After receiving support from China's "Skylark" fighters, which can compete with the advanced "Gale" fighters, the morale of the US troops in Manila has been restored, and the US pilots who have withdrawn to Australia with the planes have returned to the Philippines on warships to fight with the Japanese planes. Both military and civilian, white men in the Philippines who had flown or were willing to become pilots were called up for training, and they quickly mastered the Chinese fighter jet, which was so easy to get started, and they played an invaluable role in future battles.

Despite the tremendous efforts made, bureaucratic interference, differences of opinion among senior commanders, and confusion in Washington greatly weakened the Pacific Fleet's efforts to fight with him. When the three aircraft carrier task forces, which had been painstakingly assembled, were preparing to leave Pearl Harbor for operations, Admiral Nimitz received an order to remove him from command, and Vice Admiral Pai temporarily commanded the Pearl Harbor fleet "at 3 p.m. on 17 December." It was part of a major reshuffle of the Admiral's senior admiral by Secretary of the Navy Knox to prevent the public and Congress from holding the Pearl Harbor fiasco accountable. Admiral Stark still served as Chief of Naval Operations, but the actual command of naval operations was in the hands of Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Ernest ? Kim's hands. King was a tough, uncompromising, zealous seafaring admiral. He demanded and received the authority to command the U.S. Navy under Executive Order 8984, and was directly accountable to the president, and the Pacific Fleet that had been attacked by surprise must regain confidence, and he was adamantly opposed to Nimitz's dismissal, insisting that this important task must be entrusted to Nimitz. At the insistence of Admiral King, Nimitz's dismissal decision was canceled, and he remained the supreme commander of the US Navy in the Pacific. Lieutenant General Pai was assigned to be his deputy.

Pai was a capable strategist and an experienced admiral, and it was understandable that he was cautious about Nimitz's grand battle plan to build a task force of three aircraft carriers. Fearing that the 11th Task Force led by Vice Admiral Brown and with the escort aircraft carrier USS Long Island would attack the base on Jalut Island in the Marshall Islands and fall into the enemy's trap, he changed the target of the attack to Makin Coral Island in the Gilbert Islands, which had just been occupied by the enemy, according to intelligence reports. Task Force 8, led by Vice Admiral Halsey and with the escort aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea, is guarding Hawaii's estuary. Frank? Rear Admiral Fletcher and his 14th Task Force, which was tasked with rescuing Wake Island, was also in a bad situation, and the departure of the fleet was delayed by the late arrival of the newly completed escort aircraft carrier Manila Bay. Nimitz had planned to wait for the arrival of the USS Manila Bay, then sail out of Oahu on 16 December with three heavy cruisers and escort destroyers, and dispatch the supply ship USS Tangier to rescue Wake Island with the fleet's oil tankers. When Rear Admiral Fletcher finally caught up with the supply ship Tangier, he insisted on keeping the fleet constantly refueled so that his destroyers were ready to move quickly, so that they would be slower to move westward in the turbulent Pacific Ocean.

On the morning of 20 December, when Task Force 14 under Fletcher's command was less than halfway to Wake Island, Pai decided that Task Force 11 would not carry out the attack and would go to reinforce Wake Island. That morning, the invasion fleet led by Rear Admiral Kajioka sailed out of Kwajalein Island to capture Wake Island and save face from the previous defeat. To achieve this, he also sent a fleet of heavy cruisers from the Truk Islands. In order to support the operation, the attack fleet led by Nagumo Tadaichi returning from Pearl Harbor allocated two aircraft carriers, which attacked the lonely coral island the next morning. The island's two remaining Marine Corps Wildcat fighters engaged in a heroic air battle with enemy planes and shot down one Gale fighter in a disparity of power. "We don't have planes anymore." Major Putman reported that his surviving pilots and ground crew, along with the Marines, guarded sandbag trenches dug along the coral island's shoreline.

Since the sinking of the battlecruisers "Lexington" and "Saratoga", the whereabouts of the Tsubamoto Strike Fleet have not been found on the map of operations at Pearl Harbor, but the sudden appearance of Tsumoto carrier-based aircraft over Wake Island has caused Pai to fear that his two task forces may be caught in a trap. Once again, he weighed how dangerous it was to carry out his predecessor's battle plan, pondering whether to "risk the loss of an aircraft carrier task force and attempt to attack the enemy near Wake Island." While Pye made up his mind that the safety of the Pacific Fleet's escort carriers was more important than rescuing the Marines, Fletcher's fleet, 600 miles east of Wake Island, was refueling — and literally heading away from the island. Task Force 11 was ordered not to sail within two hundred miles of Wake Island in order to prepare for engagement with enemy aircraft carriers, but the Tangier continued to Wake Island to withdraw the Marines there. On the morning of 22 December, while Pearl Harbor was still debating whether to attack, a wireless telegram came from Wake Island: "The enemy is clearly landing. "At this time, Task Force 14 was more than 400 miles northeast of Wake Island, and was refueling; Task Force 11 was southwest of Wake Island, twice as far away as Wake Island, and could not rush to the rescue.

In the pre-dawn darkness, the god of the army unwittingly reached the sea near Wake Island. This time, Kajioka parked his capital ship in the sea far from the range of artillery fire, and the 1,000 soldiers of the 2nd Special Naval Landing Team from Maizuru were ferried by assault boats and patrol boats. Suddenly, a trail of pink light pierced the dark night sky. The Wake Island Marine Corps artillery battery opened fire on the landing site. "The scenery is so beautiful that it's not a battlefield," wrote a war correspondent who watched the battlefield from the cruiser Yubari in Kajioka. It is said that the warship fired back with its guns, which made this fireworks display even more dazzling. On Wilkes Island's "Big Finger", Wesley? A detachment of 70 marines, led by Captain Pratt, managed to hit an enemy ship into flames and prevent the enemy from landing with frequent attacks with rifles and grenades. After four hours of hand-to-hand combat, they almost wiped out 300 "marines" who attempted to land.

At dawn, the Star-Spangled Banner was still flying on Wilkes Island, but an hour later, Major Devereaux on the main island of Wake Island and his 200 men were facing an attack by more than 1,000 Legon soldiers who had dug trenches along Coral Beach and planted sun flags on the beachhead to protect them from shelling by their own warships. Major Putman's pilots on the island were still at the southernmost tip of the island to meet the enemy attempting to land, and at 5 a.m. the flagpole at the U.S. headquarters was broken by artillery fire, and the flag was soon flying again on a broken water tower. After 7 a.m., the planes on board the aircraft carrier flew like a swarm of wasps, and Major de Vreaux, realizing that his position could not be held, sent a telegram: "The enemy has landed, and victory or defeat is uncertain. When he received a call back from Pearl Harbor suggesting that the nearest U.S. [***] ship would sail for another day, he believed that this was an authorization for him to "surrender when further resistance is futile."

Flags made of white sheets were raised on the water tower. Just after 7:30 a.m., a sergeant armed with a mop handle and a white cloth tied to it, accompanied by Major de Vello, stepped forward to surrender while the American military loudspeaker on the island was loudly broadcasting military music. Some of the American troops on the outlying islands, maintaining the fine traditions of the Marine Corps, refused to surrender to the enemy until their commander personally came to the islands. Therefore, it was not until the afternoon that Kajioka, dressed in a crisp white navy dress, was able to land on the island for a formal surrender ceremony. During the ceremony, he renamed Wake Island "Torishima" in the name of Emperor Hirohito. 1,500 American[***] and civilian personnel were taken prisoner. They fought valiantly, killing 1,200 soldiers and 210 U.S. troops, and Roosevelt praised them for their "heroic and historic defensive operations."

Newspaper headlines across the United States praised the Army's exemplary fighting spirit, but the praise could not hide the fact that it could have been avoided if Pai and his commanders had been more determined to rescue Wake Island. When the order to retreat was given to Task Force 14, the American officers and men aboard the "Manila Bay" protested and lost control for a while, and Fletcher had to hide in his cabin to avoid irritating his emotional subordinates.

The unfortunate news of the fall of Wake Island was soon drowned out by the news of the British Prime Minister's dramatic arrival in the United States. He flew to Washington at nearly 6 a.m. on a cold winter night, almost at the same time as the Sun Flag was raised halfway around the world by the newly occupied coral island in the Pacific Ocean. With a smile on his face and a cigar in his mouth, Churchill strolled down the ramp of the plane. That afternoon, he arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, aboard the Duke of York, and from there flew to Washington. Anxious to meet Roosevelt, he strode into the black car where the president was waiting, and when the sedan immediately sped toward the White House, the two heads of state in the car were already discussing the issue in depth.

When the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain met for the first informal meeting that night, news of the defeat poured in across the Pacific. Not only did Wake Island fall that day, but an army of more than 10,000 men had advanced to less than 100 miles from Manila. It has been less than 24 hours since the army launched a large-scale invasion of the Philippines. And General MacArthur had predicted a few months earlier that the attack would not be able to cross the beach.

Just after midnight on 22 December, the first of the 72 troop carriers dropped anchor near the gently sloping beach of Lingayen Bay. The troop carriers were escorted by battleships and cruisers carrying the 14th Army Corps, led by Lieutenant General Masaharu Honma. MacArthur correctly estimated where the Japanese army would launch its main attack, but he miscalculated the timing of the Japanese army's attack. When the submarine "Sharkfish" reported that the Grand Fleet had reached the surface of the sea only 50 miles from the northern tip of Luzon, he had less than 48 hours left. A few hours later, another piece of news came: a small invasion force of five troop carriers was landing in Davao, on the southern tip of Mindanao. These two operations were not seriously intercepted by the surface ships and submarines of the US Asian Fleet, nor by the "B-17" bomber group that had been ordered to attack the Chinese army before withdrawing to a new base in Australia.

In the early morning of 22 December, when it was still dark, the soldiers of the 48th Division, under the cover of heavy artillery fire from a large number of warships, began to land at three beachheads. The rough seas were a greater threat than the three divisions of the Philippine infantry and the regular Philippine cavalry regiments. Only Rosario's troops put up a resolute resistance, delaying the enemy's offensive for several hours; At other landing beaches, when the Japanese army rushed into position, the defenders dropped their old Enfield rifles and fled for their lives. Throughout the next day, his tanks, soldiers, and equipment were brought ashore in a shuttle of barges, meeting little resistance except for the occasional burst of fire. By the afternoon, Honma Masaharu's vanguard was already deep into the heart of the Philippines in order to join up with the southward advance that had landed a week earlier. A promising actual combat exercise of the submarine forces of the US Asian Fleet failed to materialize because the submarine commander who was in the shallow waters was caught off guard, and only two troop carriers and one destroyer were sunk by torpedoes from US submarines.

On 22 December, the day the US War Department announced the reinstatement of MacArthur's rank of four-star admiral, MacArthur was surprised to realize that neither the submarines of the US Asian Fleet nor the poorly trained Philippine army could save the Philippines. However, he remained reluctant to carry out the only remaining military option: the "defeatist" but well-orchestrated "Orange Initiative," which called for the withdrawal of American troops to the Bataan Peninsula. And now the fighter jets provided by China have initially curbed the air superiority of the company. MacArthur tried to avoid such an inevitable defeat, and he urgently asked the War Department to buy more fighter jets from China to strafe the enemy's advancing columns. "Can I expect anything from this?" He repeatedly demanded that General Marshall persuade the Navy to bring in more troops and planes from the continental United States. When this request went unanswered, he issued a series of warnings that unless reinforcements arrived, the whole of the western Pacific would fall: "Cowardice and Gou An cannot defeat an enemy as arrogant as Ben." ”

The only thing that made MacArthur happy at this time was the arrival of the Chinese volunteers.

Due to the interference of "pan-Asianist" and "isolationist" elements in China, the Chinese Congress has been unable to pass the bill declaring war on the Chinese side for a long time, and this situation has aroused strong dissatisfaction among many pro-American generals in China, most of whom participated in the Second War of Resistance against Japan and formed a deep friendship with the officers and men of the American volunteers who supported China in the war against the Japanese at that time, and MacArthur, who is currently in trouble in the Philippines, was the officer of the American Volunteer Army at that time. He has close contacts with many Chinese army generals. The Chinese side has been closely monitoring the war situation in the Philippines, but because Congress failed to pass a proposal to declare war, China's political axe was not authorized to war, and the Chinese team could not take action. Prior to this, in order to cope with a possible crisis, the Chinese side decided to adopt the method of retiring officers and servicemen on active duty and forming a Chinese volunteer army as civilians, so as to be able to support the US military in combat when necessary. This decision was strongly supported by Chinese non-governmental organizations and enterprises with close ties with the United States, and the recruitment of volunteers went very smoothly. Soon, three divisions of the Chinese Volunteer Army were formed, and a civilian-funded convoy armed with old ships and civilian vessels decommissioned by the Chinese Navy was formed. Of course, when the Chinese Volunteers were founded, they were criticized by many people, and some high-ranking officials of the Chinese political axe also expressed opposition, but what happened later showed that the Chinese side was very wise to take precautions.

When the situation of the US military in the Philippines was deteriorating, the Chinese volunteers quietly completed the assembly, they were transported by three armed fleets, and went to the Philippines through Keelung, Taiwan.

MacArthur warmly welcomed the arrival of the Chinese Volunteers, and the three Chinese divisions soon became his main force in defending the Philippines.

The Allies suffered another full day of crushing defeat on two fronts on Luzon, and the poorly trained Philippine army was too ineffective to stop the attack of the battle-hardened army. MacArthur's 28,000-strong force in northern Luzon was outnumbered by two to one, but when he toured the Lingayan front in a Packard jeep on December 23 and saw with his own eyes how easily the army could advance the front, he was disillusioned with what little remaining combat strength of the Philippine army was.

(To be continued)