At the time of departure from Pearl Harbor, the "Second Great White Fleet" had fourteen battleships, four aircraft carriers, twenty-four cruisers, sixty destroyers, and more than thirty auxiliary supply ships accompanying it. It can be called the most powerful fleet on the planet.

However, when the sun set on 22 June, only four cruisers and 13 destroyers barely escaped the pursuit of the Japanese navy, and most of the more than 30 auxiliary supply ships and fighters during the day were captured by the swarming Japanese navy. A small number were sunk due to stubborn resistance. Among the ships lost, in addition to the captured flagship South Dakota, a Brooklyn-class light cruiser and a destroyer were also captured by the Japanese.

During this sixteen-hour naval battle, the U.S. Navy lost more than 15,000 sailors, and eighteen capital warships (including air carriers) were sunk or captured.

As for the Combined Fleet itself, only eight torpedo boats were sunk and more than 20 were wounded, a small number of ships suffered a certain amount of light damage from artillery shelling in naval battles, 10 planes were shot down and dozens were damaged, and more than 10 planes had to be overhauled when they landed in the aircraft carrier air because they were seriously damaged, and the total number of dead and wounded was only 400.

After the battle, officers in the command center of the chart room on the flagship Yamato congratulated Isoroku Yamamoto, Supreme Commander of the Combined Fleet, on the victory of the Combined Fleet in the largest naval battle in human history.

Instead of rejoicing at the victory, Yamamoto Fifty-six sighed to his subordinates as he did in history: "We have only awakened a sleeping giant." ”

On the other side, the "Yamato Nadeshiko", who was stored on the Yamato in a god-like posture, also said to a group of high-ranking officials in the chart room: "This war will be even more difficult and longer than you imagined. We will destroy the American fleet at least twice, as we do today. It is possible to force them to the negotiating table. ”

In the naval battle of 22 June, the Japanese Navy destroyed the second largest White Fleet near Guam, while the Pacific Fleet detachment at Mani Harbor in the Philippines destroyed the "Second White Fleet" almost simultaneously.

Before the departure of the second White Fleet, in order to meet the needs of President Wilkee to "pretend to be forced", several battleships originally parked in the Philippines also returned to Pearl Harbor. On the one hand, it is for maintenance, on the other hand, it is for the purpose of traveling on a larger scale so as to "pretend to be necessary", and there is another element, but it is to avoid being broken by the British and Japanese navies in case of emergency.

As a result, the Manila sub-ship had only one aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington, and his mission at the time was to transport a batch of P40 fighter jets to Manila in May to reinforce the air force there.

As a result, on the night of the destruction of the "Second Great White Fleet" on June 22, less than an hour after the Battle of Guam began,

Before the war, four "Condor-class" escort aircraft carriers, which had secretly sailed to the waters off Manila, took off one hundred attack planes one after another to attack Manila Harbor that night.

Although fifteen minutes before the attack. The radar station set up by the Americans in Manila spotted traces of Japanese aircraft. However, in the early hours of the morning, the radar officer, who was accustomed to slacking off in peacetime, delayed for five minutes before reporting to his superiors, and the superiors again asked his superiors for instructions, and by the time the information reached the air defense forces, the Japanese attack aircraft group was less than five minutes away from Manila.

At this time, information about the attack on Guam by the Pacific Fleet had also reached Manila, when the US navy, army, and air force hurriedly raised a combat alarm. Hundreds of planes that had taken off from the Condor-class aircraft carriers had already flown over the harbor and began to drop bombs.

The USS Lexington was moored at the Port of Manila. It is completely in a state of no fire and no anti-torpedo nets.

First, the attack planes led by the Japanese army dropped flares to illuminate the entire port, and then the rest of the planes targeted the Lexington, dropping more than a dozen heavy aerial bombs and releasing more than ten aerial torpedoes.

Due to night reasons, all the bombs dropped by the Japanese planes were lost, but the torpedoes fired by the 12 torpedo attack planes in the way of killing the target. However, it hit the side of the Lexington six times in front and back, opening a large row of huge holes in the side of the aircraft carrier's body.

The captain of the ship, who had just been awakened by the air defense siren from his sleep, ordered to urgently release the water to the other side and forget to calm down, but the ship still had too much water and plunged directly into the anchorage. In a short time, the Lexington became a piece of scrap metal that could not move in the berth.

After scrapping the USS Lexington. The remaining Japanese planes bombed the local airfield and barracks. During the bombing, Japanese aircraft also damaged two American destroyers parked in the harbor. And in the following days, the Japanese navy in Taiwan went south with the army and launched a campaign to seize the Philippines. The Lexington, which was seriously wounded, ended up with the military "self-fired" with explosives placed on the keel of the warship before retreating, and the keel was blown up to scrap itself to prevent the Japanese from capturing the ship and reusing it. After the end of the Philippine campaign, the Japanese salvaged the wreckage of the ship and dismantled it for recycling.

As for the main forces of the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean, they completely disappeared in twenty-four hours overnight. After June 22, within a day, the US Navy also fell from the throne of the world's number one. And the Japanese Navy, which pulled the U.S. Navy off the throne, temporarily grabbed the crown of the world's No. 1 overnight.

However, while wearing the crown of the world's No. 1 naval force, the "Great Japanese Empire" also had to endure the wrath of the world's largest industrial country, which could burn everything to the ground.

The time difference between Washington and Guam is eleven hours.

When the Pacific Fleet, known as the "second largest white fleet," was attacked off Guam, it was around 4 p.m. Washington time on 21 June.

Masao Takeda is the new Japanese ambassador to the United States, and his predecessor Koji Tatsuda was ordered by the Tokyo side to return to China early for "vacation" because he "made inappropriate speeches" in front of the media in the United States.

But this qiē was part of a series of strategic deceptions used for the total annihilation of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

At one o'clock in the afternoon of 21 June, Ambassador Masao Takeo received a secret telegram from Tokyo at the Japanese Embassy in the United States.

The "stinking and long" 2,000-word cipher cable was so busy that the US intelligence services, which had been listening to Japan's diplomatic cables, were so busy that it took them a full three hours to complete the translation.

The content of the message is still the same as before. It was all about Tokyo's diplomatic claims that the ambassador to the United States would protest and threaten the US officials, as well as diplomatic falsehoods about foreign power and dry smell. Even the coder in charge of deciphering the secrets of the Japanese, after interpreting the message and handing it to his superiors, couldn't help but spit out to his superiors: "Those Japanese dwarfs are doing this old way again." ”

In the past six months, the beginning of a diplomatic cable sent by Japan to the ambassador to the United States. There are three strange code symbols that are exactly the same, and the message symbols in the first three words of each issue are basically identical, and these code symbols have never been repeated in the hundreds of messages intercepted by the Americans.

These three identical code symbols are the only thing that the U.S. cryptographic department has not deciphered. The intelligence services speculated that the code symbols at the beginning were related to the Japanese interpreting the code themselves.

What the US intelligence officers did not know was that the only thing that really mattered to the Japanese diplomatic cables they had deciphered in the past six months was the one at the beginning and changing from issue to issue, three identical code symbols.

These code symbols represent the names of animals.

For example, "horses, horses, horses", "cats, cats, cats", "cows, cows", and so on. The symbols themselves had no meaning until one o'clock on June 21, when Masao Takeda received a telegram from Tokyo, the first three words of the telegram were no longer exactly the same animal name, but had changed the meaning he had been waiting for.

"Here comes the wolf".

After seeing these three symbols, Masao Takeda and the envoy from Tokyo changed their faces at the same time, and they no longer cared about the content behind. The two left together, and one went back to his bedroom. One returned to his office, and when they met again, the two of them each had an extra bag in their hands.

Masao Takeda took out a sheet of tissue paper, while the envoy took out a code book, and after a few minutes, the contents of the tissue paper were translated into words.

After reading the translated content. Masao Takeda's face was overjoyed, and he immediately picked up the phone, claiming that he was going to hold a press conference at half past four in the afternoon, inviting the media in Washington to visit the Japanese diplomatic embassy in the United States, claiming that there was an important statement to be released.

This is not a very unusual move. Since the deterioration of Anglo-American relations. When the United States announced high-profile military exercises in Southeast Asia, every once in a while, the Japanese ambassador to the United States put on a similar performance.

Whether it is the American people, American journalists, or the US government, they are all used to it, and everyone wants to hear what kind of performance the "actor Takeda" will have today.

At half past four in the afternoon, reporters from major media outlets in Washington gathered.

It was half past four, but Takeda still didn't show up on time, and American reporters were wondering why the ambassador was late and missed the appointment.

At this time, Masao Takeda was in the telegraph room, nervously waiting for the second telegram from Tokyo to be sent.

At 4:40 p.m., the US listening department again overheard the same message as the one received at one o'clock, which had only the first three words, and its meaning was still "wolf, wolf, wolf."

Historically, when the Japanese Navy successfully attacked Pearl Harbor, the code word issued was "tiger tiger tiger", Li Huamei and Lin Han did not like this "used" and unlucky code word, and Lin Han aptly changed them to "the wolf is coming".

Beginning in March, Japan's ambassador to the United States has repeatedly warned that dangerous moves by the United States on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean will lead to unnecessary dangers of war. While their mouths are stubborn, they "bitterly plead" with the US government to "retract this provocative move to provoke danger."

If it had been just strong diplomatic rhetoric, it would have been easy to arouse the vigilance of the Americans, and the Pacific Fleet would not have been ambushed so easily as it headed westward.

The wonderful thing about the situation is that the Americans have already deciphered the diplomatic cables of the Japanese, and the Japanese side knows this and deliberately calculates it. The official statement made in the United States is very harsh, but behind the scenes, it has revealed to the United States that the current Japanese government is actually very afraid of the United States and is very opposed to conflict with the United States, deliberately making the Americans think that all of them are "only one mouth is very hard."

The Japanese approach is very similar to that of "the wolf is coming," and the more the Japanese ambassador to the United States talks about the situation and the harder his tone, the more the US Government does not believe it. Whether it is President Wilkie, who lives in the White House, or Admiral Kimmelly, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, the protest rhetoric of Japanese diplomats has always been heard as a joke.

Because of the slogans of the Japanese threat, shouted too much, too long, too often. Even ordinary Americans are tired of hearing it. In June, an announcer from the National Radio Station of the United States even made a random telephone survey asking Americans if they believed that there would be a war conflict between Japan and the United States.

The answer is that almost no one believes.

Almost every interviewee smiled and said something similar to that of the president and the commander of the Navy: "The Japanese Navy attacked the US Navy first?" Is it so possible, do they have the guts? Why should they be enemies of the United States of America, relying on Takeda's mouth? ”

The past few months. In front of American reporters, Masao Takeda also made exaggerated remarks about the United States on national radio stations, which has long caused the whole United States to regard him as a clown.

Koji Tatsuda, Japan's ambassador to the United States, is an out-and-out hardliner against the United States in front of the public, and his lines are getting tougher day by day. But because he "said the wrong thing", he was quickly replaced by the Japanese side and replaced by the current ambassador Masao Takeo.

After changing ambassadors, Americans unexpectedly found that they usually had an extra entertaining activity before lunch or dinner. That is to listen to Masao Takeda's "speech to the American people" on behalf of the Japanese government.

Almost everyone who has listened to Masao Takeda's diplomatic speeches has a similar idea.

"The Japanese government, where did you find this strange thing?"

In fact, the content of Takeo Masao's speech to the United States, his "tough Cheng dù" is not much weaker than that of Koji Tatsuda, but his words sound like they have the effect of making people laugh through their stomachs.

For example, he complained bitterly that the incumbent President of the United States had mentioned that "the greedy Democratic donkey is in the United States, the Republican Party is an elephant, and the Democratic Party is a donkey." The meaning of the words is "to use the "donkey" to mock the current President Wilkie, which continues Ghana's foreign policy.

When President Wilkie announced that he would conduct military exercises in Southeast Asia, he looked even more "angry." To the American public, the US Secretary of the Navy and the current commander of the Pacific Fleet are described as "madmen" and "pawns of warmongers" who are destined to become "losers." He also claimed that President Wilkie and his predecessor, the President of Ghana, were "dogs raised by the military-industrial complex" and "fools who couldn't tie their ties".

All kinds of scolding and gaffe performances that detract from the identity of diplomats have really blinded the eyes of all Americans. Since the Meiji Restoration. Japanese diplomats have been trying to maintain a so-called polite diplomatic image abroad, but they have been defeated by this man's "clown" antics for the past three months.

Americans were stunned for a moment, and then they became "relaxed" people watching the clown show.

Although in front of the media, Masao Takeda has repeatedly claimed that the British and Japanese navies will definitely respond in the strongest possible way to the dangerous provocations of the Pacific Fleet. But he was angry and ruined by losing his status as a diplomat. And the clown-style performance is really not very convincing in his words.

Moreover, for three months, repeating these old rhetoric repeatedly in front of the public, both the US government and the American audience have long been numb to listening.

When Masao Takeda informed the US media that he was going to hold a press conference at the embassy at 4:30 p.m., the American reporters attending the meeting thought in their hearts: "Haha, what kind of interesting performance will that Japanese clown have today?" ”

The wolf is coming, the wolf is coming, and this time the wolf is really coming.

Just like the Japanese government, Masao Takeda, who wore the clown mask for three months, finally took off the mask today.

At 4:45, Takeo Masao appeared in front of a group of American reporters. As soon as he got on the stage, he walked up to the microphone and said loudly in front of countless American reporters in the audience:

"In view of the fact that the U.S. government has been unwilling to listen to our government's police for a long time and has repeatedly carried out dangerous and provocative actions in Southeast Asia, our government has decided to enter a state of all-out war with your country at 4:45 p.m. on June 21, U.S. time."

After speaking, the scene was quiet for a few seconds, and then like a hornet's nest that had been stabbed, the audience suddenly became in an uproar.

When Masao Takeda announced the news of Japan's declaration of war against the United States in front of countless American reporters, President Wilkee in the White House also received an urgent telegram from the Navy at 4:45 local time, claiming that the US Navy had been attacked by the British and Japanese fleets near the waters off Guam.

"What?"

When President Wilkee heard the news, he was initially "surprised and delighted," and he was surprised that Britain and Japan had really declared war on the United States, and he was glad that he could finally go to war with his hands and feet -- President Wilkee at this time did not know that Japan was the only one that had openly stood up and declared war on the United States. Because of Admiral Kimmelly's "miscalculation", the U.S. military also thought that the British were involved in the operation.

The huge state machine of the United States came into operation at this moment.

On the one hand, the president immediately convened a staff group to discuss countermeasures, and on the other hand, someone naturally summoned the British ambassador to the United States. Asked and reprimanded them as to why they had not issued an "official declaration of war" and had instead used this "despicable and shameless sneak attack". However, because of the scandalous act of sneaking up on the French navy and the fact that the Japanese had a bad record in this regard, the Americans were convinced of the information that had been transmitted from the front line that the two countries had jointly attacked the US fleet.

Soon, information that the Philippine fleet stationed in Mara Harbor had been attacked by Japanese aircraft carriers also came. Because before the incident, the Japanese aircraft carrier deliberately took off from the south near the direction of Kalimantan Island to launch an air strike. This also led to a miscalculation by the local U.S. military, who thought that the British were also involved in the operation.

In this war, the Japanese started a war against the United States because of the great benefits of Britain and Germany, but the Japanese were not stupid, and under Li Huamei's construction, they also played some small tricks, hoping that they could pull the British who wanted to sit on the wall and watch the "two tigers fight for food" into the water.

The torpedo boat units that participated in the operation, those British torpedo boats, deliberately used British livery on their bodies that night. The Union Jack was hoisted - these were lowered before dawn, but they were already visible to the warring opponents.

In order to make the Americans more misjudged that Britain entered the war. During the night raid at that time, the Japanese ships deliberately sent some operational communication instructions in British English, and these instructions were naturally monitored by the US Pacific Fleet, which was stunned at the time. One consequence was to increase the perception among Americans that the British were involved in the operation.

The U.S. military garrison in the Philippines suffered heavy losses in the early hours of the morning at six o'clock in the morning. Just after dawn, twenty B17 bombers of the US Army. He received orders from the military to load ammunition and fuel and take off from the airport, aiming at the British base in British Malaysia, located in the south.

Before the bomber took off, the military hesitated. But at this time, President Wilkie, located in the White House. After receiving the bad news from the Guam front that "the Pacific Fleet suffered heavy losses after the attack, and many capital ships, including the aircraft carrier, have sunk," President Wilkie almost suffered a heart attack on the spot, and he ordered the Philippine garrison to launch a retaliatory "operation" in "anger"

The British are bent on killing people with knives, and they are good at stirring around the world. This time, he was splashed with.

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When Masao Takeda slapped the American people who thought he was a "clown" in the face with his actions, and told them that people who "thought others were fools" were really "fools" in a serious tone of public declaration of war, there was still a commotion in Tokyo.

On June 22, the sky was clear and cloudless on the Tokyo side.

At 7 o'clock in the morning of the same day, the two battleships Nagato and Mutsu, which had been parked more than 10 kilometers away from the pier in Tokyo Bay, finally slowly approached the shore at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

At this time, the people nearby noticed that the two battleships were not battleships at all, but camouflage made of inflatable rubber and wood. And their predecessors were basically two large coal carriers.

The camouflage techniques of the Japanese, with the technical assistance of the Germans. During the One Year War in Europe, the Germans succeeded in disguising a cargo ship as the battleship Scharnhorst. In this attack to annihilate the Pacific Fleet, the Japanese, with the help of film prop engineers from the German side, also succeeded in disguising several cargo ships as battleships and deliberately moored at the far end of the dock, successfully deceiving the American observers in Tokyo.

As for the so-called Japanese warships anchored in the ports of Hokkaido and Taiwan before the war, they were camouflaged warships built using similar ideas. Since Japan could not find most suitable camouflage ships for the time being, some cargo ships were provided with the help of Germany and even Britain.

The British were so zealous, not only for their own interests, but also because the advantage of the US Navy at this time was too great. Before the war, when the British evaluated this naval battle, they all thought that even if the Japanese navy won, they would be scattered and lose extremely heavy losses, but what they did not expect was that due to the blessing of the ship spirit, the losses of the Japanese in this battle were very small, and even after the war, there were big gains. (To be continued......)

PS: I'm going to write another "Reaper of the End Times", this chapter has been updated first, and I'll go back and proofread the typos when I have time.