In the eyes of his colleagues, Ernest Joseph King is undoubtedly a very lucky guy, although he did not taste victory in the Atlantic theater, but as the United States gradually established stable and trusting military cooperation with Germany and Ireland, from the Battle of the Azores to the Battle of Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cuba, the key to the victory or defeat of this series of confrontations was analyzed, and through the mouth of the other military officials, the US military top brass was surprised to find that General King, who had been defeated again and again, was by no means useless. His subtle and bold deployment caused a lot of problems for his opponents, but his opponents were the scheming Beinke and the miraculous Joachim, and he unfortunately missed the victory. As a result, King was re-appointed as commander www.biquge.info of the U.S. Navy's 6th Task Force. Although this position is one notch lower than the previous acting commander of the Atlantic Fleet, the weight is not low at all, and the disgraced and courageous Admiral Kim is determined to prove himself with victory......

Following the operational deployment of Admiral Calbfors, commander of the Pacific Theater of Operations, King once again led the fleet to set sail from Pearl Harbor. The 6th Task Force originally had 3 battleships, 3 heavy cruisers, 4 combat aircraft carriers, and 4 auxiliary aircraft carriers, plus the large aircraft carrier "Tarawa" temporarily transferred from Task Force 4 and the improved Confederate aircraft carrier "Clover" secretly leased from Ireland, and had the strength to contend with the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet -- from the perspective of the decisive victory of aircraft carriers, the combat strength of the Japanese Combined Fleet, which lost many aircraft carriers in the naval battle of the Marshall Islands, was greatly weakened and did not have the ability to carry out active attacks in the short term. Attacking while the other side is unprepared is indeed the only way for them to reverse their decline at the moment.

Although he did not insist on his opinion at the military conference, Kim did not believe that the Japanese Combined Fleet would dare to attack Pearl Harbor. If they were to make such a big gamble, they would never reveal their intentions in their radio communications. Therefore, there is a high probability that this information was deliberately thrown by the enemy in order to allow the US military to draw troops to strengthen the defense of Pearl Harbor, so as to be unprepared in the direction of their real attack.

Therefore, after leading the task force out of Pearl Harbor, King did not fully follow Admiral Calbfors's plan to maneuver between Pearl Harbor and Wake Island, he organized the slowest battleship "Arizona" together with 4 auxiliary aircraft carriers and half of the light ships into a temporary group, and deployed it in the waters northwest of Wake Island. Eleven destroyers and three fast supply ships sailed across the waters of Wake Island into the depths of the ocean.

At the same time, in the waters of Truk in the Caroline Islands, the essence of the Japanese Combined Fleet -- two Kii-class, one Kaga-class, two Ise-class, one Nagato-class, and one Fuso-class, a total of seven battleships, together with the Amagi-class battleship "Akagi," known as the "No. 1 Battle Cruiser in the Pacific," as well as two light aircraft carriers, two auxiliary aircraft carriers, and 29 cruisers and destroyers, were densely moored here.

On the Kii, which returned to the front line after overhaul, Mitsumasa Yonechi's Combined Fleet Commander's flag was waving in the wind.

On the bow deck, Menet, dressed in a white navy uniform, and Yamamoto Fifty-six, the new chief of staff of the fleet who arrived with the ship, stood opposite each other, one tall and one short, one with three or seven points, and the other with a shaved head. Minai is the 12th term of the Naval University, while Yamamoto is the 14th term; Minai was a traditional warship school with extensive experience in fleet command, while Yamamoto had long been committed to the construction of naval aviation. On the surface, the two have very different personalities and are not interesting, but in fact, they are colleagues who respect each other and have a good relationship, and even have a very good personal relationship.

"Commander, although our strategy of bullying the enemy is ingenious, it is a pity that the resolution of the Imperial Council of the base camp has bound our hands and feet, otherwise, our achievements will not only strengthen the existing defense line, and it is entirely possible to recapture Majuro or even Wake Island."

"Yes, Yamamoto-kun, no matter how hard we try, the role we can play is very limited, the real crux at the moment is that the white countries are complicit, Germany, Ireland, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Spain are our allies on the surface, and secretly they are all scrambling to trade arms with the Americans, resulting in our war with the United States dragging into a mode of attrition, and the base camp is powerless to change this situation, so we should make a decision as soon as possible, and make peace talks with the Americans and then concentrate on passing through L.I.C., Myitkyina, and Australia is the best policy."

"That being said, but the current problem is that the United States has turned from defense to offensive in the Pacific, and they insist that we return the Philippines and evacuate Australia, such a harsh demand, even if the cabinet can accept it, the army and the people will not agree."

"Yamamoto-kun, you must not take the words of politicians seriously. The Americans are asking for such a demand on the table, how can they not want to end the war as soon as possible and get rid of the trade plundering of them by European countries? As long as we show sincerity in negotiations, fight on the basis of reason at the negotiating table, and cooperate with military results, it will not be difficult to reach an armistice condition agreed upon by both sides! ”

"The commander has a point!"

The conversation between Menet and Yamamoto stemmed from a strategic defense policy adopted by the Japanese army headquarters at the Imperial Council half a month ago, that is, the Kuril Islands, Ogasawara Islands, the Mariana Islands, the central and western Caroline Islands, and the western part of the island of New Guinea should be regarded as an "absolute defense circle" and must be resolutely defended, while the Marshall Islands belong to the outer defense circle, and the task of the garrison is to do its best to wear down the enemy who is delaying the attack and gain time for strengthening the defense of the "absolute defense circle." Due to the heavy losses suffered by the Combined Fleet's air force in a series of combat operations in the early stage, when the US forces gradually seized the islands, reefs, and island groups of the Micronesian Islands, the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet no longer went to sea to meet the attack, but it had to go all out to assist the ground forces in strengthening the defense of the existing islands. In order to achieve this contradictory goal, Yamamoto advised Meneti to create the illusion that the Japanese Navy was preparing to attack Pearl Harbor through radio communications and the feints of some ships, so that the US military could strengthen the defense of Hawaii and suspend the offensive against the Marshall Islands and other targets, so as to buy time for the Japanese army to strengthen the defense of the islands.

During this period, the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet will "recuperate" in Truk, and the damaged ships will use the floating docks and maintenance ships here to carry out emergency repairs, waiting for the capital ships and aircraft carriers to return to the Philippines and the mainland for overhaul, and continue to accumulate strength until they have the strength to challenge the US Navy again.

The Caroline Islands, where the Truk Atoll is located, are located in the southwest of the Marshall Islands and north of the Solomon Islands, which is strategically very good, and the Truk has a unique geographical advantage - the six main islands of the atoll are located in the reef, which is equivalent to a mountain system sinking into the coral circle, and it is difficult to play a role in sea surface attacks, and it can only be effectively attacked from the air. Since the occupation of this place in 1914, the Japanese army has continuously improved its military facilities, making it the largest anchorage of the Japanese Navy outside the mainland and the most important naval and air base of the Japanese army in the Central Pacific.

However, the secrets of Truk Atoll are not seamless, as the entire Caroline Islands were once a Spanish colony, sold to Germany after the Spanish-American War, and later broke out in World War I, when Japan joined the Allies and occupied a series of German colonies in the South Pacific. After Germany's victory in the Great War, Japan, under military and diplomatic pressure, took the initiative to return all the islands to Germany, and negotiated with Germany to continue to use the Caroline Islands and some islands and reefs in the Marshall Islands by way of lend-lease. The Germans, who had newly annexed a large number of British and French colonies in Africa and the Middle East, had no energy to manage the islands in the South Pacific and did not want to compete fiercely with the United States in the Pacific, so they ceded a 50-year lease of the two islands to Japan for 45 million marks.

During the occupation of the Caroline Islands for more than ten years, the German colonial governor organized personnel to carry out geographical surveys of various islands and reefs, and drew the survey data into professional military drawings, all of which were backed up by the German Admiralty. By the end of 1936, the secret intelligence-sharing mechanism established by Germany and the United States was operating in a low-key manner, through which confidential information about the Caroline Islands and the Marshall Islands was made available to the United States.

Only six days after the Japanese army sent out the false information that it was preparing to attack Pearl Harbor, a US Fayabusa-type carrier-based reconnaissance plane appeared in the airspace near Truk and successfully photographed the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet anchored in the lagoon and the planes on the airfield.

Ernest King, who led the task force to the northwest of the Marshall Islands, immediately launched an attack on Truk's Japanese Combined Fleet with a carrier-based aircraft group, and snuffed out the enemy's threat to Pearl Harbor in its infancy!

……

Flying at an altitude of 1,500 meters, small floating clouds drifting by, and the blue sky against the blue sea was a wonderful sight, but the US Navy Second Lieutenant Kane had no intention of appreciating it at the moment, because he and his crew were flying a TBD-2 torpedo bomber with the notorious "widow maker" to an important Japanese nest in the Central Pacific, where not only the main ships of the Combined Fleet were moored, but also a considerable number of land-based fighters were deployed. Although there were 70 "Eagle Falcon" fighters in this large wave of US carrier-based aircraft, in the eyes of the bomber pilots, this number was not enough to be safe.

Officially nicknamed the "Destroyer", the TBD torpedo bomber was the most advanced carrier-based torpedo bomber in the world when it entered active service, and in many ways it was a first: it was the first torpedo aircraft on the U.S. Navy's list to use an all-metal lower monoplane structure, the first naval aircraft to be equipped with a hydraulic wing folding device, and even the 18-inch (450 mm) diameter Bris-Levitt MK13 torpedo it carried was the first U.S. aviation torpedo specifically designed to be carried and dropped by aircraft. The aerodynamic design of the TBD is excellent, and when lightly loaded it can fly any tricks, including horizontal figure-eight and Nesterov somersaults, but with a torpedo mounted it is a completely different situation. Whether in the Atlantic or Pacific theaters, US Navy pilots complained more than praised the TBD-1 and its improved model TBD-2, and the commanders at the grassroots level therefore proposed to the top level to purchase carrier-based torpedo planes from European countries, but after comprehensively comparing the American-made "Destroyer," the Ai-made "Sailfish," and the German Navy's latest model of the "Javelin" carrier-based torpedo plane, the US technical officer said that the gap between the two sides' battlefield performance was mainly "people" including the commander's tactical arrangement and temporary scheduling, the pilot's tactical literacy and will to fight, and so on.

(End of chapter)