With MacArthur's help, the Australian government now lobbied on Capitol Hill and promoted the "Pacific First" proposition in the American press. When MacArthur arrived in Australia from the Philippines, he was welcomed as a hero—but he found that the Allied Army and Air Forces, which he had expected to assemble and which he was waiting to command in the campaign against Japan, did not exist at all. Eager to regain the Philippines, he established his headquarters at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne. He didn't have an army, but he was very popular: Congressional pressure forced the president to award him the Medal of Honor, and across the United States, streets, dams, public buildings, children, and even a dance move were named after the general, and polls showed that most Americans considered him a war hero. Polls also indicate that Americans want him back to the Department of the Army, and some have asked him to be the Republican presidential nominee. MacArthur shrewdly exploited that support by holding press conferences, addressing the Australian Parliament, and speaking on radio as a sign of his strong desire for promotion. He demanded "enough troops and enough supplies" to launch an offensive against the Japanese. For an entire month, the sullen general — whom Time magazine aptly called "a hero on the cold bench" — waited for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington to resolve their strategic differences.

MacArthur was even more chagrined when he learned that Washington had decided to stick to the strategic priority of "Europe first" and would not appoint a supreme commander in command of the war in the Pacific. Like most Americans, he believed that he had been transferred back from Corregidor to take on that important position, but conflict between the Army and Navy made the appointment impossible. Admiral King refused to accept an army general dictating orders to his admiral, on the grounds that since naval operations would determine the course of the war against Japan, Nimitz would be the natural choice.

After a bitter dispute, command of the war against Japan was to be divided equally between the army and navy, with Nimitz as commander-in-chief of the Pacific region, which included New Zealand, Samoa, and Fiji, and reached the 160-degree ecliptic circle in the west, which was the eastern limit of General MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Southwest Pacific. Sumatra, Malaya, Burma, and the Indian Ocean remained under British control. MacArthur immediately found himself in the position of "Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Army, Navy, and Air Force of Solomon and the Philippines in New Guinea, Australia (equivalent to Nimitz)." He remains convinced that "of all the wrong decisions about this war, the most inexplicable is probably the absence of a unified command in the Pacific." He had a deep grudge against Washington's "naval cabal," which he once accused of exploiting his reinforcements in the Philippines, and now he is even more jealous of it. He believed that it was this small group that prevented him from being the supreme commander in chief of the Pacific. He was dismayed to find that he had been deprived of his command by an order from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which had retained a large part of the command in the hands of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in order to avoid future competition among several jurisdictions in the Pacific. MacArthur thus had to report to General Marshall and receive orders from him. Nimitz will receive instructions through Admiral King, and any disagreements between them will be resolved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What annoyed MacArthur the most was that he found that he could not "directly command the forces of any one country" and could not dictate strategy. Conductor Bleimai; U.S. Fleet Naval Commander Herbert? Admiral Leary was in charge of naval operations. The Allied Air Force was originally led by George? General Brett commanded - MacArthur later managed to remove him and replace him with someone from his own "Bataan Gang", who had established a command in Australia. MacArthur's protests were not enough to convince General Marshall, who insisted that General Wainwright be promoted to four-star general so that he could command all American forces, including the guerrillas, still fighting in the Philippines. …,

On the same day that Bataan fell, the British Royal Navy faced the same humiliation of being forced to give the western Indian Ocean to the Japanese. Weeks after the tragic sinking of the Prince of Wales and Counter-Attack, Britain's situation in the Far East was already precarious, and Churchill had to plead with China for help in securing Ceylon and India. The Chinese Navy provided active support, and the "Indian Ocean Task Force" consisting of four battle cruisers and three aircraft carriers set off from Cam Ranh Bay and urgently sailed to Ceylon to defend India's sea lanes and Burma's shipping lanes. After the collapse of the Allied Command in the United States, Britain and Australia, Churchill specifically asked China to send a brave and warlike admiral to command the fleet. Vice Admiral Wang Yonggang, who had participated in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Battle of the Celtic Sea, was selected and was now an excellent fleet commander. The fleet that was waiting for him at the Cam Ranh Bay Naval Base was a formidable front-line fighting force. The three World War I battlecruisers, led by the battlecruiser USS Glorious, were modernized and used to fight with the two fastest new aircraft carriers of the Dragon King class and the escort aircraft carrier USS Vostok. The fleet, consisting of eight cruisers, 16 destroyers and six submarines, would join the British Eastern Fleet in the task of defending the entire Indian Ocean (from Australia's western sea passage to the Cape of Good Hope) and the convoy shipping lanes to the Suez Canal and India.

However, the Allies were preparing for a large-scale operation to preemptively prevent a Japanese invasion of Madagascar, otherwise the Japanese navy would monopolize the Indian Ocean and cut off oil supplies to Britain from India and the Middle East, as well as the Persian Gulf. On 28 July, Wang Yonggang raised his flag on the USS Glorious, and immediately received an urgent report from the intelligence agencies that it seemed that such a strategic catastrophe was really possible: a powerful Japanese aircraft carrier attack group was sailing into the Indian Ocean. In order to prevent this unimaginable catastrophe, he immediately left the harbor and went to sea, correctly estimating that the enemy was heading to Ceylon to attack the British Royal Navy base and warships there, and he intended to lure the Japanese into a night battle, because after nightfall, the aircraft carriers could not dispatch aircraft, and his battleships had a firepower advantage over the enemy's aircraft carrier attack team. After three days of futile searching, he was forced to refuel at the forward base of Addu Island on the Maldives archipelago near the southern tip of India, and after refueling, he dispatched the light aircraft carrier "Vostok" and two cruisers to set off first.

Wang Yonggang estimated that this Japanese fleet was still in the Indian Ocean, which turned out to be a great mistake. In the afternoon, the pilot of a Bison water patrol plane, before being shot down by a Japanese Gale fighter, had reported that the enemy's aircraft carrier was about 350 miles south of Ceylon. Wang Yonggang's forces were scattered and too far away from the enemy to intercept him, and all he could do was try to cover as quickly as possible to the 600-mile sea surface of Ceylon.

Vice Admiral Keno Kurita, who commanded the Japanese fleet, had no information on the whereabouts of the Chinese fleet from his patrol submarine, and similarly miscalculated that it must be anchored in Colombo harbor, and he planned another Pearl Harbor-style attack the next morning to annihilate the Chinese fleet in one fell swoop.

While the church bell was ringing for the worshippers in Colombo, radar spotted the approaching Japanese plane. At nearly 8 a.m., RAF Hurricane fighter jets roared off from a runway converted airstrip. However, the first British aircraft to encounter enemy aircraft were a squad of Swordfish torpedo bombers returning from Trincomalee to the aircraft carrier Athletic (which had been withdrawn from port along with two cruisers). All twelve wooden biplanes were shot down into the sea, and the Japanese planes of the first attack wave continued to fly forward. Disillusioned by the fact that there were few ships in the harbor, the Japanese ordered their bombers to do what they had not done at Pearl Harbor: to concentrate on destroying the port facilities. Heavy anti-aircraft artillery fire and heavy attacks by RAF Hurricane fighters after finally spotting the enemy aircraft resulted in the downing of 16 Galewind fighters and the loss of 54 RAF aircraft due to their outnumbering. The Japanese failed to achieve their goal of destroying the port facilities and retreated in disarray. …,

Two small British naval ships were sunk, and a merchant ship caught fire. This was by no means a heavy blow that the Japanese wanted to inflict on the British fleet or the Chinese fleet. At noon, when the Japanese planes were returning to the aircraft carrier, the seaplanes of a Japanese heavy cruiser reported two cruisers to the southwest. Kurita now ordered the planes of the second attack wave to take off, and the planes remained on board because there were reports that there were no more targets to bomb in Colombo. They finally found the Chinese fleet, and their hopes were greatly increased. The anxious pilots found only two British heavy cruisers, meandering across the Indian Ocean in an attempt to evade the bombs of much more powerful enemy aircraft. The 10,000-ton "Dorsetshire" was hit by 32 bombs in quick succession, and a series of explosions lifted it out of the water. Twelve minutes later, its sister ship, the USS Cornwall, was hit by eight bombs and caught fire, and at nearly 2 p.m. it capsized and sank to the bottom of the sea, leaving more than 1,100 people on both ships to be rescued by the Chinese destroyers who arrived later.

When Wang Yonggang learned the news, he immediately led his fleet out to sea to search for the enemy, and later that afternoon, one of his aircraft carrier reconnaissance planes spotted a Japanese "Gale" fighter about 300 miles south of Ceylon. Kurita was unwilling to engage his aircraft carrier task force in an unfavorable night battle, so he accelerated eastward. The next day, when he searched west again, he found that the Chinese plane appeared above him. Because Wang Yonggang once again deployed the fleet to intercept the Japanese fleet heading for the Maldives Islands.

Although the Japanese fleet was warned in time, Kurita was confident that his fleet could destroy the Chinese, so he did not choose to dodge. The next morning, about 100 Chinese planes swarmed to drop bombs on the Japanese fleet, and 42 Japanese fighters took off to meet them. The two sides engaged in fierce fighting, and with no more fighters to deploy, the aircraft carrier Ruifeng became an easy target for Chinese pilots. At nearly 11 a.m., 12 bombs sank it; At the same time, the destroyers "Akebosake" and "Tide", which were guarding it, were sunk. This was the first time that the Japanese Navy had encountered an equal opponent since the start of the war in the Pacific, and Kurita decisively ordered to withdraw from the battle, avoiding further losses. Of course, his quick retreat was seen by many as an escape, and he did not complete the intended task of destroying the enemy.

While Kurita's attack fleet was engaged in a fierce battle with the Chinese fleet in the waters off Ceylon, Vice Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa's cruiser was also attacked by Chinese aircraft in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean, and one light cruiser and four transport ships were sunk. These Chinese planes took off from Chinese light aircraft carriers escorting merchant ships. Japan's raid on the Indian Ocean, although it cost the Allies nearly 100,000 tons of ships, also suffered considerable losses. The Japanese realized that no real victory could be achieved unless the Chinese navy active in the Pacific Ocean was defeated and eliminated. The outcome of the Battle of Ceylon greatly shocked the Imperial Japanese General Staff Headquarters, forcing them to use various methods to achieve the goal of destroying the Chinese navy, and the course of the Pacific War was changed.

"This is the latest intelligence analysis, and all kinds of signs show that the Japanese army may take large-scale offensive actions against our base in the near future."

Looking at the intelligence analysis report on the table, Vice Admiral Wen Xuezhong, commander of the Truk Naval Base of the Chinese Navy, only nodded with a smile on his face and did not attract much attention.

"Our base is now the biggest nail they've hit in the Pacific, and of course they're going to pull it out as soon as possible." Wen Xuezhong said, "Is there any news from the submarine force?" ”

From the time after the Pearl Harbor incident to the present, in order to prevent the Japanese from "copying" at Truk, the Chinese Navy has comprehensively strengthened its vigilance, not only has it added radar stations, but there is also a vigilance fleet composed of light aircraft carriers and destroyers in the waters around the base, and many ocean-going submarines have also been sent out. In this case, Wen Xuezhong is confident that if the Japanese fleet comes to sneak attack, the Chinese Navy will definitely be able to detect and counterattack at the first time. …,

"Not yet." The intelligence officer replied.

"Is the ship that sank a few days ago sure it's a Japanese transport?"

"Yes, although the ship does not have any nationality identification markings, there is no doubt that the ship is a Japanese ship from the analysis of the wreckage fragments."

"But why did the ship sink, but no human corpses were found?"

"Maybe the ship sank too fast and the Japanese couldn't escape."

"By the way, haven't those murders been solved yet?" Wen Xuezhong remembered the recent attack and murder of a local indigenous woman, and somehow felt a little uneasy in his heart.

"Not yet." After listening to the commander's question, Li Shicheng was silent for a while and replied.

"And what about the homicide on the 'Republic'? Still no clue at all? Wen Xuezhong asked with some annoyance.

"It's not like there's no clue at all." Li Shicheng hesitated for a moment and said, "It's just...... The current conclusions are somewhat counterintuitive......"

"Unconscionable? Could it be that some non-human did it? Wen Xuezhong looked at Li Shicheng's hesitant look, and couldn't help but wonder, "What's going on?" ”

"I'm afraid it's just like you say, General......"

"What? The experts from Beijing have been checking for so many days and have come to such a conclusion? ”

"It's not just this case, it's also the case of the rape and murder of the women." Li Shicheng seemed to have made up his mind and said to the commander, "The murderer is not a person, and he is different from ordinary people in terms of physique and mental intelligence. ”

"Do you think it's going to be Japanese?" Wen Xuezhong saw that his subordinate looked solemn and did not have the slightest intention of joking, and noticed the abnormality of the matter, and immediately asked.

"There is no evidence of that yet." Li Shicheng said, "But this kind of case has never happened before, but now that it came out, I think there is something strange, I am afraid that it is related to some sabotage activities of the Japanese." ”

"In other words, the Japanese are likely to have snuck in." Wen Xuezhong said with some annoyance, "And we haven't caught them yet!" ”

"Our people have been sent out, the situation has been reported, and Kyori said that someone will be sent over immediately......

"Don't wait for them, check me now! I'll ask the Marines to send a regiment over to help, and you arrange it to find those guys!" Wen Xuezhong waved his hand and said in an unquestionable tone, "Pass my order, once you find a suspicious person, you can kill it directly!" ”

"Yes!" Li Shicheng hurriedly got up and said.

"Love attacks young women, it's really terrible." Wen Xuezhong said to himself, "The feminists in Congress are still demanding the passage of a bill that allows women to serve on combat ships, but fortunately, there are no female soldiers here now, otherwise someone would have had an accident, and it would be really troublesome." ”

"Yes, this time it was a local woman who had an accident, and the impact was not too great, if it was a female soldier, the news would be transmitted back to China, and it would definitely cause an uproar." Li Shicheng said, "I think we should send a telegram to the upper side, euphemistically explain the situation, and don't let those rich daughters come here to 'gild'." ”

Wen Xuezhong nodded, and at this moment, a shrill "woo" alarm suddenly sounded outside.

"What's going on?" Wen Xuezhong got up and came to the window, looked out, and saw that a large group of planes suddenly appeared in the sky.

"It's a Japanese plane...... Li Shicheng had just finished speaking, when he saw a Japanese "Gale" fighter roaring down, followed closely by a Chinese "Skylark" fighter.

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