In the waters southeast of Ngano Island, Nagumo also received a telegram from a reconnaissance plane that the Japanese planes attacking Bengkulu had discovered the traces of the Marshallese fleet, and some of the bombers that had not yet finished dropping bombs turned around and launched an attack on the German fleet. According to intelligence, the German fleet had four aircraft carriers, but did not send bombers to attack him.

This situation made his aviation operations staff officer Harada Nakasa very nervous, which is very reminiscent of the North Atlantic naval battle that took place last year. In that naval battle, the German fleet, which was also responsible for attracting the attention of the British, did not launch a counterattack, but sent fighters with all its strength to defend the fleet, but the Austro-Hungarian air fleet, which was in ambush in another position, launched the attack first. In that naval battle, the British lost most of their aircraft carriers, thus losing control of the seas.

To tell the truth, most of the Japanese naval commanders who fought in the South Seas were quite critical of the naval counterattack plan drawn up by the Admiralty. The Japanese Navy is not strong enough, and it has left the protection of shore-based combat aircraft to take the initiative to attack, which itself is a great risk.

Now Vice Admiral Nagumo is indeed in a dilemma.

Judging by the reports sent back by the fighters of the first wave of attacks, the number of fighters escorted by the enemy was large, the attack on the enemy by more than thirty bombers protected by twenty-six Zero fighters did not achieve much results, only a dozen planes ventured to break through the enemy's defense line and hurriedly dropped bombs, and it was possible that one of the enemy's aircraft carriers was hit by a bomb (in fact, it was an aircraft carrier that was hit, and the aircraft carrier in the hands of Marshall remained intact).

Now Nagumo had to make a decision, the enemy had six aircraft carriers (the Japanese planes also used two transports full of planes on their decks as aircraft carriers), far outnumbered him, and in fact he had to attack them first. However, a second wave of attacks was immediately launched. There is also a very strict zhòng obstacle. In order to prevent enemy attacks, all 48 Zero fighters escorting the second wave of attacks have already taken off and are conducting combat patrols over the fleet.

Now Nagumo's real available forces are only thirty-six dive bombers and forty-eight torpedo planes of the "Wyvern" and "Soryu". If he sends bombers to deliver a preemptive attack on the enemy task force, they have no fighter cover, and they can easily become live targets for nimble and fast enemy fighters, suffering severe losses.

Nagumo hesitated. At this time, the first attack wave under the command of Nagayu Shaoza had returned from the bombing of the Bengkulu landing site, and these planes needed to land on the aircraft carrier, which required Nagumo to make a quick decision. At this critical juncture, Rear Admiral Tabun Yamaguchi, commander of his Second Aircraft Carrier Fleet, proposed an urgent proposal to Vice Admiral Nagumo. Yamaguchi's flagship, the Flying Dragon, was still quite far from the Akagi, and he received a series of reconnaissance reports from the search planes of the Tone, but he did not receive the order for Nagumo to attack immediately, which he felt was both unwise and dangerous. So he instructed the destroyer "Nobu" escorting him to forward his telegram to Vice Admiral Nagumo: "I think that the attacking force should be ordered to take off immediately. ”

The communications officer who handed the telegram to Nagumo didn't dare to look at his already blue face, and in any navy in the world, a subordinate would be seen as an insult to his superiors if he sent such a telegram in battle. Because it means that he doubts his superior's ability to command; In the Imperial Japanese fleet, this was a daring, suicidal offense.

Yamaguchi's telegram backfired, and Nagumo immediately did the opposite: he ordered all combat-ready aircraft on deck, including those of the Yamaguchi fleet, to be sent off the hangar, the flight deck was emptied, and the entire mobile fleet of aircraft carriers was instructed to prepare for the recovery of the aircraft.

In fact, the outcome of the Japanese fleet was already decided from the moment they sailed out of the Sunda Strait, and the number of aircraft carriers itself was reduced by half, plus the transfer of the strongest Fifth Air Force. Nagumo's five aircraft carriers in his hands have only 310 aircraft, and his opponents. However, the Combined Fleet of the Axis Powers has more than 1,200 combat aircraft, and in terms of strength, the Axis Fleet is enough to beat the entire Nagumo Fleet.

Nagumo's decision was nothing more than hastening the destruction of the Japanese mobile fleet.

The crews of the Japanese aircraft carrier Gojo were recovering all the planes, preparing to reload them with weapons, fill them with fuel, and install them in their designated positions on the flight deck. At this time, the aircraft carrier is at its most chaotic and weak. Basically, there is no ability to fight back.

While one by one the returning planes landed on the flight deck, the hangar deck below was desperately trying to reload the torpedo planes. Ground crews, dressed only in short-sleeved shirts and shorts, hurriedly unloaded the bombshell. They didn't have time to send the dropped bombs back to the bomb magazine below, so they had to pile them up next to the hangar.

The problem was that the first wave of Axis aircraft formations arrived on the battlefield precisely at this time.

A huge number of Austrian-Chinese joint attack formations were lined up in an orderly echelon formation, and bombs were whizzing from the sky. Appeared in the sky to the west of the Japanese fleet.

Although Japan had already obtained radar technology from the United States at this time, Japan's weak electronics industry had only produced four sets of radar equipment so far, and all of these radars were equipped on the battleships commanded by Commander Yamamoto of the Combined Fleet, and the most important mobile units were not equipped with any radar.

In the Japanese Navy, the traditional battleship faction still had the upper hand, and although the Japanese Navy had a strong aircraft carrier fleet, they still regarded aircraft carriers as auxiliary ships. For example, the two battleship formations commanded by Yamamoto will certainly be incorporated into the escort formation of the task force according to the German and Austrian practice, but the Japanese have always let these battleships with strong defense form separately and wander outside the aircraft carrier formation, which has caused the entire anti-aircraft firepower of the aircraft carrier formation to be very weak.

Naturally, the Japanese Navy had to pay a corresponding price for their backward naval thinking.

The patrol planes on alert in the air were the first to spot the incoming group, and then the destroyers in the outer layer of the fleet also emitted black smoke and sounded the air defense alarm.

However, the group of planes sent by the Austrian-Chinese fleet had already sailed to the sea and air, which was only 60 kilometers away from Nagumo's fleet, and there were only 10 minutes to go, and Nagumo did not have time to react much anyway.

Nagumo is really desperate now.

Air raid sirens sounded throughout the sea and air, the anti-aircraft guns of the Screen Fleet all spewed out thick clouds of black smoke, the aircraft carriers broke the formation to hide from the incoming planes, and the few Zeros were slowly climbing to the height of the enemy planes.

But the offensive of the Austrian-Chinese aircraft group has already begun. (To be continued......) R1292