Having destroyed all the passenger and cargo ships by the Red Army Air Force, Lieutenant General Takasu Shiro is now faced with a dilemma.

The first is to pick up those soldiers who are still alive after eating enough seawater from the sea, and slap their butts and leave before the second wave of bombardment of the Red Army arrives. The HNA planes were completely wiped out, and not even one of the 75 planes that released the planes came back.

This means that the opponent has an extremely powerful air force, which has been proven in the recent air-to-sea bombing, and the smoke-emitting Chicheng next to it is one of the results of the opponent's battle.

No one survived, which is the worst outcome, which means that the defeated side of the air battle does not know where it is defeated, which is more of a headache than the defeat of the air battle itself.

Reason told Vice Admiral Takasu Shiro that Shanghai was a terrible black hole, and until the true strength of his opponent was thoroughly understood, the navy ships he should lead should stay away from here, and the farther away the better.

The sinking of the light cruiser Tenryu and the destroyer Wakatake was already a stern warning, but it was a pity that he was too much at the time

Arrogance, completely ignoring this, resulted in this unprecedented tragedy.

Go, that's the right choice, but can he go?

In Japan, the political chaos caused by the assassination of the emperor continued to ferment, and various contradictions that had been suppressed by the emperor in the past, contradictions on land and sea, and contradictions between the unification faction and the imperial faction, all broke out at this time. His political enemies, the Army, the Navy's sworn enemy, now use the situation in China as a weapon against his opponents. Just left Shanghai and returned to Japan, and then waited for the Chicheng to be repaired. Join forces with Kaga and regroup again?

He won't be given time in Japan, his political enemies won't give him time, and the red deer in the army won't give him time. Lieutenant General Takasu Shiro could even imagine that after he returned to China, he would definitely be attacked by the "people" in China who were brainstorming, and he would even be called a "national thief" and "punished by heaven".

For a long time, the weakened China was a tender and delicious fish belly in the hearts of the people of the Great Japanese Empire. Just eat it however you want. From the First Sino-Japanese War to the Northeast Incident. The people have become accustomed to winning and winning again against China, and they cannot tolerate the slightest defeat, let alone the "fiasco" of today.

Takasu Shiro knew he couldn't afford to go home in defeat.

But if he doesn't leave, he will be like a gambler. Keep gambling? Defeat by the remnants of the army in your hands. Relying on the advantage of large ships and huge guns. Break through the Yangtze River, and then carry out artillery bombardment around Shanghai.

Not to mention that the fleet, which had completely lost air supremacy, would continue to be bombed by the Chinese Air Force, and a large number of officers and men of the army who were preparing to land in Shanghai were drowned in the sea. Where does he still have a gambling book in his hand to go to Shanghai to "gamble"?

Commander Takasu Shiro asked the Chief of Staff of the Third Fleet, Eijiro Kondo, for his opinion.

Eijiro Kondo said what was in the commander's heart: "Your Excellency, this battle should be the victory of the Red Chinans, no, it should be said that the victory of the Germans. Those planes, in the past, had been rumored to have been sold by the German Führer Hitler to the Red China. The role of the Air Force in naval warfare, we saw it all yesterday and today. Although with the armor of King Kong, he is not afraid of the bombardment of those planes, but it is too cost-effective to pit the precious ships against those cheap planes. At least we shouldn't have brought the Navy here again until the Asei is repaired and the Kaga is refitted. ”

After consulting with his staff officers, Lieutenant General Takasu Shiro finally came up with a compromise plan.

After rescuing people, first withdraw the fleet, away from the strike range of the Red Army Air Force, and then make a night sortie, close to the coast of Shanghai, and then shell the perimeter of Shanghai.

After hastily salvaging the soldiers and sailors floating on the sea, Takasu Shiro retreated to the northeast with his fleet, and according to his idea, he planned to drive the warship back after dark, and then shell Shanghai, and after firing the shells on the ship, it can be regarded as an "explanation", and then turn around and return to Nagasaki.

Compared with those army deer who like to gamble and the young young heroes of the navy, Takasu Shiro is finally a little disciplined, and he is not crazy enough to put the navy on the gambling table for his own personal interests.

At one o'clock in the morning of the 19th, the Japanese fleet, which had been returning and returning, approached the mouth of the Yangtze River and opened heavy artillery fire on the Yucun towns along the Yangtze River, and Chongming Island and Changxing Island did not escape their shelling.

Fearing the mines in the Yangtze River, Japan did not dare to go deep into the Yangtze River. Although Takasu Shiro shelled Shanghai, he still did not dare to fire at the concession, and the shells fell on the counties around Shanghai. However, after receiving Lin Han's early warning before the Red Army, and having prepared in advance, the local residents had almost evacuated before the war, so there were basically no casualties, only some buildings were lost.

Fearing another surprise attack after dawn, the shelling lasted for an hour, and the Japanese fleet left in a hurry. Japan's intervention forces against China, organized "in a hurry", came in high spirits, but left wolf-bèi unbearable. The Japanese soldiers of nearly 5,000 people in the intervention army did not even set foot on Chinese soil, so they all sank into the sea and fed the fish.

And because of this heavy failure, coupled with the absence of the emperor's throne, an even bigger storm is brewing in Japan, but that's a story for later.

On June 18, the whole world was staring at China, at Shanghai, and at what kind of performance the arrival of the Japanese fleet would be. However, the results of the air battle on the 18th caused the world's political leaders to shatter their spectacles.

After the news came out that the Japanese fleet had been defeated and retreated in the East China Sea and that the intervention forces from Taiwan and the mainland had been almost wiped out, the United States, Germany, and the Soviet Union, which were short Britain, joined forces to hype up this information, causing the London stock market to fall sharply at the open on the 19th. Under the strong sniping of international funds, especially American capital, the British government suffered heavy losses, while the French government also suffered small losses.

In the early morning of 18 June, when the planes of the Chinese Air Force inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese fleet over the East China Sea and sent the first wave of the Japanese "invading and intervening forces" into the sea to feed the fish, Washington in the eastern part of the United States was still on the night of 17 June.

In the early morning of the 18th US time, the President of Ghana woke up. From the front-page headlines of the Washington Post at the dinner table, I learned about the battle that took place thousands of miles away. At this time, people from the intelligence department were also at the dinner table to report to him the news from Shanghai, China.

The United States has always retained a concession garrison of more than 200 people in Shanghai, and the Red Army entered Shanghai and liberated the concession, but this garrison was not disarmed. Instead, a small plot of land was set aside to secure the foreign expatriates and refugees in the concession.

When the Red Army took the concession, governments sent ships to Shanghai to receive refugees, and the U.S. government was no exception. It's just that due to the lag of time, when the Chinese Air Force and the Japanese Navy were fighting in full swing in the East China Sea, these ships receiving expatriates were still on the way.

For the abrupt changes in China. The U.S. government under the President of Ghana. It's joy and worry.

Rejoicing is the collapse of the British colonial system, and the loss of China means that the declining empire has fallen another step on the horizon. After the end of World War I. Successive U.S. administrations have seen rapid expansion of national power. They all have a sense of mission to bring the United States of America to the top of the world. Although "Cactus Garner" is a "red-necked" racist, such a love affair will only be heavier than Roosevelt's.

To see the British lose so much in China is for the US government. Naturally, it's a joy to hear. In the past two years, the U.S. government has also done business on both sides of the Red Army and the White Army. Although the Red Army's munitions were mainly German and supplemented by Soviet weapons, Red China, which had begun to industrialize and stockpile strategic materials, still imported a lot of chemicals, especially petroleum products, from the United States out of cost considerations.

The president of Ghana originally wanted to "pull" the Nanjing government when it needed it most, but since the death of Chang Kaishen, the two chairmen of the Nanjing government are not as good as crabs. After listening to the reports of the ambassadors and military attaches in China, the President of Ghana and his staff have not been very optimistic about the Nanjing government since 1934, and the United States in the midst of the economic crisis is still anxious to draw blood from China to replenish its vitality.

Therefore, in the past two years, the foreign debts of more than $100 million borne by the Nanjing Nationalist Government were all paid by Britain and France. The U.S. government only symbolically lent $10 million to the Nanking government after the Treaty of London. Seeing that Britain and France had stumbled the China issue, the senior officials of the US government, who had been squeezed out of the League of Nations by Britain and France after World War I, were all secretly happy in their hearts.

In September last year, after a large number of air forces under the Nationalist Government in Nanjing rebelled and defected to the Communist Party, the US Government went so far as to privately accept orders from the Red Army and continue to supply maintenance parts for the Hawker II fighters, especially the sale of 120 engines for the Hawker II fighters to the Red Army.

The sale of chemicals that could be used to make gunpowder to the Red Army, the supply of large quantities of high-quality aviation fuel, and the sale of spare parts for aircraft were all for the sake of profit, the best of both worlds in order to destroy the base of British interests in China, and at the same time to make a small fortune for itself.

In the view of the President of Ghana, the current situation in southern China is in the best interest of the United States if it can be maintained for a long time. The only problem was that the Red Army in the south had become too strong in this defeat of the Nationalist government in Nanjing.

That's what the U.S. government is worried about.

What they want to see is a China that is facing confrontation between the north and the south and is torn apart, not a China that has risen strongly, even if there are signs of its rise.

In the plan prepared by the President of Ghana and his staff, at the "appropriate" time, Japan was encouraged to send an intervention force against China into the Yangtze River valley to interfere in the Chinese revolution. According to their thinking, in the early stage, the US Government would instigate and covertly support Japan's invasion of China in the south -- in the process, they could take the opportunity to wantonly export a large amount of supplies to Japan for military cities and make another war fortune.

According to the thinking of the US Government, although they will secretly support Japan's invasion of China in the early stage, in the same way, depending on the changes in the war situation, they will also secretly help China -- all of them are based on the basic starting point that the two sides will fight without winning or losing, and the more they fall.

If the Red Army has the advantage, then help Japan, and if Japan has the advantage, then secretly support China again. If Japan's war in China goes too smoothly, then the U.S. government, together with the British, will impose sanctions on Japan at the right time, and then force them to withdraw their troops from South China.

During World War II, the U.S. government, whether on the China issue or in Europe's attitude toward Germany, was far from being as glorious as it was in history textbooks, but in fact, it did countless dirty things that were not seen in it, whether it was the real history or the history that was crushed by Lin Han, a time-traveler, the U.S. government played an extremely disgraceful role in the process.

(Note: Historically, the U.S. government has been doing this since the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, and before 1940, the U.S. sold countless scrap steel, rubber, and fuel oil to Japan.) Before the Pearl Harbor incident, because of the quagmire of China, the gains outweighed the losses, and in fact, even if the Americans did not impose sanctions on Japan, Japan's domestic economy would have been dragged down by the war. As for Germany, before World War II, the total amount of investments and loans from the United States to Germany alone exceeded $40 billion. Without the injection and investment of large sums of money from the United States, Hitler simply did not have the capital to start World War II. ）、

After the intelligence department confirmed the current situation in China, Ghana began to gather his staff to discuss the "attitude" towards China and Japan in the next stage.

Before the talks, the president of Ghana had already set a tone in his heart, that is, he had to help the Japanese and the British, push them to take a tougher stance on the China issue, and encourage Britain and Japan to continue to work together to interfere in China.

The president of Ghana smiled and said to the intelligence chief: "However, the Japanese suffered such a miserable defeat yesterday, according to the temperament of that country, they will definitely not give up well." As for the British, Stanley. Mr. Baldwin, I guess now has reached the point where there is no way back. ”

The President of Ghana has decided that he will support British and Japanese intervention in the Chinese revolution, and at the same time, he will firmly oppose the "destruction of trade freedom" by Britain and Japan. In order to make the "Chinese quagmire" sink Britain and Japan deeper, the US Government will still resolutely engage in "free trade" with the Red Army after eating Party A. The President of Ghana will not allow Britain and Japan to resolve the China issue "easily".

"Hasn't that Chinese god stick been calling on the yellow monkey to return to China in the United States for the past few years? At this point, it's time for us to push him. ”

After discussing the China issue with his aides, the President of Ghana never forgot this opportunity to clean up the Chinese issue in the United States. (To be continued......)