisively withdraw before both sides are defeated. If Task Force 1 Halsey had defeated the Japanese Combined Fleet, the U.S. government would have taken the opportunity to coerce the Japanese government into accepting their terms of armistice, thus breaking the shackles imposed on the Americans by the defeat in World War II once and for all......

As soon as the attack group returned, the American light cruisers, which were on guard north of the fleet, detected several enemy planes in reconnaissance formation. After recovering all carrier-based aircraft, Task Force 1 quickly turned around and sailed at full speed away from Luzon.

In the early morning, 82 Japanese fighters flew towards the rising sun, and these land-based combat planes did not take advantage of any advantage in the early engagement with US carrier-based aircraft; even if they joined some more experienced Japanese pilots in combat, they could not reverse the technical and tactical inferiority, and in the end only a small group of Japanese bombers was able to break through the outer defensive circle of US fighters, and their results were only minor damage to the US aircraft carriers "Independence" and "Washington" and damage to seven fighters that had not taken off. The greatest significance of this retaliatory attack, which was not worth the cost, was to determine the coordinates and force composition of the US fleet, and the information was immediately reported to the Combined Fleet, which felt that Koga Beeichi was one step closer to his dream......

The time spent on the transmission of information, combined with the time it took for carrier-based aircraft to fly, assemble, and fly, did not appear on the radar screens of US carrier-based fighter pilots until three hours later. According to the report on the enemy situation provided in advance by the radar early warning plane, the US military used 11 fighter squadrons to meet the 107 carrier-based fighters that the Japanese army had put into convoy, and used six fighter squadrons to deal with the 91 carrier-based bombers of the Japanese army. Although the Wildcat, Hellcat, and IR-39T lag behind Gale in air combat maneuverability, the gap is more than made up for by weapon technology, combat skills, and tactical arrangements. In this large-scale, heavyweight naval and air battle, both fighters mounted and used air-to-air rockets, and both achieved effective shooting, which was the first time in the history of human air warfare, and in the battle, Irish Navy pilot Second Lieutenant Phillips used radio-guided rockets to shoot down a Japanese Zero, becoming the 100th downed result of this epoch-making weapon on the battlefield.

The white trail of the air-to-air rockets divides the blue sky into an irregular chessboard, and the fighters of the two sides chase each other in classic or novel air combat actions, fighting fiercely, with old trump cards falling here, new trump cards being born here, and the design performance of the fighters reaching the extreme at a certain moment, and the lethal effect of weapons can easily kill people even if they only reach one-third or one-quarter of the theoretical value......

The actual threat of this wave of attacks launched by nearly 200 Japanese carrier-based planes was naturally much greater than that of the previous dozens of land-based fighters. In the face of the interception of the US warships, the Japanese carrier-based bombers scattered in all directions to evade and flee, looking panicked and messy, but they were broken into pieces and continued to look for opportunities to attack the US warships. Fierce battles in the air were still going on, and Japanese carrier-based planes in groups or alone began to challenge the artillery defenses of the American fleet. Traditional dive bombing tactics can still shine brightly in the hands of first-class pilots, but with the practical application and popularization of fire control radar, it is no longer possible for the permeated gunpowder smoke to provide natural cover for torpedo bombers -- the "Independence" was injured twice, the "Enterprise" was slightly damaged, and the "Vespa" was hit by a dud; these were basically the results of the Japanese carrier-based planes through dive bombing, with the only exception being that a wounded "Gale" launched a death attack on the "Princeton" when there was no hope of returning home. As a result, the large US aircraft carrier was damaged in a large area in the aft take-off area, and the stern elevator was unusable for a short time, seriously affecting the normal take-off and landing of the fighters, and 19 crew members and one pilot were killed on the spot, and dozens of people were injured. To make matters worse, some Japanese pilots witnessed this crazy and tragic act and reported it to their superiors when they returned. Those who flew into the enemy ship were regarded as heroic models, and their behavior became an example for their colleagues, which means that similar actions will appear more and more in the following combat operations......

(End of chapter)