"Mr. President, Admiral Short, Governor of Hawaii and Commander-in-Chief of the Hawaiian Army, reports that the Japanese landing force entered Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of January 3, Hawaiian time......

Mr. President, Admiral Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, reported on the confirmation of the sinking of a Japanese Nagato-class battleship. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoIn addition, the 80,000-ton Japanese battleship also suffered heavy losses. ”

White House, Oval Office. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt listened to the reports of Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Stark with a gloomy face.

The battle for Hawaii is not over yet, but the outcome is clear. The United States has lost! And the loss is very ugly!

Not only was the Hawaiian Islands about to fall, but the Pacific Fleet was hit the hardest. It lost 10 battleships, including the USS Pennsylvania, USS California, USS Maryland, USS Oklahoma, USS Tennessee, USS West Virginia, USS Arizona, USS Nevada, USS Colorado and USS North Carolina, as well as the USS Hornet.

In addition, more than 800 Army and Navy planes were lost, and more than 45,000 Army and Marine Corps officers and men, as well as more than 90,000 white-skinned American civilians, were trapped on Oahu and other Hawaiian islands.

"This is a complete fiasco!" President Roosevelt let out a long sigh, "And ...... This is just the beginning of a string of failures, right? ”

Stark and Marshall glanced at each other and nodded in agreement. The list of failures of the United States already has a long list, and after the Hawaii and Pacific Fleets, there are the Philippines, the Far East Fleet, Guam, Wake Island, Midway, the Gilbert Islands, the Aleutian Islands, and so on.

In addition, the British forts of Malaya, North Borneo, Burma and Singapore were also on the list of failures.

The Japanese fleet and army had already begun to attack these areas, and the resistance of the British and American allies would be crushed sooner or later with the complete loss of sea supremacy. With the exception of Fort Singapore, I am afraid that all areas will be lost before April 1942, and then the Dutch East Indies will change hands. The fort of Singapore will most likely be captured by the Japanese in six months, after which Japan and Germany will meet in the Indian Ocean, and Japan will march on Australia, turning itself into a truly intercontinental nation......

"And, we can't do anything right now but reinforce Australia, can we?" Roosevelt looked at Chief of Naval Operations Stark and Army Chief of Staff Marshall.

"President, we can also use submarines and camouflaged assault ships against the Japanese now." This was stated by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark.

"So how much did our submarines achieve in December?" Roosevelt asked.

"It was determined that 10 Japanese transport ships, 2 Japanese light warships were sunk...... Ships with a total displacement of about 20,000 tons. ”

Seeing Roosevelt's disappointment, Admiral Stark immediately added: "Mr. President, the British have achieved much better results than we do. In December, they sank 31 Japanese transport ships and 4 Japanese light warships, with an estimated total tonnage of more than 75,000 tons. ”

Stark was actually talking about an exaggerated "certainty". According to the Japanese Army and Navy, the total tonnage of ships sunk or damaged by submarines and camouflaged assault ships in December was less than 75,000 tons. Among them, 18 ships were sunk by submarines and camouflaged raiders, with a displacement of less than 45,000 tons.

In addition, 26 Japanese ships were injured, most of them minorly, that is, one or several high-tech torpedoes made in the hull of the ships - this torpedo is the Mk14 torpedo developed by the US Navy Ordnance Bureau at great expense, using the world's most advanced magnetic fuse, theoretically does not have to hit the hull, as long as it passes near the target, it can be detonated by the target's magnetic field, thereby blowing up the enemy ship. However, as a result, Japanese ship repair yards collected more than 100 such torpedoes from wounded Japanese ships in January-March 1942 alone......

According to later statistical surveys, 52 American submarines fired a total of 160 MK14 torpedoes in December 1941, and only 2 Japanese freighters (and 26 went home with torpedoes) and 1 Soviet freighter (which were mistakenly hit and later lost $1 million), with a displacement of less than 7,000 tons.

However, the 22 submarines and five camouflaged attack ships deployed by the British east of the Strait of Malacca achieved good results. Now the British Empire is too poor to afford high-tech torpedoes, so it can only attack with low-tech backward torpedoes.

And this low-tech white-headed torpedo is an antique developed during the First World War, and it explodes when it hits, and it doesn't explode if it misses. In less than a month, these low-tech torpedoes sank a total of 9 Japanese cargo ships and 2 Japanese light warships.

In addition, five British camouflaged assault ships sank five Japanese merchant ships, including a passenger liner full of Japanese expatriates evacuating from Hong Kong, killing more than 600 Japanese civilians. The incident also sparked tensions between Japan and the East Asian continent because the attacking British camouflaged assault ship was flying the blue sky and white sun flag when it opened fire.

"That is, a maximum of 100,000 tons a month...... President Roosevelt was still dissatisfied with the exaggerated results, because he knew the navy. He shook his head and said, "Our and British submarines will soon have to be redeployed, and then they will have to spend a lot of time on the road, and their combat efficiency will be greatly reduced." ”

Now the United States has 103 submarines in the Pacific theater (52 of which are active in the Western Pacific) and the British Eastern Fleet has 50 submarines (22 of which are active in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea), for a total of 155 submarines. There are quite a few of them, but where these submarines attack directly determines their combat efficiency.

If these submarines were based in Singapore and the Philippines, the time spent on the road would be short. It is possible that more than 40% of submarines will be in the operational sea area for a long time.

But if the base of the submarine is transferred to Australia, it will take a lot of time to sail thousands of nautical miles to get back and forth between the base and the battlefield. Moreover, the redeployment of 155 submarines is not just a matter of lip service, because Australia is just a large rural village where sheep are farmed, and although the British have built naval bases and ports there, the British have limited supplies stored there, and it is impossible to support a large fleet to be stationed. Even supporting the operation of more than 100 submarines is difficult, and a large amount of equipment and ammunition must be replenished.

In addition, the distance from Australia to the target sea area (the main route of Japan) is too long, and the relatively close ones are more than 3,000 nautical miles. Those small and medium-sized submarines with a displacement of less than 1,000 tons, such as the R-class and S-class, would basically not be able to reach Japan's main routes without the support of submarine carriers.

Therefore, when the current group of US submarines operating in the Pacific Ocean returns to their new bases in Australia or the continental United States, the threat posed by American submarines to Japanese transport ships will be greatly reduced.

Stark saw that Roosevelt was a little dissatisfied, and hurriedly said: "Mr. President, we are building large ocean-going submarines of more than 1,500 tons, which will be ready for service in large quantities by the end of this year."

In addition, we can also use some light cruisers to break the engagement, and even consider converting some of the Cleveland-class light cruisers under construction into fast aircraft carriers, and then use them to form a two-ship formation with the Cleveland-class light cruisers to break the engagement. ”

"Break the diplomatic relationship with an aircraft carrier?" Roosevelt frowned, "The Germans seem to have experimented, but the results are not ideal." ”

"President, just because the Germans can't do it doesn't mean that we can't do it well, the Germans are too stingy and only take out 1 aircraft carrier at a time." "And we have the most powerful shipbuilding capacity in the world, so we can come up with 10 broken carriers." The Department of Naval Operations hopes to be able to use the hulls of Cleveland-class light cruisers to create 10 light and fast carriers, and at the same time increase the number of Cleveland-class light cruisers from 15 to 20, so that 10 three-ship broken formations can be formed. ”

A light aircraft carrier built on the basis of the hull of a Cleveland-class light cruiser is not comparable to an escort aircraft carrier built on the basis of a merchant hull. Light aircraft carriers built with cruiser hulls have the same protection and power systems as Cleveland-class light cruisers, and can still reach a top speed of more than 31 knots, which is completely capable of going deep behind enemy lines to make a big fuss.

And Admiral Stark also opened his mouth widely, not 1 or 2 ships, but 10 ships! If they were all built and then penetrated deep into the western Pacific, Emperor Hirohito would have to be crushed by them.

"10 ships?" Roosevelt shook his head, "Too little...... Since we can't fight the Japanese for the time being, let's first set a small goal to break the engagement, build 20 aircraft carriers, and build 40 Cleveland-class carriers. In addition, the construction of Iowa-class and Montana-class battleships, as well as Essex-class aircraft carriers, must be accelerated. ”

After saying that, Roosevelt looked at the Chief of Staff of the US Army, General Marshall. The Navy is ready to fight guerrillas, so how is the US Army preparing to resist Japan?

"Mr. President, you've heard of a man named Ernest . Lawrence's physicist? ”

"Lawrence?" Roosevelt was stunned by Marshall's question, "As if I had heard of it, he was ......"

Winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics, he is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, working on transuranic elements. In October-December 1940, his laboratory discovered a very strange but unexplained physical phenomenon. However, in the second half of last year, Professor Lawrence's student Dr. Seaberg successfully explained the phenomenon using Einstein's formula of relativity. Professor Lawrence and Dr. Seaborg call this phenomenon nuclear fission. (To be continued.) )