, 864 The Sunset of the Old Empire XVII is independence and not abandonment

Flagship of the Western Fleet, Nakayama.

The telephone ringing in the command center was heard one after another, and the latest intelligence and battle situation on the entire Indian Ocean battlefield were transmitted from the communications center through these telephones, and one after another combat orders were also transmitted from the mouth of Admiral Chen Si, who was temporarily in charge of commanding the South and Western fleets, to the communications center, and then to the Chinese naval fleets and bases scattered throughout the Indian Ocean.

Chen Si received an order from Admiral Zhao Zheng 30 minutes ago to take over the command of the South and Western fleets. Zhao Zheng's flagship, the Taiwan, suffered a blow in a previous struggle with a British carrier-based aircraft, and a 225-kilogram semi-armor-piercing bomb was hit on the aviation deck, reducing the aircraft's take-off and landing capacity by half. However, this was not the main reason why the Taiwan withdrew from the battle and returned to Singapore, as the reason why the Taiwan could not fulfill its joint flagship responsibilities for the "two oceanic fleets" was a 760-kilogram aerial torpedo launched by a Swordfish torpedo bomber. This torpedo opened a hole more than 10 meters wide in the stern of the Taiwan hull, poured in thousands of tons of seawater, flooded several compartments, caused the aircraft carrier to have a 15-degree tilt, and finally had to inject nearly 2,000 tons of seawater to maintain balance, and more seriously, the seawater poured in from the breach in the stern of the ship also poured into the power compartment for a time, although the seawater was finally discharged after all-out repairs, but the ship's power system was still seriously damaged, and the speed dropped to less than 12 knots. I had to quit the fight, staggered back to Singapore to repair it. It is estimated that within two months, China's most powerful aircraft carrier will want to return to the battlefield.

However, compared to the role played by the aircraft carrier Taiwan in this naval battle in the Indian Ocean, this loss is simply insignificant now! Because Cunningham and his Indian Ocean Fleet paid an extremely heavy price for the elimination of this "decoy"! Not only did the USS Radiance suffer heavy damage (it actually sank by itself), but more seriously, the carrier-based aircraft group that raided the Taiwan lost more than sixty percent of its aircraft, and the remaining dozens of Tubenose Swallows and Barracuda (all of which were wiped out in the Swordfish type) were tailed by 285 FW-190Cs and A-4Bs...... If these British carrier-based pilots had not chosen to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the sea halfway, their aircraft carriers would have been doomed!

Are those British carrier-based pilots willing to throw themselves into the sea? Chen Si's swarthy face showed a bit of mockery, these Western devils are more afraid of death than Oriental devils. If it weren't for the one-in-a-ten chance of survival, they could have driven carrier-based planes to ram the Taiwan aircraft carrier, just like the Japanese kamikaze, then the Taiwan would have sunk by now. It seems that after this war, the British Royal Navy is no longer an opponent of the Chinese Navy! It's time for them to roll back to Europe to defend those three islands. And the U.S. Pacific Fleet does not seem to have time for revival, and the future of the Pacific Ocean is a competition between China and Japan......

"Sir, the carrier-based aircraft group has spotted a British aircraft carrier, it seems to be the Brave." Just when Chen Si was pondering when China and Japan would tear their faces apart, Rear Admiral Song Da, chief of staff of the Western Fleet, brought him another piece of good news.

The British fleet, which had been detected by the radar of the Cloud Eagle 12 seaplane 50 minutes earlier, has now been spotted by carrier-based aircraft sent by four aircraft carriers of the Western Fleet.

In addition to the flagship Zhongshan, the four motherships of the Western Fleet are regular aircraft carriers, and the remaining three are all "Heilongjiang" class reformed from merchant ships, which can only carry 50 aircraft, and the entire fleet has only 230 carrier-based aircraft (excluding seaplanes), and Chen Si sent 180 of them in this wave of air raids, including 140 A-4B dive bombers and 40 FW-190C fighters. And the British Brave can only carry a maximum of 48 carrier-based aircraft, and most of them have been sent out to fight at the moment, leaving at most 10 and 8 tube-nosed swallows to guard the house, which is not worth mentioning at all! This Brave, it seems, can be regarded as a reimbursement, and now it is waiting for the British carrier-based aircraft to return to bring the 285 carrier-based aircraft sent by the South Sea Fleet to the remaining two British aircraft carriers.

……

Blue sky and white clouds, sparkling blue waves.

The view of the Indian Ocean in spring is stunning, and the air is so fresh that you can't help but want to die here...... Well, the citizens of Chinese imperialism who will travel to the Indian Ocean for a holiday in later generations probably would not have such a strange idea. However, in the naval and air battle in April 1939, Colonel Anderson, who was driving a bullet-riddled tubenose swallow carrier-based fighter in the blue sky and white clouds, really wanted to plunge into the blue water and die for the British Empire!

Because at this moment, below the clouds less than 5,000 meters behind him, more than 280 Chinese planes painted with blue sky and white sun marks on the wings and fuselage are chasing unhurriedly. Oh, it's not about chasing, it's tailgating. With the speed of those FW-190Cs, it would have caught up a long time ago. But people are obviously releasing a long line to catch big fish! It was the British planes who wanted to get these deserted British planes to take them to the British aircraft carriers.

"Colonel! Captain! My plane is running out of fuel! What to do? What am I going to do? I don't want to die yet......" The headphones don't know whose shout came from.

Colonel Anderson glanced at his fuel gauge, which was almost running out of fuel. Now there are only two choices in front of him, one is to continue to take the more than 280 Chinese planes behind him in circles in the Indian Ocean, until the dozens of planes he led run out of fuel and crashed in the sea! The second is to immediately return to the aircraft carrier Victory, which is 120 kilometers away...... At the same time, he also took those Chinese planes with 500 kilograms of bombshells, and exchanged the sinking of the Victory for the life of more than 100 people.

Admiral Cunningham had ordered the Victory to tell Anderson where he was, but had not given him the order to return or die. The Admiral put the final decision in his hands, was it more important to follow him the lives of more than a hundred people, or the lives of the thousands of British sailors of the USS Victory aircraft carrier battle group?

This question seems to involve human nature, the meaning of life, and a lot of very complex thoughts, in short, it is difficult to answer...... Decades later, in 1998, the American Jewish film director, Steven Brown. Spielberg also filmed the film "Save the Victory" based on this story, and won nine awards at the 2000 Goebel Film Award, the highest award in world cinema!

In this film, which touched billions of people around the world (including the Chinese imperialist citizens of the time), the film was written by Tom Brown. Hanks plays Colonel Anderson, while tearing down tears, reminiscing about his wife, children, and happy life in the past, and using all kinds of absurd reasons or excuses to persuade all the crew members of the carrier-based aircraft he leads to agree to sacrifice their lives to save the USS Victory aircraft carrier battle group!

In that film, Colonel Anderson relied not on coercion, but on patient persuasion or deception, to finally get everyone to agree to die with him - in order to save more lives.

All the conversations between Anderson and his subordinates were heard clearly by the pilots of the Chinese carrier-based aircraft group only a few kilometers away from them through the airborne radio, and finally these Chinese pilots witnessed all the British planes running out of fuel and crashing into the vast Indian Ocean!

One of them, Liu Zhesheng, was a lieutenant colonel of the Chinese Naval Aviation, and he devoted a considerable amount of space to recording this touching history in the "Memoirs of Liu Zhesheng" published later......

But this history is also very cruel! Because just after the last British carrier-based aircraft crashed into the sea, the report of the seaplane Yunying 13 came from the headphones of the pilots of the Chinese carrier-based aircraft who witnessed all this.

"Cloud Eagle 13 calls Eagle King, Cloud Eagle 13 calls Eagle King! Discover the British fleet, only 120 kilometers away from you! The location is at east longitude xx; Latitude xx south. ”

……

London, Whitehall.

In the solemn Navy Conference Hall, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sat in the top seat in the middle of the conference table in a neatly dressed but unrefreshed manner, staring blankly at a document in front of him, without saying a word, and there was no trace of brilliance in his eyes that were once full of energy. The ministers at the table were whispering to each other, discussing their views on the current situation and proposing various solutions. And the generals were about the same as Prime Minister Chamberlain, looking at the battle report they had just received in front of their eyes in a daze.

Outside the window, it's London's Whitehall Street. Today is a rare spring light, and the sunlight that shines through the thick glass windows into this conference hall seems so cold and damp to the British civilians and soldiers attending the meeting, just like their mood at the moment.

That battle report was the latest battle report jointly submitted by the Indian Theater of Operations and the Indian Grand Fleet to the Imperial General Staff, the Admiralty and the War Department. These include reports of the battle of Jamshedpur on Indian land, which has just been defeated, and reports of the ongoing but already victorious naval battle in the Indian Ocean. On the land of India, most of the 858th Regiment of the Anglo-Indian Army, about 100,000, was caught off guard by the Chinese GC Army, which had been running hundreds of kilometers in a day and night, and the 100,000 army collapsed in less than half a day, and the army that fled to Ranchi with Lieutenant General Nelson was less than 30,000, and the rest were either killed, captured or scattered and fled. And the 30,000 people who fled to Ranchi also lost their armor, and most of the infantry lost even the rifles and bayonets they carried with them!

However, the losses of the British and Indian troops did not make the atmosphere in this conference hall so solemn and depressing, and what made everyone really despair was another urgent telegram from the Indian Grand Fleet, and the naval battle in the Indian Ocean had been defeated! Three of the most valuable aircraft carriers, the Radiance, the Brave and the Victory, lost more than 200 carrier-based aircraft, two heavy cruisers, Australia and Canberra, three light cruisers, Newcastle, Southampton, Glasgow, in addition to six W-class destroyers and two 20,000-ton fast tankers......

And the confirmable results of the Indian Ocean Fleet are only the heavy damage to the aircraft carrier Taiwan and the heavy cruiser Nanjing! According to a telegram sent back by Admiral Cunningham, the USS Taiwan was hit by a 225-kilogram semi-armor-piercing bomb and a 760-kilogram aerial torpedo. For a 27,000-ton heavy aircraft carrier, such damage is usually not fatal, and at most three months the Chinese can repair the aircraft carrier. The heavy cruiser was only hit by a 225-kilogram bomb, and it was a bit of a suspicion of whitewashing the face of the Royal Navy to say that the heavy damage was a bit of a whitewash.

"Hey......." A long sigh came from Prime Minister Chamberlain's mouth, "Gentlemen, we have lost the war, and we are no longer capable of defending Australia." ”

The atmosphere in the conference hall was even more depressing, Prime Minister Chamberlain was right, the naval battle in the Indian Ocean had indeed been lost, and there was a suspicion of losing all the old books! Even if the "Dreadnought" aircraft carrier could escape from the encirclement and interception of eight Chinese aircraft carriers, Britain would no longer have the strength to compete with China for sea supremacy on the west coast of the Australian mainland. Now that the Chinese can send their powerful army to Australia in a steady stream, how can they keep this continent of more than 7.6 million square kilometers by relying on Wavell's 600,000 troops without much heavy equipment?

"Mr. Prime Minister, we can defend the Empire, the Royal Navy still has 8 aircraft carriers!" It was Churchill, the Secretary of the Admiralty, who always found the good in a whole bunch of unfavorable news, and who was always confident in his words. Churchill confidently said:

"The restoration of our Indomitable and Ark Royal is also well underway, and will be operational by the end of June at the latest. At that time, the Royal Navy will have three more aircraft carriers in Australian waters, and we will soon be able to obtain a batch of 'Sea Hurricane' fighters and the American SBD 'Dreadnought' dive bombers, and then the 'Barracuda' will be converted into torpedo bombers, so that the combat effectiveness of the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier force will be greatly improved.

So, as long as the Army can hold on to Western Australia until the end of June, the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet of Australia will be able to regain the strength to fight a war. ”

"Really?" Prime Minister Chamberlain slowly raised his head, a hint of ruddy on his pale and haggard countenance, and his gaze wandered around the chamber before finally falling on Ironside, the chief of the Imperial General Staff. "William, will the Army be able to keep Western Australia alive before the end of June?"

"No problem, Mr. Prime Minister, Admiral Wavell is capable enough to hold Western Australia for at least three months." Ironside swallowed, a look of embarrassment on his face.

"What's wrong? Any questions? William. Chamberlain looked at the chief of the General Staff with an embarrassed look on his face and asked.

"Mr. Prime Minister, it is like this, after the defeat in the Indian Ocean naval battle, the most dangerous thing is not the Australian and New Zealand theaters, but the Indian theater and the Middle East theater......" Ironside said in a slurring voice: "Especially in the Indian theater, the Chinese GCD will soon control the entire state of Odisha, southern Bihar, western Madhya Pradesh and other regions after the Battle of Jamshedpur. And according to credible intelligence, the Chinese GCD will install an Indian GCD government there.

In addition, in Kabul, Afghanistan, there has recently been a coalition of Muslims with a total strength of about 100,000 troops, which is composed of Muslims from the autonomous republics of Central Asia in the Chinese colony and who are also supported by the Chinese government. Moreover, the Afghan royal government has also formed an army of 50,000 men to prepare to invade northwestern India with this Muslim coalition.

Also, after the end of the naval battle in the Indian Ocean, the forces of the Chinese Nationalist Government will certainly intensify their offensive against Ceylon, and the Maldives Islands are expected to be invaded soon. We've also deployed ...... in both places."

"Give up!" Chamberlain waved his hand, interrupting Ironside. "Immediately abandon the islands of Ceylon and the Maldives, withdraw the troops there to Mumbai, and then all then to the Middle East."

"However, Mr. Prime Minister, if all the British troops in India are withdrawn, it may be difficult to hold India by relying on the British and Indian troops alone, and if India falls, the squadron will probably attack the Middle East soon, and even kill all the way to the Suez Canal!" Ironside argued loudly.

"This ......" Chamberlain hesitated again when he heard this, and it was a strategy that had been formulated a long time ago to give up India as a last resort, but the Middle East, especially the Suez Canal, could never give up. If China hits the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and seizes the Suez Canal, then Italy, Turkey, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and other countries that are still on the sidelines will probably not hesitate to join the side of the Axis powers, right?

"No, we don't rely on the Anglo-Indian army to defend India!" Churchill suddenly interjected: "India should be defended by the Indians." A mocking look slipped into Churchill's fat face as he spoke. Didn't the Chinese GCD say it was going to liberate India from the colonial rule of the British Empire? Then let's make India independent now! If the Chinese continue to invade, then they are not liberation, but aggression! At that time, the whole Indian people will rise up against them, and it will be a struggle of 30,000 people, and the Chinese will either leave in ashes or fall into the big quagmire of India! ”

"That's right! Winston is right, we are arranged, we will immediately give India independent status, let Mr. Gandhi be president, Nehru will be prime minister, and we can also invite the Indian GCD to join the coalition government. Prime Minister Chamberlain's eyes lit up suddenly, and he stood up with his hands on the table, and there was some confidence in his tone.

"I will immediately go to Buckingham Palace to ask His Majesty the King to grant India independence, from now on, India will no longer be an integral part of the British Empire, and the British ** officer will serve in the Indian army for a period of time in the name of adviser, and can also accept the Indian government's employment as an officer in the Indian army until ......."

"Your Excellency the Prime Minister!" Before Chamberlain could finish his sentence, a panicked secretary suddenly pushed the door and walked in, interrupting the meeting.

"Europe! It's something big in Europe! Hitler's army suddenly appeared on the Ardennes ......"

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