The nine cruisers and 11 destroyers in the combined fleet of the British, American, Dutch, and Australian fleets were the last hope for preserving part of the Dutch East Indies. On 26 June, four days after China declared war on Ben, three other Royal Navy cruisers and destroyers sailed for Batavia, where they were ordered to attack a large fleet of invading convoys in the northwestern part of Java. They were subjected to heavy air raids and finally escaped to Ceylon through the Sunda Strait.

In the afternoon of the same day, aerial reconnaissance detected another convoy of convoy ships heading to the eastern tip of the island of Java. Before Rear Admiral Dorman's fleet could refuel in Surabaya, it received an order from Herfrich's headquarters in Batavia: "Follow the pursuit until all the troops are destroyed." He instructed his multinational force: "We must fulfill our duty until the last moment." "The Allied fleet searched all night, but to no avail. At dawn, they returned to Surabaya and escaped the attack of the plane, which was discovered and sunk that morning when the old American aircraft carrier "Langley" was transporting a group of fighters to Chiraza.

When aerial reconnaissance discovered for the second time that the convoy was 100 miles north of Bavean Island, Dorman's fleet set out to intercept it. There was no time to hold a combat meeting, and the general's orders had to be ordered by the "Germans?" A U.S. Navy liaison officer aboard the Ruyter translated it and sent it to the heavy cruisers "Exeter" and "Houston" with a signal light. The aft tail of the fleet consisted of the light cruisers "Perth" and "Java". On the left flank are 3 destroyers of the Royal Navy; The right flank was covered by two Dutch destroyers and four US Navy destroyers.

Dorman's request to send reconnaissance aircraft was denied, as all aircraft had been sent to attack the troop convoy. At 3:30 p.m., the British destroyers, covering the left flank, spotted the support fleet approaching from the northwest. This is the light cruiser "Shentong" and 8 destroyers of Rear Admiral Yorizo Tanaka. Dorman now ordered his fleet into battle, but, in the absence of radar and reconnaissance aircraft, he was completely unaware that there were two more enemy fleets nearby. Six miles west of the troop convoy's support fleet were the light cruiser Naka and six destroyers, and five miles to the northwest were the heavy cruisers Nachi and Haguro and four destroyers of Vice Admiral Takagi Takeo. Although the cruisers of the Dorman fleet were stronger, and therefore more firepower, this advantage was lost, because he participated in the battle blindly, while the enemy cruisers and seaplanes were able to observe the movements of its enemy.

The ships of the three squadrons immediately entered a parallel course to the Allied ships, keeping only enough distance for the 8-inch guns of the heavy cruisers, which put Dorman at a disadvantage, as the aft turret of the wounded cruiser "Houston" was rendered useless. In order to overcome the opponent of this duel, the Dutch admiral tried to reduce the distance so that the 6-inch caliber guns on his cruiser could work. He had an advantage in small-caliber guns, but when the distance was reduced, he fired a torpedo himself.

The shooting skills of the Yue army were also superior, and in the first few minutes of the battle, "De? The engine room of the Ruyt was hit by an 8-inch shell that did not explode. At about 4:30, another volley of shells fired from the heavy cruiser exploded in the engine room of the "Exeter". The warship immediately caught fire and was forced to withdraw from the battle. Since it followed closely behind the flagship and was responsible for conveying orders, the other ships of the fleet followed it honestly, turning south together, leaving behind the "German? The Ruyt" moved forward alone at high speed. A torpedo blew the destroyer "Cotton Air" in two, and the broken two halves of the hull quickly sank to the bottom of the sea.

The crucial minutes were lost, and Dorman turned around and regrouped the fleet under the cover of the smoke screen cast by the American destroyers. The pressure of the attack forced him to turn his fleet away from the bow of the crippled Exeter.

The chaos that was about to enact was blocked by Captain May, who, in accordance with the fine tradition of destroyers, took the "Electra" to rescue the paralyzed "Exeter" at full speed, and he blocked the head-on attack of the enemy's two light cruisers. A destroyer was sunk, and the engine room of the "Electra" was hit by several bullets and could not move, becoming the target of the gunners of the "Shentong."

The dim twilight and the smoke of artillery fire seriously hampered Dorman's judgment of the enemy's activities. The Ruyt's signal lights flashed brightly and dimly: "Follow me." "After I launched a torpedo attack, I opened up and disappeared into the thick blue smoke." The enemy retreated to the west, where was the convoy of troop transports? "At half past six o'clock in the afternoon, while very anxiously questioning Herfrich's command, Dorman led his squadron to turn north-east, and the wind stopped, still searching for Ben's troop carrier. In the absence of aerial reconnaissance, it was impossible for him to know that Takagi Takeo had ordered the troop transport fleet to change course under the Nachi, that the convoy had reached the sea 30 miles away, and that it was protected by three squadrons of the Navy, which were now heading south to escort the convoy.

As night fell, parachute flares were lit up in the darkness, which were dropped by reconnaissance planes to track the Allied naval squadrons. The two sides exchanged occasional cannon fire, which finally forced Dorman to turn around and turn northwest. Intending to get rid of the plane, he circled the coast and then turned north again to search for the troop carrier.

Dorman's operation was about to succeed, but at 9:30 p.m., a loud bang tore through the night sky. "I was torpedoed," the destroyer "Jupiter" cried out for help. The explosion was caused by a drifting mine laid during the nearest coastal fortification; But this was the opportunity needed by the American destroyer commander to make a request to return his four destroyers to Surabaya, as they were running out of fuel.

The Allied cruisers continued at full speed with only one escort to escort them, and an hour later, the escort remained to rescue the sailors who had fallen from the unfortunate "Cotton El". "Virtue? The Ruyt" went north, and 3 cruisers followed it, now unguarded and threatened by enemy destroyer attacks. At 10.30 p.m., Dorman was spotted again by a sharp-eyed lookout on the Nachi, who was still searching for the enemy's convoy of escort ships, which he concluded had not yet reached Java.

Takagi Takeo lined up his flagship Nachi and the cruiser Haguro that accompanied him in a northeasterly direction, blocking the passage to the troop convoy, and he began an artillery battle, while Rear Admiral Tanaka transferred the support ships of the Kazuki to cover the flanks that had left gaps. It was a battle of great disparity in strength, because he had the advantage in 8-inch guns. Their night fighting skills were immediately apparent, and they saw the flashes of red artillery fire fluctuating back and forth. When the distance was reduced to less than 5 miles, Tanaka's destroyers fired a volley of torpedoes at the Allied naval squadron. A deadly "spear" torpedo drilled into the "German? The stern of the Ruyt. The stern of the light cruiser was immediately drowned in a sea of fire, and the "Houston" and "Perth" hurriedly turned and fled, avoiding the fate of the "Java". The "Java" was torpedoed a few seconds later, and the ship's crew rushed forward to avoid the flames. At this time, the signal rocket on the flagship ignited, and a strange fireworks appeared in the night sky, announcing the destruction of the ship. Dorman's last courageous signal was to withdraw the two remaining cruisers and not to rescue the overboard. The two American and Australian ships quickly fled south to the port of Batavia, leaving two Dutch warships at their disposal. The two ships hissed into the black waters of the Java Sea, drowning Dorman and his 344 sailors.

The battle, which claimed the life of the brave Dutch admiral and the tragic destruction of four warships, only delayed the landing of the Japanese army in East Java for twenty-four hours. On that day, the Houston and Perth refueled in Batavia, and 400 miles to the east, the Exeter, escorted by the destroyer USS Conflict, staggered into the port of Surabaya to rendezvous with four American destroyers. Royal Navy mechanics labored to repair broken machines, and the dead were sent ashore for burial. After nightfall, the Allied naval forces prepared for various retreats.

That night, three of the four destroyers of the U.S. Navy managed to break out of the Bali Strait and evade the battleship. "John? The destroyer "Paul" accompanied the destroyer "Conflict" and escorted the wounded cruiser "Exeter" westward out of the dark and dreary Java Sea, preparing to pass through the Sunda Strait the next night. The cruisers "Houston" and "Perth" had already left the harbor and hoped to make the same voyage that evening in order to avoid being bombed by enemy bombers at dawn. They should have succeeded, but, at 10:15, when they were less than 30 miles from the northern mouth of the Sunda Strait, they suddenly encountered the Zoben invasion fleet in Bantam Bay.

Admiral Waller did not hesitate to lead the "Perth" and "Houston", bypassing the two destroyers that were on guard, into Bantam Bay; By the light of the flares, about 50 troop carriers were moored in the bay, arranged in the shape of crescents, and Allied artillery spewed tongues of fire into them. The commander of the 16th Army, Lieutenant General Imamura, was sitting on the boat with his headquarters, which was also thrown into the sea by a shell, and he grabbed a piece of floating wood and struggled to swim to the shore. Gunfire and smoke tore through the night sky. Torpedoes were fired back and forth, frantically shuttling, and the other destroyers rushed back to the bay to join the melee. Then, four heavy cruisers arrived to block the escape route of the Allied warships. They are besieged in the bay. A military observer aboard the Houston recorded the battle until the end: "Enemy ships, presumably cruisers or aircraft carriers, fired at the Houston at a distance of about 12,000 yards toward the sea. After determining the range of their guns, the enemy ships began to fire heavily at the Allied ships, inflicting considerable losses. Destroyers of three or four formations, using guns and torpedoes, attacked the bow and stern of the Houston in turn...... All the means of communication that were still working were overwhelmed, with some reporting damage, some reporting that torpedoes were coming, some reporting that the enemy had started a new offensive, and some reporting a change in the target. ……”

Everyone on the two cruisers with inferior firepower of the Allies knew what the outcome of this desperate final melee would be. They played very beautifully. Fifteen minutes before midnight, the "Perth" sank after being hit by 4 torpedoes. The thickly armored "Houston" was still trying to dodge the continuous onslaught of torpedoes, and the deck was littered with dead and undead sailors. The 8-inch guns of its forward turret fired continuously until the shells were finished, at which point three torpedoes hit the middle of the cruiser's hull. The hull of the ship began to shake violently, and Captain Rooks ordered the ship to be abandoned. He continued to fire on the deck, and the survivors jumped into the water. His own searchlight shone coldly on the burning cruiser for a quarter of an hour. When it sank into the water, the torn battle flag on the ship was still flying. Less than half of the personnel on both warships will be rescued from the warm black water, facing an uncertain survival in the camp.

The Dutch destroyer "Everson" set sail from the port of Batavia too late that night to catch up with the two cruisers, and narrowly slipped away from the side of the naval battle and escaped into the Sunda Strait without being discovered by the Japanese army. Later, it was still in danger, and at dawn it was sunk by two destroyers of the Japanese army. The wounded "Exeter" and its two wingmen were still unaware of the fact that the Sunda Strait had been blocked, and at 2 to 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, they continued to move towards the strait at a speed of more than 20 nautical miles per hour. The night allowed Captain Gordon of the Exeter to slip west without being spotted by the warship Tsubamoto, which was patrolling the Java Sea. However, daylight exposed its position to enemy aircraft. At 10 a.m., Takagi Takeo's heavy cruiser headed west at full speed to intercept the cruiser that had escaped under his nose 36 hours earlier. Another group of heavy cruisers and destroyers blocked the escape route of the "Exeter" to the east.

When the cruiser "Exeter" turned its bow and attempted to crossfire with its 8-inch guns, its two faithful destroyers raised a protective smoke screen for it. The ship's mechanics worked desperately to repair the broken machine and make the ship as fast as possible. In the Java Sea, it raced to death, heading 20 miles to the east. It is said that the plane launched a fierce attack on the "Exeter", and the rain of shells set off a column of water that soared into the sky. The "Exeter" returned fire with all its guns, but its column had been damaged by an earlier shell, and then its boiler room was destroyed by shells, and the speed of the entire warship began to slow down. At 11:30 a.m., the end of the "Exeter" approached, and Captain Gordon ordered the ship to be abandoned, and the last few torpedoes blew it up, and a thick smoke screen rose over it. The "Conflict" also sank. American destroyer "John? The Paul grabbed a few minutes to save her life, ducking into a thick cloud of smoke, and it was only when the vagaries of the storm ceased and her own 8-inch shells came in a flurry that the destroyer fled in a hurry. Takagi Takeo won the final victory in the naval battle on June 26.

That morning, as the final hours of the Battle of the Java Sea were underway, an embarrassing scene marked the death of the Allied naval command of the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, and Australia. Rear Admiral Glasford and Pallize had to inform Hellfrisch that they had been ordered to remove their surviving submarines and destroyers from his command, making him feel like an inexperienced ensign. Herfrich couldn't help but protest. Unable to prevent the Japanese from reaching the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, their main objective, the first Allied efforts to establish joint command failed. The last brutal battle of the American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces was fought in the woods, with British and Australian troops resisting the invasion of the Japanese army together with General Tepultan's soldiers, and six days later, when they were defending Bandung, they fought to the point of exhaustion and finally stopped resisting. Radio Bandung broadcast the last sad message: "We stopped resisting...... Say goodbye. Long live the Queen! ”

A few hours before the final surrender of Java, about 2,000 miles to the north, the British troops of the last train left Rangoon at dawn. After the demolition experts had completely destroyed the port facilities, the last of the ships left the port, by which time the vanguard of the 33rd Division had entered the outskirts of Rangoon. The commander, Lieutenant General Iida, held a victory parade in the city of Yangon, abandoned by the Allies. With Rangoon in his hands, the 15th Army now controls the gateway to Burma. Although China had declared war on the Chinese frontier at this time, the squadron in Yunnan did not immediately enter Burma, and the squadron in Indochina was busy suppressing the Vietnamese rebellion, and the squadron did not make any moves, nor did the army attack the squadron. Wavell returned to his old headquarters in New Delhi, and now he had a more realistic view of his military prowess. He realized that neither the squadron nor the newly arrived British 7th Panzer Division and Indian recruits could hold Burma.

(To be continued)