At four o'clock in the morning, the night was thick, like a thick ink that could not be opened. The sea breeze howled and the leaves were swaying, and the humidity and heat of the day were washed away. On the heights of Mount Tabo, southwest of Jonah, more than 800 airborne troops hid in their positions, snakes and insects scurried around them, and mosquitoes and flies buzzed endlessly, making the newcomers suffer greatly. In just 10 days since landing on the island, seven officers and nearly 100 soldiers have been reduced due to illness, and the situation would have been even worse if it had not been for the urgent delivery of large quantities of anti-malaria medicines by domestic water planes.

Six kilometers northwest of the heights is the town of Jonah, the last base of the Japanese army in the south of the island. The Marines had a chance to take it quickly, but with their backs to the Gulf of Pago, the Japanese Fifth Fleet had two troop transports unload their soldiers here during the first support, and then the naval guns established a defensive line that made it impossible for the Marines to attack. Later, because of the domestic demand to stabilize and speed up the construction of field airfields, the Japanese army had a chance to breathe. In addition to the high ground, another regiment was placed at Talofo to the east by Yezi Mountain, and a blocking battalion was moving towards the Bay of Pago, encircling on three sides in an effort to leave all of Jonah's Japanese forces behind.

There was silence in the woods on the opposite hill, but Ye Zishan knew that at least 500 Japanese soldiers were hiding in the rainforest and caves.

"Push the rocket artillery behind the rocks. Big bull, get your flares ready. Luo Jun, put your 40 anti-aircraft guns flat, there is no need for air defense now. Ye Zishan looked at the Japanese positions and began to deploy an attack. It's a meticulous job, and as an officer, you have to make sure that every platoon is supported by heavy firepower as much as possible. Fortunately, the rapid support of the heavy patrol formation allowed the airborne troops to finally get their hands on their favorite heavy weapons, mortars and 107-mm 12-barrel rocket launchers, which everyone jokingly called "seeders". So he pulled eight rocket artillery to the highest point, eight 120-mm mortars were deployed behind the cliff, and even the 40-mm anti-aircraft guns that were supposed to deal with the Japanese air raids after dawn were temporarily flattened.

"Major. The Navy is coming. ”

After arranging the task, two striking red mast lights appeared on the sea. "Big bull, flashbang." According to the prior code, after the mast lamp continuously sent out two long and one short signals, Ye Zishan immediately asked the mortar to fire flash grenades to provide coordinates. The islands are narrow, and if there are no coordinates to bombard, God knows how many shells will fall on their own heads.

After two thuds, two flares landed on Hill and Yona Town, one after the other. "Let them fire at the drop point." Seeing that the landing point was correct, Ye Zishan immediately asked the signal corps to contact the navy.

"The carrier pigeon called the fishing boat. Carrier pigeons call fishing boats. Azimuth 176, depth 25, width 35, flashbang landing point fired in ten minutes. ”

"The fishing boat received, the flashbang landed, and it opened fire in ten minutes."

"Lie down! Lie down! The Navy is going to open fire, lie down and boom! ”

As soon as the call ended, a fire lit up on the sea. From five kilometers away, two supporting Woodhing-class destroyers launched heavy artillery strikes on the South-West Highlands and the town of Jonah, respectively. In the Navy, the 120 gun can only be considered a secondary artillery, but for the infantry, it already belongs to the ranks of heavy artillery. Moreover, the projectile weight of semi-self-loading naval guns is generally higher than that of the army, and the rate of fire is also faster. "Boom, boom." Twelve naval guns. Thirty-three kilograms of high-explosive grenades were dropped at a rate of eight rounds per minute over an area of no more than four kilometres in length and width from Jonah to the south-western highlands. Dense shells exploded in the rainforest, toppling trees, scattering rubble and dirt, and drifting vines in the blast wave. The originally silent Japanese positions immediately resounded with mournful shouts.

Private Akira Yamamura held his gun and hid in a small, weathered cave screaming desperately, trying to boost his courage by doing so. A recruit in the 55th Division, he had heard ten days ago that Chinese commandos were tearing through naval defenses as easily as paper. After a large number of Chinese marines and airborne troops landed on the island and easily took the port of Apra, it became clear that the imperial army and navy were not as invincible as advertised at home. At least in these 10 days, with the help of a large number of aircraft, the navy has not been able to regain sea supremacy from beginning to end.

Dense shells exploded around the cave, brown mud and sandstone washed over the hole, and as the shells became denser, the narrow cave trembled, and tiny rubble clanged against the steel helmet. Seeing that the cave could collapse at any moment, a cry of joy was suddenly heard from all around. Looking through the air holes behind, artillery flashes appeared on the northern ocean surface of the two China destroyers, and Saipan's Imperial Fifth Fleet had arrived!

"Major, the Japanese warship is coming! The Navy said that they would deal with enemy ships first. "The signal soldier rushed into the bunker with the radio on his back." Damn, sooner or later, not late! Contact the second regiment to start immediately. By the way, tell the Navy not to let the Japanese ship come close! Get up, get up! Don't pretend to be dead, tear your throat out and shout at me. Ye Zishan looked at his watch, and the covering shelling was four minutes shorter than expected, so there must have been a lot of surviving Japanese troops. But he couldn't help it, before the navy completely defeated the Japanese navy, the battle to seize the island was like this, so he immediately ordered a fake attack to lure out the heavy firepower of the Japanese army, and did not forget to contact the navy to block the Japanese ships and cancel the remaining support shelling.

The airborne troops came out of their bunkers one after another, leaning on the trees and rocks to shout loudly and take a charging stance, and the assault team quickly lay down and crawled towards the high ground. The light and heavy machine guns and 40-mm anti-aircraft guns lying in ambush behind the bunkers also opened fire fiercely and pretendedly, pulling countless lines of fire through the dense forest. "The enemy is coming!" Nervously, the Japanese army did not know that this time it was just a feint, and when they heard the shouts of the military cao, Yamamura immediately put his face on the 38 rifle, and his small eyes repeatedly searched the lower part of the high ground. However, due to the shelling just now, the debris filled the hole and blocked the view of the shots, so he had to lean out slightly. With the help of a flare, he and his companions spotted a dark shadow wriggling high underground. "Kill them." Raising his saber, he personally commanded four 75-mm mountain guns and two heavy machine guns to fire at the wriggling black shadow. But what made the mountain village strange was that the squadron on the opposite side seemed to have no artillery, and it was slow to suppress it when it opened fire. "Do they want to rush straight over and fight with the white knives?" Thinking of this, Yamamura immediately pulled out his bayonet and stuck it under the muzzle.

"Boom, boom, pop." The bullets made a splash in the night, and Yamamura fired only two shots before the rifle jammed. Due to the lack of copper and the lack of special coating technology, when the painted steel shell bullet is used in areas with large salt spray, it is necessary to brush the oil first to prevent the shell from jamming. But Guam was attacked. He was in too much of a hurry when he came out, and he had been fighting for the past few days, so he didn't have time to brush the oil at all.

The mountain village immediately retreated into the cave, and as soon as he withdrew the rotten egg, he heard a strange whooshing sound suddenly sounded. Looking up again, more than a dozen bright fireballs exploded around the mountain artillery and machine-gun positions. "Boom, boom." These explosions were extremely fast, as if thirty-five cannons were firing at the same time, covering the position in an instant. "What is this? Why is there no sound of shelling? Daxi-kun! Kono-kun!. "The Japanese had never seen a rocket launcher with a very soft sound, so they were stunned by the rockets falling from the sky. The firepower points attracted by the feint attack of the airborne troops were destroyed in an instant. Yamamura shouted loudly to his companions, but in addition to the explosion, it was an explosion, until an arm came from the side, and he thought it was a comrade who was going into the hole to hide, but when he pulled hard, he found that his hand was fluttering. When I looked at it again, I realized that this was a comrade who had gone into the cave to hide, but a corpse with an arm attached.

"It's our turn, come on! Run, run, run! "After destroying the Japanese firepower points with a fake attack, the airborne troops quickly rushed out of their bunkers. The veterans who have fought in the northwest for a year are by no means comparable to the Japanese recruits, and the sturdy and skillful airborne troops move quickly from left to right in squads. And cover can always be found. In addition, for this mission, each squad was equipped with two fully automatic rifles, combined with the "ripper" general-purpose machine gun and various types of artillery, completely suppressing the Japanese army who only had rifles and grenadiers.

"For the sake of the Emperor! For the Empire! For Mom. "The mountain village hiding in the cave has bloodshot eyes. Forgetting that shouting will reveal the location, and shouting every time you shoot, to embolden yourself. Just after he hit the third Chinese airborne soldier, a grenade flew in from outside the hole. Roll into a corner deep in the cavern.

Rumble!

Waves of blast gas spewed out of the cave with rocks and gravel. The flames and rubble made his back a blur of flesh. But before he could climb out, an even more terrifying flame suddenly erupted from outside the cave. "Flamethrower." As soon as the last thought came to mind, the mountain village was charred with gasoline and flames.

At the same time as the airborne troops attacked Jonah, Agania and other places also started one after another. While more than 7,000 Marines and Airborne troops fought bloodily, most of Guam was in fierce fighting, and Ajana Beach was also extremely busy due north. "Quick, put down the lifeboat! Climb down, faster. "Outside the shoals, a dozen destroyers and ad hoc cruisers gathered in groups, and sailors on deck were busy lowering rope ladders, cutting lifeboat cables, and urging the Army to disembark.

After all, the destroyer is not a special landing ship, and it is really difficult for the Fifth Fleet to quickly send 2,000 troops and equipment ashore. In addition, they did not dare to turn on the lights, so there were many soldiers who did not grasp it firmly and fell into the water, and even two 70-mm infantry guns fell into the sea. In order to protect the landing field, Nobutake Kondo had to place all four light cruisers on the outer flanks and the heavy cruiser Kumano in the middle, ensuring that the ten most powerful 203-mm naval guns could support either side. The guns and torpedoes of the other ships were also ready, and whenever there was any trouble, they were in full swing. "Let them hurry, this is a war, not a fish market!" The noisy and chaotic sight made Kondo shiredevil's head dizzy, and he paced back and forth along the deck corridor, looking nervous and anxious. You must know that the terrain in the north of Guam is very special, the coast is full of cliffs more than ten meters high, only the shallow sea of Ajana, and there is no obstruction around it, if a submarine appears at this time and releases a few torpedoes, the Fifth Fleet does not know how it died.

But the more urgent the accident, the more accidents, dozens of wooden lifeboats had obviously passed through the shallow sea to land, but an iron-hulled transport boat that followed behind was unlucky, and when it was about to approach the reef, a water ball suddenly exploded from the bottom of the boat. "Boom!" The explosion was so sudden and violent that it lifted the boat up and dismembered it into parts. "It's a mine, Yaga! The people of China laid mines! Damn, what are the sentinels on the shore doing? Hurry up, machine gun fire on the beach to clear the passage. The explosion also scared the fleet, and it wasn't until Nobutake Kondo re-emerged from the guards' protection that he realized what had happened.

It's a shallow! There are also army sentries patrolling the landing site 24 hours a day on the shore, how can there be mines? Could it be that the army on the island has been fully loyal?

In fact, he was wrong, Kitajima was still under the control of the Japanese army. As for these magnetic mines, they were quietly laid by the submarine a few days ago. Originally, the submarine captain wanted to bomb the warship, but because he did not calculate the tide and miscalculated the ocean current, he was washed into the shallows by the sea, and even the sentinels on the shore did not know. No problem with the wooden lifeboat passing. But the traffic boat was iron-hulled, so it was lured to explode.

I have to say that tonight's Nobutake Kondo and the Fifth Fleet were really unlucky, not to mention the loss of a heavy patrol on the way, they all reached the shore, and they actually detonated the mines that were scattered by the waves. The violent explosion swept through the shallows, and the sea water several meters high instantly submerged hundreds of Japanese soldiers, and all the small boats around them were overturned. The explosion and the light of the fire made Kondo Nobutake feel relieved, and he immediately ordered the army to be forcibly driven out of the sea. Let them wade through, and then let the ships maneuver into the deep sea to prevent attack.

The cold orders caused the army to lash out, many soldiers were forced to jump into the sea by naval officers, and artillery and ammunition boxes were pushed directly off the boat, and there were shouts and confusion everywhere. But Nobutake Kondo didn't seem to hear the army's curses. For him, the life and death of the 2,000 Army Army is completely incomparable to the safety of the Fifth Fleet. His fears were justified, and just as the sailors drove the army into the sea, the heavy cruiser Xi'an and the light cruiser Fuchunjiang with two destroyers had quietly approached from 18,000 miles away. In order to prevent the "cat's eye" from discovering itself, the captain of the Xi'an, Colonel Bai Fuan, had already ordered all lights to be turned off, and the four warships sailed completely on radar.

"Captain. At 15,000 meters, do you want to go forward? The navigator was not sure to pay attention, because no one knew how far the Japanese army's carefully cultivated "cat's eye" could see (in fact, only 5,000 meters of targets could be found at night). Moreover, the information on the 93 oxygen torpedo obtained by the Intelligence Department has always been like a fishbone in the throat of the Navy. 50 knots / 20,000 meters, 42 knots / 32,000 kilometers, 36 knots up to 40,000 meters! Thunderhead charge 490 kg of explosives! Just see this string of numbers. No captain wanted to approach a Japanese ship at night with poor visibility.

Bai Fuan is the nephew of Bai Yutang, the current chief of staff of the First Fleet and the famous ace submarine captain of the Qingdao naval battle. There was such an uncle who taught, knowing full well that the Navy could no longer accept heavy losses, decided to stop advancing: "Turn right 57 ticks. Keeping parallel to the Japanese ship, the fire control radar began to locate. ”

The Xi'an-class heavy cruiser is a cutting-edge heavy cruiser that was only delivered in the first half of the year. A total of six ships were built in the 1936 naval program, but six more were added after the start of the war. As a post-treaty heavy cruise, the standard displacement of the Xi'an class soared to 18,800 tons, with a full load of up to 22,500 tons, and a maximum speed of 33 knots. But this is not what attracts the navy, what really makes the navy excited is the 1937 L56/210mm rapid-fire naval gun developed by the Nanjing Naval Factory for ten years. The gun has a maximum range of up to 31,050 meters, and it can reach 28,350 meters when firing 139 kg armor-piercing shells. The biggest innovation is the fully automatic loader developed by combining the French flexible reloading technology (which can be loaded at any angle) and the drawings provided by Yang Qiu, so that the theoretical maximum rate of fire is as high as 10 rounds per minute, a single door can pour up to 13.9 tons of ammunition per minute, and 103 mm of homogeneous armor can be penetrated at 25,000 meters when using armor-piercing shells.

The data is very strong, and the armor-piercing efficiency and firing range also meet the requirements, but the Navy has only reached the speed of eight rounds per minute in the actual test, which is due to the fact that the Nanjing factory used a high-speed ammunition winch made in the United States during the experiment, but later the Roosevelt administration did not agree to sell it in the procurement, and the process imitated by itself could not reach the original level. But even so, the Navy decided to adopt and equip the Xian class with nine guns of this type. In order to maximize the effectiveness of artillery, the Xi'an-class is also the first warship in the Navy to install a radio fire control radar.

With the help of modern electronic technology, in just two minutes, the Xi'an locked onto the light cruiser Longtian, which was closest to it.

"Captain, the telegram from the Wuhan, they still need two hours." After the navigator informed the two heavy cruisers pretending to support Agrihan, Bai Fuan decided to kill a few of them first. Of course, he is not a reckless man, even if the Xi'an-class comprehensively suppresses the Japanese heavy cruisers, he is not arrogant enough to think that relying on one heavy patrol and one light patrol can destroy the Japanese Fifth Fleet. "Let the Fuchunjiang fire with our ship, sink two ships as soon as possible, and then move closer to the Wuhan." Bai Fuan looked at his watch, it was now 4:10 in the morning, and the sky would gradually brighten up in 40 minutes, and the Japanese plane from Saipan would arrive in an hour.

Having received the order, nine 210-mm naval guns were quickly raised. At the same time, the 12 155-mm naval guns of the Fuchunjiang, which were separated by two hulls, were also raised at the same time, and the gun commander sent the coordinates detected by the fire control radar to the light patrol, and waved his arm fiercely: "Calibration five rounds, fire!" ”

"Boom!" With this command, the hull of nearly 20,000 tons trembled suddenly, and the nine naval guns roared at the same time, and the cannon flames and wind shattered the air and swept along the deck. In less than 20 seconds, the radar was the first to receive the reflected signal of the shell falling into the water, and the fire generated by the explosion was also captured by optical fire control and rangefinders at the same time, and these data were quickly transmitted to the fire control room in the bilge of the bridge through a telephone line. Before the Tatsuda could react, the three rounds of shelling had already ended. By the time the four 140-millimeter guns of the Longtian flashed and the shells whistled and landed a few kilometers away on the starboard side of the Xi'an, the ballistic computer had completed the calibration calculation, and the new coordinates were fed back to the various gun positions.

In order to sink the enemy ship as soon as possible, the gunnery chief gave the order at full speed: "One minute, full speed!" ”

Even the sailors of the Xi'an had only seen the scene of the ship's guns firing at full speed during sea trials. At that time, because I was in a relaxed mood, I didn't feel anything, but at this time, when the nine naval guns entered full speed mode, I suddenly felt that my ears were filled with the sound of the air whistling after the shelling. "Boom, boom." Just after the first minute, seventy-two armor-piercing shells whistled towards the Ryuta. What is this concept? In the words of the "cat's eye" Captain Yoshikawa on the Tatsuda: "I saw the first column of water, but before I could report it, the second round of shells had already fallen. Then the third round, the fourth, until I couldn't tell how many shells had fallen. "Yoshikawa is not exaggerating, an armor-piercing projectile takes nearly seventeen seconds to fly fifteen kilometers, and at this time the third round of reloading has begun.

Fifteen kilometers is not the best range for heavy patrols, but there is a probability of everything! Even if the accuracy of the current fire control radar is far inferior to that of optical fire control, it cannot withstand the fall of seventy-two shells in one minute. In the sixth round, the Xi'an fired a straddle shot, and in the eighth round, two armor-piercing shells hit the starboard side and chimney of the Longtian at the same time. "Discover the fire, find the fire! Resolve. Thirty seconds to prepare for the second round, full speed! "After receiving the signal to hit, the gunners decisively stopped firing and calculated the trajectory again, and when the ballistic coordinates were entered into the turret for the second time, the Tatsuda, which had served for twenty years, was pronounced a death sentence.

Seventy-two armor-piercing shells roared away again, and this time six directly hit the Light Patrol of the Longtian, which was only 4,350 tons fully loaded. The explosion spread from the triple 533-mm torpedo launcher between the two chimneys of the Tatsuda and the mine frame on the lower deck of the stern, and the three pending torpedoes were detonated after the armor-piercing shells smashed through the protective armor shells, as well as the 22 anchor mines that were supposed to be laid around Guam after the mission was over.

It was only four and a half minutes between the opening of the fire and the explosion of the Tatsuda, and Nobutake Kondo and other ships of the Fifth Fleet behind him had even fired a third shell.