By August, the defeat of the US forces in the Philippines was assured, and the remnants of the air force were not left after the previous combat attrition.

Due to the simultaneous attack of the Japanese army from the north and south, and the opponent's "single-mindedness" (in history, when Japan launched the Philippine Campaign, its appetite was too strong, and the Philippines, Malaya, and even Burma were fighting at the same time on several battlefields, not to mention throwing hundreds of thousands of devil soldiers in the quagmire of China), by the end of August, the US Army's resistance in the Philippines was nearing the end.

MacArthur fled the Philippines on 20 August by submarine, while his troops laid down their arms on the Bataan Peninsula on 3 September and surrendered to the Japanese.

Compared with the Philippine Campaign, which was fought for almost six months in history, the Philippine Campaign on this plane, the Japanese army ended the war in less than three months.

During the battle, the Japanese army suffered about 13,000 casualties, lost more than 100 planes and 5 ships; It destroyed more than 500 US and Philippine military planes, 8 combat ships of various types, and sank or captured 26 merchant ships. The U.S.-Filipino coalition lost 5,000 dead and 7,000 wounded, 140,000 prisoners, and 200 tanks (including Lieutenant General Wainwright).

Compared with history, the U.S. military in the Philippines has lost more than 35,000 troops and more than 200 aircraft. On the Japanese side, more than 3,000 people were killed and about 10,000 wounded, and the personnel losses were even slightly smaller than the historical Philippine Campaign, and the material losses were slightly higher than those in the same period in history.

The main reason for this situation is that it has bloomed everywhere in history, and it has made different enemies everywhere. In this Philippine strategic operation, the Japanese navy and army had a clear goal, and with the exception of the Yamato and Musashi ships used to carry out special tasks and several heavy cruisers, the vast majority of the naval and land forces were engaged in the Philippine battlefield.

Although the strength of the US troops in the Philippines has increased considerably, it has increased considerably compared to the same period in history. But the opponent is stronger.

Unlike the Japanese army that fought with the U.S. Army in history with a "toy tank", the Japanese Army's armament and equipment have also been enhanced.

In order to allow the Japanese to bleed more blood on the United States, Germany and Japan signed a secret agreement on land for weapons before the war.

At the expense of Palawan Island in the southern Philippines near Kalimantan, the Japanese exchanged several divisions of army equipment and a large amount of aviation assistance from the Germans.

Palawan is a narrow island in the southwestern part of the Philippines, with an area of about 11,785 square kilometers, this Amazon-like jungle inland region is the last ecological virgin land in the Philippines. The island's population was around 100,000 in 1942. When the Japanese captured the island, the U.S. military set up a naval base here to deter the British to the south.

In 1942. Most of the island is still a wild place, and the output is not much. Since it was a colony of the United States, the Japanese side did not feel any pain at all by "selling" the land to the Germans in advance and being generous to others.

And the German side asked for this island, in fact, for Lin Han. Germany is far away in Europe, and this island means little to them. Germany claimed the island to the Japanese as "compensation" for the loss of the Bismarck Islands, which had been ceded by the Japanese after World War I as a result of the Treaty of Versailles.

In Linhan's plan, Palawan was in hand. Coupled with the seizure of East Malaysia from the British at an appropriate time in the future, the entire South China Sea could then be considered almost an "inland sea" of China.

The territory of the "Republic of South China" designed by Lin Han includes Singapore, most of Kalimantan, and Palawan.

The Japanese side's agreement to this agreement is entirely the result of Li Huamei's collusion with the agreement. Li Huamei's initial proposal to the emperor was that after conquering the Philippines, he gave Palawan Island to the British as a "letter of surrender". This one is built yì. Later, during the secret talks between Britain and Japan, the Japanese side formally proposed it to the British.

This kind of naked desire to drag the British into the water. Of course, the British refused to agree, and then, in the secret negotiations between Japan and Germany, the Japanese threw out the bait again, and the Germans, after the British refused, stood up and bit the bait regardless of the situation.

The Germans would bite into this bait, apparently with a large trap, so lightly that even the Japanese did not expect it. After the agreement on land for arms was reached. This was the later move of the Germans to "give" shiploads of arms to the Japanese at a low price like scrap metal.

After the end of the European War, the German Army captured a total of 20 divisions of British Army equipment in Northern Europe and France. Although partially defective, these captured munitions were repaired. It is enough to lightly arm the army of sixteen divisions.

British weapons were of different calibers from German and were of little use to Germany. After Lin Han founded the country in Lanfang, after Germany sent Lin Han 70,000 Lee Enfeld rifles and three army division equipment, the Germans still had a large number of "useless" stocks, which were basically "sent" to the Japanese.

On the one hand, there are "useless" war trophies, and on the other hand, there is land that is "generous to Americans", and both of them are doing business. This secret weapon for land agreement is easy to pass guò.

Now Hannah is preparing to take advantage of the war between the United States and Japan to completely wipe off Germany's huge debt of more than $40 billion to the United States. At the time of the war in Europe, relations between Germany and the United States were already very bad, and now she was ready to pay her debts, and she did not care that such behavior would arouse the anger of the Americans—without the help of Britain, the Americans would not have been able to cross the Atlantic to Europe to carry out armed debt collection against Germany. Germany is not alone in its debts, and the Soviet Union, another powerful country in Europe, is also thinking about it at this time.

In the first half of the war, the Japanese armed eight full-fledged "British armourers" with British rifles, British artillery, and British tanks provided by the Germans, from rifles to cannons to tanks, were all British munitions. Due to the defeat of the Chinese war, the country was in danger of bankruptcy, and the military expenditure was greatly reduced. Coupled with the British tanks sent by Germany and the American tanks captured in the battle, the Japanese even had the capital to form three full-fledged tank divisions.

On the land battlefield in the Philippines, an "interesting incident" that often happens is that the American M2 tank faced the Japanese M2 tank.

It was precisely because Britain and Germany stood behind them before the war and desperately tried their best to convey their strength to Japan, that the Japanese navy and land military confidently dared to challenge the United States.

At the beginning of the Philippine Campaign, when MacArthur commanded the U.S. Army to fight against the Japanese Navy and Army, he was depressed to find that the weapons used to fight the Japanese Army on the ground were almost all British equipment. This situation further deepened his miscalculation that Britain might declare war on the United States at any time, so that in the strategic layout, he had to devote a lot of energy to guard against the British in the southwest, resulting in even greater consideration for one and the other.

In addition to army equipment, but also in terms of aircraft, the Japanese Navy and Army Airlines received strong assistance from the German side.

HNA conveniently got a large number of FW190TF fighter-bombers at a very good price, and the army aviation got the HE151 long-range fighter of British and German mixed blood, or rather, the alternative P51 Mustang fighter.

The P51 field fighter, which had the reputation of being the best liquid-cooled fighter of World War II, did not even appear in June 1942 due to the burning of the company that developed it, the killing of the chairman, the "poaching" of the core developers by the Germans, and the early end of the European War.

But Hannah and Lin Han, who knew the name of the Mustang fighter very well, how could they give up this excellent fighter.

In 1940, when the European war was still underway, the two ordered Dr. Henk of the Heinkel company to start designing the German version of the Mustang fighter based on the development idea of the Mustang fighter, which was named HE151.

One of the main reasons why the Mustang fighter was rated as the strongest fighter in World War II was that it was the first fighter to use laminar wing design and mathematical aerodynamics to "calculate" in World War II. The performance of the aircraft with laminar flow wing design needs to be increased to more than 1500 horsepower after the engine (referring to liquid cooling) horsepower can fully play its own unique advantages.

During the European War in 1940, both Britain and Germany were still struggling with aircraft engines below 1,400 horsepower, and it was not until the end of the war that the two countries respectively developed aviation liquid-cooled engines of more than 1,500 horsepower, and then the birth of the laminar wing design aircraft was meaningful.

After 1941, the German side successfully developed the German version of the Mustang fighter based on the design idea of the Mustang D, which had a maximum range of more than 1,200 kilometers without adding auxiliary fuel tanks.

After 1941, with Germany's successful turn to the left and further improvement in relations with the Soviet Union, international strategy was less likely to face war in the short term. Although this fighter was developed, it was no longer heroic.

At this time, Germany's foreign strategic direction had shifted to "trapping" the Americans. Under this line of thinking, the speed of military exchanges between Japan and Germany accelerated.

In February 1941, a Japanese military delegation visited Germany, and the German military, on Hannah's orders, let Japan watch the performance of the HE151 fighter jet, which was newly equipped with the Air Force, and had Japanese pilots fly it.

After the flight, the Japanese test pilots were full of praise, the fact that Li Huamei was encouraged by it, one side wanted to buy, the other side desperately wanted to sell, the Japanese soon got a full set of design and manufacturing drawings of HE151 at a low price that was unbelievably cheap, and the related production fixtures arrived in Japan in September of that year, and the Germans moved so fast that even the Japanese did not expect -- the Japanese did not know, in order to deliver faster, The German side directly dismantled the production line of the HE151 fighter that Heinkel had just built and sent it to Japan.

In Hannah's view, she could make Americans bleed more in the Pacific Ocean for "a small fee", and why not. (To be continued......)

PS: There is one more shift after eleven o'clock