Spruance didn't regain his confidence in victory, but he recovered and was determined to keep fighting. Maybe the change didn't give him hope, but at least it reinvigorated him. Before that, Spruance was fighting for victory, and now, he is fighting for more of his countrymen to live to see the war end.

At that time, there were many problems in the Fifth Fleet, and each of them was very serious, which directly affected the combat effectiveness of the fleet. Faced with this mountain of problems, Spruance quickly sorted out the priorities and began to solve them.

The first issue is the quality, the quality of the officers and men of the fleet and the aviation units. Almost from the end of 25, this has been the most serious problem facing the US Navy. Although at the beginning of the 24th century, when the United States had only entered the war, the US military still lacked sufficient combat experience compared to the Tang Imperial Army, the quality of the officers and men was not low, especially the quality of the pilots, which was worthy of the pride of the US Navy. At that time, more than half of the officers and men in the U.S. Navy served for more than two years. In addition, a large number of pilots who had previously gone to Japan, Britain, France, Russia and other countries as volunteers returned to the Navy, and these pilots had sufficient combat experience, which was the main reason why the US Navy was able to compete with the Tang Imperial Navy in the first two years, and was able to fight with the Tang Imperial Navy in several fleet battles, and even forced the Tang Imperial Navy to revise its strategic plan several times. However, since the war has been fought so far, there are probably only one or two hundred truly veteran pilots in the US Navy, and the truly experienced officers and men of the fleet are less than 10 percent of the total strength. How high can the quality of such a contingent of officers and soldiers be?

In a situation where it is impossible to temper the troops through actual combat, and it is also impossible to withstand the losses of battle, the only way to improve the quality of officers and men is training, crazy training. That's exactly what Spruance did. Originally, he had already trained a group of officers and men, and these officers and men had already accumulated a certain amount of combat experience in the battles in front of him. Some of these officers and soldiers have already departed, some have died on the battlefield, and some have had to retire because of their wounds and disabilities. The biggest loss was the pilot, and this is what Spruance is most distressed about. If he had had a team of pilots like he had been in for 24 years, perhaps he would not have been so pessimistic and hopeless.

The second issue is the staffing of the fleet. After the battle on Niwa Island, Spruance had only three aircraft carriers left, and the escort warships could barely form a three-carrier battle group. Other than that. At that time, he also let a group of officers and men who had recovered from injuries return to the team, basically gathering enough officers and men of the fleet of these three aircraft carrier battle groups. By selecting a group of pilots from the Marine Corps' aviation units, he was able to gather the pilots needed by the three air wings. The quality of this contingent of officers and men should still be not low, at least compared to the overall quality of the US Navy at that time, this must be regarded as an elite contingent, but the problem is that with the arrival of a large number of newly commissioned warships, the number of "elite soldiers" in Spruance's hands is obviously insufficient.

At that time, the newly commissioned ships had a matching number of officers and men, who were trained at Norfolk Naval Base on the East Coast. At that time, the U.S. Navy required two sets of officers and men for each warship. But the problem is that the pace of training new recruits simply can't keep up, and it would be nice to be able to ensure that there are enough soldiers for each battleship. These officers and soldiers have received only the most basic training. If they can sail a battleship and operate artillery, but if they really want to go to the battlefield, then their skills are still far behind. The pilots of the carrier-based aviation are similar, many of them have only completed their training from the naval air station near New Orleans, and although they can fly fighter planes to take off and land on aircraft carriers, their combat skills simply cannot meet the requirements, and they don't even know how to safely drop torpedoes!

It's like in the first half of '26, although six new aircraft carrier battle groups were obtained, but they didn't have any real combat capabilities. Having equals nothing. Training is obviously meant to be carried out, but training does not solve the problem at its root. In addition, half a year ago, Spruance had plenty of time to train the fleet, but now, he doesn't have much time to intensify his training. The problem is obvious, if the two newly formed task forces are put into battle, the only role is to add results to the Tang Imperial Navy, with a few aircraft carriers. What is the point of dozens of escort warships, tens of thousands of officers and soldiers to replace dozens, at most hundreds of bombers, and the same number of bombs and torpedoes of the Tang Imperial Navy?

Spruance thought of a local solution, or the only way, to reorganize the fleet and promote a group of experienced officers and men, and assign them to important positions to lead more recruits. In this way, not only can the efficiency of training be enhanced, but also those officers and men who have already walked around the battlefield will be able to play a role in calming the morale of the troops and at the same time play an important role at critical moments. The key problem is that the total number of officers and men of the nine aircraft carrier battle groups is nearly 80,000, and if we want to completely change the staffing level, it will involve almost every officer and soldier, and this is a task with a very huge workload.

Spruance handed over this matter to Turner, who was originally the chief of staff of the Fifth Fleet and had a better understanding of the situation in the fleet, and this was a relatively detailed and complicated job, Spruance did not have much time and energy to deal with these problems, so he could only let Turner be responsible.

In addition to the staffing, the establishment of the fleet warships must also be determined. This is the only problem that Spruance finds relatively easy to solve, or not too troublesome. Previously, the Fifth Fleet had been lacking powerful escort warships, especially those that provided anti-aircraft cover for aircraft carriers. Now the problem was solved at once, 4 battleships, 12 large cruisers (the US Navy has not actually adopted the name "large air defense cruisers"), and 16 heavy cruisers, which is enough for each aircraft carrier to provide three, or four, main air defense warships. In addition, there are a large number of destroyers, which can also improve the anti-submarine capabilities of the fleet and avoid a sneak attack by a submarine after the aircraft carrier was damaged, as was the case last time, resulting in irreparable losses.

It was impossible to achieve complete balance in the formation of three task forces, and Spruance did not think so. In fact, the cruisers he had at that time were enough to provide anti-aircraft cover for aircraft carriers, and the battleships could be formed into an independent fleet. At least Spruance had that in mind. If the Third Task Force of the Tang Imperial Navy also appeared in the Central Pacific Theater, then he would have to consider having a fleet of battleships to deal with the Third Task Force.

The formation of the fleet ships went well, and this was done by Spruance himself, and in fact it was a great power, and Spruance did not let anyone else do it for him.

The fourth big problem is intelligence, which is also the most difficult to solve. If it's the military's inefficiency, Spruance can find a way to solve it and improve efficiency. But the intelligence agencies are inefficient, so he can only complain, and in addition to complaining, he can only continue to wait. In addition, intelligence also involves dealing with other departments, especially some government departments that Spruance hates, so he leaves the matter to Mitchell. In any case, Mitchell is the chief of staff of the theater of operations, nominally above Spruance, and the chief of staff of the theater must be responsible for intelligence work. This is also Mitchell's work in the mainland. It would be much better for him to intervene with the intelligence agencies than Spruance to deal directly with the intelligence agencies.

The last big problem had to be solved by Spruance himself, and no one else could help. That is to arrange another task force commander. But the problem is that there are not many suitable commanders he can find now, and it can even be said that none of them can satisfy him.

Under normal circumstances, the new commanders of the US Navy are promoted directly from within the unit, and there are many criteria for appointing commanders, among which experience and actual performance in combat are the most important. The experience of many staff officers is not a problem, and Spruance has a group of staff officers between the ages of 30 and 40. However, the problem is that these staff officers did not actually perform much in battle, nor did they participate in many combat operations on the ground. It would be a bit reluctant to promote them to commanders, and it would not be possible to do well.

In desperation, Spruance asked Nimitz to propose that Mitchell be the commander of the task force. At that time, Mitchell was also the only good candidate. Previously, Mitchell served as Commander of Task Force 32 and later as Commander of the Third Fleet after Halsey. Empirically, Mitchell had more generals than all the other generals at the time, except Spruance and Turner. In addition, Mitchell did not perform badly on the battlefield. In the "Battle of the Coral Sea", Mitchell's Task Force 32 also discovered Task Force 4 first, but the final outcome was beyond his control and beyond his capabilities.

The biggest problem was that Mitchell was the chief of staff of the theater at the time, and if he was to be the commander of the task force, he would have to leave Pearl Harbor. Holding multiple positions in the U.S. Navy is not a big problem, and it has happened many times before, for example, in the early days of the war, Nimitz was both commander of the Pacific Fleet and commander-in-chief of the Pacific Theater, when the Southwest Pacific Theater had not yet been established. To this day, Nimitz is also in both positions. But the problem is that as the chief of staff of the theater, Mitchell has to stay at Pearl Harbor to assist Nimitz, and as the commander of the task force, he has to fight with the fleet and cannot stay at Pearl Harbor, and there is a clear difference between the two. And in general, if you can't do two duties in the same place, you can't do both.

At that time, Nimitz did not immediately agree to Spruance's request, not because Mitchell agreed or disagreed, but because Nimitz did not find a suitable replacement for Mitchell as theater chief of staff at that time. Spruance knew Nimitz had no choice. The commander of the task force can only be held by the navy, and by the general of the naval fleet. The Chief of Staff of the Theater does not necessarily need to be a Navy general, the Marine Corps, the Air Corps, and even an Army General can be the Chief of Staff of the Theater. In other words, the position of commander of the task force can only be sat by Mitchell, while the position of chief of staff of the theater can be sat by other generals, and even many generals have the qualifications and ability to become the chief of staff of the theater.

As it turned out, Nimitz approved the change after finding a new theater chief of staff, and Mitchell became commander of Task Force 53.

At this point, most of the problems of the Fifth Fleet have been solved, or are in the process of being solved. Although Spruance was very dissatisfied with the state of the fleet, the quality of the officers and men, and the actual combat effectiveness, this was finally a complete fleet that could be pulled out to fight.

The reorganization of the fleet was completed in mid-February, and Mitchell took up his duties at the end of February when the Fifth Fleet was officially inaugurated, and the three task forces were officially established at that time, and only the training work continued. By the end of February, the newly offered F4U replaced the F6F, which had not performed well in battle, as the main fighter of the fleet. Previously, the old F4U was nicknamed "Corsair", but in order to distinguish the two F4Us, which are not very different in appearance and have the same number, the Navy gave this fighter a new nickname: "Super Corsair".

The training of the three task forces was carried out separately, and basically they took turns to leave the port for training. At that time, Spruance had not yet arranged the task of confrontation training, mainly because the quality of the officers and men of the three task forces had not reached the level of confrontation training. The initial training alone will last at least until the end of March, and Spruance knows very well that he does not have so much time, so he can only increase the intensity of training, and strive to let the fleet conduct confrontation training in mid-March, so that those recruits can familiarize themselves with the feeling of battle through simulated actual combat training, even if it is still impossible to replace actual combat, it is impossible for officers and men to gain actual combat experience, which is also much more effective than ordinary training.

Spruance, Turner, Mitchell were the three main commanders of the Fifth Fleet, and they were also the "three carriages" of the Fifth Fleet, a nickname that was taken in private by a group of sailors and quickly spread. That's pretty polite, at least the sailors haven't read Alexandre Dumas's book, otherwise they'd have called them "the three musketeers". As for whether Spruance will care about this nickname, I'm afraid no one knows.