In command of this aircraft carrier formation is Halsey, the newly promoted commander of the aircraft carrier task force.

During the Battle of Guam, Halsey happened to be transferred to the Atlantic Fleet, and fortunately escaped without participating in the largest pretending operation in history.

In the Battle of Guam, the greatest blow to the US Navy was not the loss of all the capital ships of the Pacific Fleet, but the loss of experienced sailors and officers.

After being promoted to commander of Task Force 3, Halsey and his immediate boss Nimitz strongly opposed the immediate departure of a rookie sailor to the waters of Oahu, and fought with the Japanese Combined Fleet, which controlled many islands and was supported by land-based airfields. Halsey himself even objected to the operation of the aircraft carrier Tongguò as a transit point to transfer aircraft support to Oahu. He believed that the best way for the U.S. Navy to provide effective support to Oahu was to attack the long supply lines between the Japanese mainland and Oahu.

However, the strength of the Pacific Fleet in the early stage was too weak, and before the second Essex-class aircraft carrier entered service in November, the US Navy could only come up with two high-speed aircraft carriers. And the sailors in Halsey's hands are even more rookies. There were numerous accidents during training, and the man-ship run-in of the new aircraft carrier was also very bad.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Navy is now completely deprived of supply points and staging points west of Oahu. Under such circumstances, the dispatch of an aircraft carrier formation to attack the Japanese supply fleet would mean that the navy would have to sail more than 5,000 kilometers without a supply base to fight. Not to mention the huge losses, the risks to be borne are extremely huge.

Even Nimitz, who advocated active defense, did not dare to carry out such a risky operation in such an extremely unprofitable situation.

And sending planes to Oahu to support it was also a last resort for President Wilkie. Oahu is of great strategic importance to the U.S. Navy, and once it is lost, it will inevitably cost several times more blood to regain it in the future. According to President Wilkie's wishful thinking. Oahu supports at least half a year to a year. With this buffer, the Navy will have access to more than four Essex-class aircraft carriers, with a large number of escort carriers, and the U.S. Navy will be qualified to fight the Japanese Navy.

But the idea was good, but the HE177, which flew to Oahu every day and dropped a 10.5-ton super bomb, shattered President Wilkie's beautiful illusions. Defense facilities on Oahu. With the exception of the fortress guns built in the belly of the mountain, all open-air, semi-open-air, and battery installations with a "buried depth" of less than 30 meters have become as fragile as eggs in the face of this super aerial bomb. Even on Oahu, the hard "Diamond Mountain", a huge bomb dropped from a height of 5,000 meters, can still force its way into the ground 10 meters deep and cause great damage. Theoretically, except for the fort tunnels on the island that are buried at a depth of less than 40 meters. Otherwise, no facility would be able to withstand the direct hit of such a huge projectile.

Although there are important forts and forts on Wa Island, only a small part of them meet this requirement, and the rest of the facilities have been severely damaged by the huge aerial bombs that have been dropped continuously in the past two months, and many of the forts have been directly hit by the huge bombs dropped from the sky, and they have been destroyed after smashing through the shells. What was once a seamless fort defense on the island has been damaged in many places. A large number of defensive blind spots have been left behind, and more and more shadows have been cast over future anti-landing operations.

The last ten days. The Japanese Navy even dared to send some high-speed cruisers to try to get close to Oahu and launch artillery bombardments. They chose the angles cleverly, and they were all dead spots in the island's forts, which were not originally there, and were exposed only after the bombing of a large number of battery groups.

Over time, the number of HE177 bombs dropped on Oahu every day has increased, and it has now grown from the original seventy-two. It has risen to about 120 per day. Oahu is only 1,500 square kilometers in size, but the number of craters created by the bombing on the island is now approaching 2,000, and the number is increasing at a rate of more than 100 every day.

In early December, Lieutenant General Short sent an urgent telegram to Washington. If this situation continues, by January next year, the island's main defenses will be completely destroyed by the Japanese.

With Japan's weak national strength, it was also very difficult to continue the bombing of Oahu with such a large yield. But now behind Japan stands the three Soviet and German countries with ill intentions towards the United States, and the Germans not only sold a large amount of HE177 to the Japanese, but even sold their own inventory of "Big Herax" to Japan at one time. The U.S. government protested many times, but Germany rejected it on the grounds of "free trade."

Under such circumstances, in order to ensure that Oahu could support the US Navy's counteroffensive, President Wilkie had no choice but to send planes to support Oahu to reduce the threat of HE177's bombing of Oahu.

War is a continuation of the political system, which is more capable of interfering in the course of the war. The biggest contradiction in war is that the upper echelons of officials need to direct the war, and sometimes even violate the principles of war.

According to Nimitz and Halsey's assumptions, the current Oahu cannot be saved at all, at least until the Pacific Fleet has five or six combat carriers. But President Wilkie didn't think so, and he couldn't afford the political pressure of losing the Hawaiian Islands. Whether it is the people or the Congress, there are a large number of people who believe that the president who planned the "pretending operation" is the first person responsible for the destruction of the Pacific Fleet. President Wilkie was more worried that if Oahu fell, he would be impeached by Congress and ousted.

In such a situation, there was also a large-scale transfer of aircraft from the aircraft carrier Guò to support the operation of Oahu.

The so-called mountains will eventually meet tigers.

The first two transfer planes, due to surprise and the fact that the Japanese army had not yet fully controlled the area around Oahu, were relatively smooth, but in the third transition, they were intercepted by Japanese fighters halfway and suffered heavy losses.

Prior to the Fourth Transition Operation, the Japanese Navy and Army had taken full control of the perimeter of Oahu, built a solid land-based airfield, and even set up a mobile patrol alert force on the periphery.

The first to spot the U.S. fleet was not the USS Musashi, which was cruising northwest of Lower Oahu, or the alert cruiser that was cruising further on the periphery and equipped with an air defense radar, but the HE177R radar early warning aircraft that took off from Maui.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, Germany provided Japan with a full sixteen HE177R radar early warning aircraft, twelve of which were deployed by the Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands. At least two HE177Rs patrol the airspace around Oahu every day at any given time.

As the time for the general attack on Oahu approaches, and there is a suspicion that the US military will support Oahu, the number of radar early warning planes that are on alert in the sky at all times has increased to four in the past few days, and these planes usually carry out early warning patrols over a distance of about 350 kilometers away from Oahu. It was the radar on the HE177R early warning aircraft that detected a large number of US planes flying from the northeast in advance.

Just as Matsudagen received, there were a total of 40 F4U Corsair fighters among the incoming US planes.

Historically, the Americans began to form the first Pirate fighter squadron at the end of 1942, and in February of the following year, the first Pirate fighter was deployed on Kuah Island and officially participated in the war.

However, in this historical plane, because the Japanese naval and ground air tanks were so outstanding, whether it was the Philippine campaign or the air battle in the Hawaiian Islands, the fighters of the US navy and land were all blown up in the air by the opponents, and the air combat exchange ratio between the fighters of the two sides in the air battle even reached an extremely embarrassing six to one at one time, and this did not deduct the "water" of the results of the ground antiaircraft artillery battle. The planes of the US military did not even bargain for the Zero Type II, which was about to be eliminated by the Japanese army.

The huge battle loss ratio shocked the US Navy and Army, and the voices calling for the new fighters to enter service as soon as possible increased.

The new F4U Corsair fighter still has a bunch of small problems that have not been solved at this time: first of all, the vision is poor, the long nose has already made the front vision very bad, and the hood exhaust is hydraulically controlled, and a lot of oil leaks out from there, spraying the front windshield into a pitch black, and the pilot opened the cockpit to observe, and the result was also sprayed with oil.

In December of that year, the American designer Basel redesigned the hydraulics and completely closed the exhaust flap on the upper part of the hood.

The next problem is more severe, the landing gear does not absorb the shock well, if the plane falls to the deck at high speed, the stiff hydraulic struts will make the whole fuselage jump up and jump into the blocking net. At the same time, the upwash brought by the huge propeller makes it easy for the lower end of the left wing to sink through this wash area, which makes the aircraft easy to flip and cause accidents in a stall state. In the end, the pillars of the tail wheel were too short, and the huge ailerons almost hung down to the deck, making it very difficult to control the left and right directions when landing - the problem of the Corsair fighter landing was finally exposed at this time.

But the Oahu front line really needs new fighters. The production of the new fighter even enjoyed the personal intervention and intervention of President Wilkie. While those problems were still being resolved, President Wilkie directly ordered the factory to produce a batch of Pirate fighters in advance to support the front line.

Since the formal production line was still completely built, some of the key parts of the first batch of 40 Corsair fighters were almost handmade, and the cost of hand-driven cars by senior mechanics skyrocketed, but the Americans with deep pockets did not care at all. (To be continued......)

PS: Today's goal is the third watch, the first one. Ask for a thumbs up