Li Guang had been looking forward to the news of the naval battle between the US and Japanese forces, but it never came. On the battlefield, the Japanese only had a few submarines and destroyers and torpedo boats to harass, but the main fleet did not appear on the battlefield for a long time.

Could it be that the Japanese army will be beaten so passively? This is not like the usual style of the Japanese army.

When the deployment of the Japanese army came into play one by one, Li Guang couldn't help but pinch a cold sweat for the US army.

Yamamoto Fifty-six did not end as early as in history, and although he lost in a row, his prestige was working.

The U.S. military is preparing for island-hopping tactics, and in addition to speeding up the installation of aircraft carriers and training pilots, the Navy and Army are constantly attacking in the central and southern Pacific to attract the attention of the Japanese army.

And Yamamoto Fifty-Six is not stupid. Although he did not directly judge the US army's island-hopping tactics, he did not know from which direction the US military would attack. But he got to the heart of the matter, which was that the Japanese had lost too much blood in the Battle of Kuah Island and the Battle of New Guinea and needed to rest and replenish urgently.

In other words, space for time. That is, the Japanese army was passively beaten in the Pacific theater, and it was mainly the army that was beaten.

It was not easy to convince the Japanese Army, which had a long history of contradictions. But precisely because Yamamoto Isoroku did not die, the prestige of the qualifications played a role, and the Japanese Army was reluctantly persuaded to cooperate. Changing the commander of the Combined Fleet will certainly not be able to do this.

This is also the core logic of the Pacific theater in the last half year: the Japanese army has been on passive defense in the Pacific Ocean for half a year, almost in a state of pure beating, and even a little effective counterattack is extremely rare.

During this half a year, the US military was preparing, and the Japanese army was also preparing. Yamamoto once again used his gambler spirit to devise a plan that was even more barbaric than the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. And this plan. What is true is the overall situation and gambler spirit of Yamamoto Isoroku, plus the tricks of the two generals in the Japanese Navy, which combined to form the strongest strategy of the Japanese army.

On the evening of 14 August, two Japanese aircraft carriers attacked the Panama Canal.

The first move of the Japanese army, the kamikaze attack, officially debuted.

When the Naval Resistance Army burned Tokyo, Japanese Rear Admiral Onishi Ryujiro had a kamikaze attack, and even Japanese fighters launched a suicidal attack on the aircraft carrier of the Naval Resistance Army. However, in a hurry, the Japanese air force, which had not undergone special brainwashing and professional training, was not able to cause damage to the aircraft carriers of the Maritime Resistance Army.

However, this time is completely different. After half a year of training by Ryujiro Onishi, a group of Japanese air forces with a flight time of about 200 hours were killed at the cost of all 64 planes. Blew up the gates of the Panama Canal. The most important passage between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans was cut off.

The ruthlessness and madness of the little devils are terrifying, and these aviation units participating in kamikaze attacks have only learned to take off on aircraft carriers, and they cannot even land. Of course, the two aircraft carriers sent to attack the Panama Canal were not actually equipped with blocking cables. It is also impossible to recover the warplanes, but it is a real suicide attack.

With the Allies frantically counterattacking. Both Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk. Afterwards. The U.S. military learned that the two aircraft carriers dispatched by Japan carried only one-way coal. It's not just the aviation that is suicidal, but even the crews are all suicidal.

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In the early morning of August 15.

The two Japanese aircraft carriers are also the simplest aircraft carriers - except for being able to fly fighters, they do not have a recovery function at all. Two aircraft carriers like a grim reaper. Silently, quietly approached Pearl Harbor, the US Pacific naval base.

This proximity is completely different from the proximity of normal combat. A thousand kilometers from Pearl Harbor, all the Japanese fighters had already taken off.

And. On these two aircraft carriers, there are no other bombers at all, all of them are Zero fighters.

This distance is beyond the combat radius of the Japanese Zero fighters, and also beyond the reconnaissance and alert radius of the US military (700 km).

The US military had perfect radar facilities at Pearl Harbor, and the incoming Japanese fighters were also discovered before the Japanese planes approached, and no less than 100 US fighters remained at Pearl Harbor, and all of them took off to intercept them at one time.

But the madness of the little devil exceeded all expectations, and American pilots have never encountered such a situation. These Japanese planes were not even equipped with machine guns, and they did not carry fuel for the return trip at all, except for the limited fuel, all other loads were replaced with explosives.

The Zero fighters, which weighed only 1.8 tons, carried more than 500 kilograms of explosives.

The US pilots were surprised to find that the Japanese fighters, which the US pilots were trying their best to deal with, turned out to be unusual. These Japanese Zero fighters were only evading with unskilled skills, and did not fight back at all.

One after another Zero fighters were blown up by US pilots in the air, and a miraculous scene appeared in the battle, and the explosive power of the Japanese Zero fighters was so terrifying that at a distance of three or four hundred meters, some US fighters were shocked and fell apart.

After paying seventy percent of the losses, the Japanese fighters finally broke through the interception of the American fighters. By the time Japanese fighter planes flew over Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor was densely populated with antiaircraft artillery, and it was no longer in the same weak state as when the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor for the first time in 42. Under the anti-aircraft artillery fire of the US army, the Japanese Zero fighters were once again smashed to pieces.

At the moment when the American army was close to a complete victory, and the Japanese army was closest to defeat, there were only two Japanese fighters left.

If it is normal, let alone two fighters, even two bombers will not do much damage to the entire Pearl Harbor.

It should be said that there are still loopholes in the air defense of the US military. When the U.S. military was fully protecting the ships in the harbor, it was discovered that two Japanese Zero fighters had turned to the heavy fuel oil storage tank.

Immediately, the US military's oil storage facilities were fatally attacked. The losses caused by the two Zero fighters that slipped through the net to the US military were simply terrifying.

The whole of Pearl Harbor, the whole of Oahu, the sky above the wolf smoke billowed and black smoke, as if wearing a hat. This shocking fire burned for more than half a month before it was extinguished.

The heavy oil depot of the US military at Pearl Harbor can store up to 4.5 million tons of heavy oil, but it is still only half full, with only more than 2 million tons of fuel oil. However, even more than two million tons of fuel oil burned. Enough horror too.

The fire completely destroyed at least half of Pearl Harbor's facilities, resulting in heavy casualties.

Admiral Nimitz, who has always had a gentlemanly demeanor, also broke out foul this time. Vice Admiral Halsey, who was on leave at Pearl Harbor, was temporarily ordered to lead four escort aircraft carriers, whom he usually did not look down on, to immediately begin to pursue the Japanese aircraft carriers.

Under normal circumstances, the two Japanese aircraft carriers could have escaped, after all, they were 1,000 kilometers away from Pearl Harbor. However, the maximum speed of such an aircraft carrier of the Japanese army is only 20 knots, and it can run at most 15 knots for long-distance escape.

Enraged, Halsey didn't think about anything else at all, and as soon as the fleet went to sea, it was twenty-three knots at full speed.

But it's just speed. That's not enough. If you want to catch the Japanese aircraft carrier, the most important point is luck.

Vice Admiral Halsey, known as the bull, has one of the best commanding skills to be commented on, but his luck is one of the best in the U.S. Navy. Six days later, the two Japanese aircraft carriers were ravaged by Halsey and sunk.

It's even more ruthless. Halsey simply did not even ask for prisoners, and let the Japanese army drift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Die. He even destroyed the coordinate data of the sinking of the Japanese aircraft carrier after the war. The descendants of the little devils could not even find a place to cry.

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Almost in a day, the U.S. military fell to the bottom line. The bombing of the Panama Canal means that if goods from the east coast of the United States want to enter the Pacific Ocean, they have to go around to the southern tip of South America, and the voyage is 20,000 or 30,000 kilometers longer.

That route is very familiar to the Maritime Resistance Army. The first time the destroyer Pickup went to sea, it was almost sunk by ice and snow. In short, that route is really difficult, especially in August. It's winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Moreover, before World War II, the west coast of the United States, which was adjacent to the Pacific side, was relatively underdeveloped, and many military supplies needed to be transported from the east coast, that is, the Atlantic side, to the Pacific Ocean. More critically, most of the oil-producing areas in the United States are on the East Coast.

The Japanese burned the heavy oil reserves of the US army at Pearl Harbor, which meant that the huge US fleet had no fuel replenishment and could not fight for a long time.

Even if the U.S. military desperately transports crude oil to Pearl Harbor, it will have to wait two months.

And these two months are the decisive time carefully planned by Yamamoto Fifty-six.

Looking at the battle situation, you can see how ambitious Yamamoto Isoroku is.

First, U.S. troops have already landed on Saipan.

Japan has stationed heavy troops on Saipan, with a combined navy and land force of more than 50,000 troops. No matter how powerful the U.S. artillery fire was, Yamamoto 56 believed that the more than 50,000 Japanese troops with abundant ammunition and food would definitely be able to hold on for two months.

Yamamoto 56 did not draw conclusions haphazardly, you must know that in the Battle of Kuah Island, the Japanese army increased its troops one after another, and the maximum time was only 50,000 troops, and Kuah Island fought for more than half a year.

However, Yamamoto Isoroku is the navy, and his thinking is not quite right. Kuah Island covers an area of thousands of square kilometers, which can barely be regarded as having strategic depth. Saipan, on the other hand, is only more than 100 square kilometers, and there is not much room for maneuver at all, that is to say, once the two armies face each other, they will fight hard and fight to the end. With the firepower gap between the Japanese army and the American army, the Japanese army will definitely not be able to resist for half a year. Moreover, during the Battle of Kuah Island, the US army was all rookies who had never been on the battlefield, and now they are old birds who have experienced the baptism of war.

In two months, whether the Japanese army on Saipan can do it still needs to be questioned.

However, in any case, unless the US military survives, the US Army on Saipan will not be able to withdraw in a short period of time, and after several days of fierce fighting, the two armies have been mixed together.

As long as the U.S. Army can't withdraw, then the U.S. Navy can only wait for the Japanese Navy to attack near Kuah Island.

There is a saying in China, if you are not afraid of thieves stealing, you are afraid of thieves. There is no reason to prevent thieves for a thousand days.

At present, the US Navy is on the lookout for a sneak attack by the Japanese army at any time.

It's a bad day. Admiral Nimitz easily saw the predicament of the American military and began to frown.

On the night of the 16th, a small naval battle once again deepened Admiral Nimitz's apprehensions.

The Japanese sent six destroyers to attack a U.S. supply convoy. Although in this battle, in terms of losses, the US army seems to have a considerable advantage. After all, the U.S. military has artillery sighting radars for night battles, as well as escort cruisers, and surpasses the Japanese in all aspects. In this battle, the American army lost only one cruiser and one supply ship, but sank three Japanese destroyers.

However, this naval battle was a signal from Yamamoto Isoroku. That is, the Great Japanese Navy has been paying attention to the war situation and is eyeing the unknown seas.

The more arrogant the Japanese army was, the more headaches Nimitz felt.

To fight or to withdraw, this is a question.

The U.S. Army alone dispatched three divisions and numerous auxiliary units, with more than 67,000 troops. To retreat, it is not so easy.

Fighting, it's not that easy. Although the firepower of the U.S. military exceeds that of the Japanese army by 10 times and 100 times, Saipan Island has mountains and ravines, and it is not a flat coral island like Wake Island. It is definitely not easy to seize this island quickly.

What's more, the U.S. Navy's refueling may not last for two months. Without fuel, warships are scrap metal. (To be continued......)