The spring sun still can't bring warmth to both sides of the fierce war.

The war of 1941 became more and more brutal. Churchill's lightning offensive in the Iberian Peninsula helped the British to gain the strategic initiative, and his old rivals, although a little slower, had a better group of soldiers. In the face of the bombing of the railway, the interruption of the junction, and the cutting off of the road over the Pyrenees, Guderian still relied on the rolling iron wheel, led 20 divisions to quickly bypass the most difficult area in the middle, entered the peninsula from Navarre, and used the information provided by the Spanish Phalangists and the Blue Division to capture Pamplona in only five days, officially opening the door to advance in depth.

Unlike the stumbling of Spain, Rommel, who had made a U-turn, made rapid progress in the endless desert. On 12 April, the day of the surrender of Yugoslavia, seven divisions of the German-Italian East African Corps, with the cooperation of 250 tanks and 500 warplanes, fought a fierce battle with Patton's Third Army at Fort Buararij, east of Algiers. In the face of the old and spicy German army, although the US army gradually adapted to the war, the "inferior" M3 series tanks made Rommel brilliant. In two days and two nights of fierce fighting, Patton's 2nd Panzer Division was almost completely annihilated! More than 300 M3 series tanks were destroyed by the German No. 4 tank and 88 guns, more than 3,000 American troops were killed and 6,000 were wounded.

With the German army entering Spain on one side and North Africa on the other, Britain and the United States fell into the greatest crisis since the beginning of the war. In order to alleviate the problem of troops, Churchill frantically increased troops to Spain, and Roosevelt also mobilized almost all merchant ships, and also used about 1,000 transport planes of various types to send one army after another to Europe. But he also encountered Yang Qiu's embarrassment in Central Asia, that is, the length of the transportation line. Consume too. Before the country's manufacturing capacity was completely at its peak, it had to rely on flesh and blood to stop the German army. Similarly, the fall of Yugoslavia exposed Greece to German artillery, with the former mobilizing with the support of Britain and the United States in an attempt to block the German army, and Turkey, which also carried out the first national mobilization for fear of invasion.

As the huge Mediterranean millstone slowly kicks in, Central Asia is also rekindled. In order to delay the pace of Japan's defeat, the Soviet Ural Front concentrated 500,000 troops and launched another onslaught on Kostanay and the Irgiz River. China's Central Asian Theater Command is also competing against each other. 6 armored divisions, 30 infantry divisions, 5 Polish divisions, and 20 cavalry divisions of the Central Asian coalition army were mobilized, and with the cooperation of fighters and heavy artillery, they held the defensive line and waited for a counter-attack. At the same time, the Persian Army Group also dispatched 12 divisions to launch an offensive into northern Iran, trying to contain the living forces of the Soviet army.

While the land is at a stalemate, the Chinese navy is surging forward in the Pacific. Following the landfall at Majuro Atoll on 8 April, it was followed by landfall at Milli Atoll, Jaluit Atoll and Erin Lapu-Lapu Atoll. By 14 April, the XN23 battle group had captured the weakly defended Butaritari Atoll in the north of Gilbert, and the undefended islands of Baker and Howland in the south, and bombed the more heavily defended islands of Tarawa and Nauru. Destroyed the last naval and air power of the Japanese here, surrounding Gilbert.

At the same time, the XN21 battle group, another "heavy artillery" of the Chinese Navy in the Southwestern Pacific, was not to be outdone, in the case of the unpreparedness of the Japanese army. Suddenly concentrating two light cruisers and 12 destroyers, protecting 10 troop carriers, set out from Palau and landed on Biak Island, north of the island of New Guinea, in the Gulf of Aconit. 4,000 army and engineers occupied the island without even resistance, officially bringing the flames of war into New Guinea.

As the strongholds in the Southwest Pacific continued to collapse, the Philippines and Japan were completely cut off. The Japanese base camp was in a panic. Coupled with the continuous "rainbow bombing" of the Chinese Air Force, the heavy losses on the mainland, and the loss of external communications, the Japanese Navy was besieged on all sides.

The atmosphere of Armageddon at sea became more and more intense as tension became in the direction of the Ryukyus.

In such an atmosphere, 210 nautical miles southwest of Nauru Island, the nerves of the battleship formation of the Haruna were becoming more and more nervous.

In the drizzle, the interior of the battleship Haruna was pitch black, and the hatch of the command tower of the island was tightly locked, but through the thick curtain inside the porthole, the sailors who were holding the night could vaguely detect the dim light inside. Captain Kimura had a bad time, first being slightly wounded in the Battle of Wake Island, and then having to be wounded for Truk's safety, taking four cruisers to join the Kumano there for a heavy cruiser. But before he could take care of the ship's wounds, Truk was attacked by an air raid, and he had to lead his troops to retreat to Rabaul. With the decisive battle imminent, the base camp asked him to leave behind two light cruisers, the Oi and the Kiso, to strengthen Rabaul's Sixth Fleet, and bring the battleship and three heavy cruisers back to participate in the decisive battle. More importantly, he also had to protect 33 cargo ships loaded with 90,000 tons of heavy oil to ease the domestic oil shortage.

Originally, he wanted to pass between the Marshall Islands and Micronesia as a whole, but with the complete collapse of the Marshall Islands and the arrival of a large number of Chinese Navy patrol aircraft, the road was no longer open. The Philippines' return to China is also unsafe because of the attacks from Palau, Guam and Taiwan. So he thought about it, and he could only take advantage of the fact that the Chinese Navy was not closed, pass from Tuvalu, south of Gilbert, and then bypass the dangerous Hawaii to the Kuril Islands and return home.

It's a dangerous road, but it's much better than Micronesia and the Marshalls, where Chinese bombers are intensive. "I hope to be able to return to China safely." Kimura quietly lifted the curtain, and the slow fleet of oil tankers in the dark made him very unsteady. Just as he lifted the opening curtain, to the west of him, Yang Tiancheng's 239 destroyer formation was searching and advancing at a speed of 27 knots. Although Comrade Xiao Yang had great ambitions, he had just been promoted from the frigate and his rank was also a major, so he could only follow the Songshan destroyer, which met halfway, to obey the command.

The Songshan is a Taishan-class destroyer (French Utopian-class) jointly built by China and France, which is fast and has a large tonnage, and is more like a popular destroyer lead ship in Europe, so the cost is very expensive. The navy could not afford such a high cost at that time, so after building six, it canceled the follow-up plan and built Qinling-class destroyers instead. The cost of the Qinling class is 10 percent lower than that of the Taishan class, but it is not weak in terms of combat performance, seaworthiness, and endurance, but the speed is slower. At this time, the formation adopted a single-wing formation, with the Songshan at the front, the five Qinling-class destroyers following in turn in an inclined line, and the position of the Wumengshan was at the end.

"Is it fixed? How much longer? Yang Tiancheng pushed open the hatch, came under the mast in a raincoat, and asked loudly about the electronic soldiers who were repairing the radar. Shortly after the voyage, his own radio and radar antennas were both damaged by lightning strikes. This is very fatal, because now the formation maintains radio silence, and even the navigation mast lights are turned off, so without radio and radar, the Wumeng Mountain can only rely on the visual operation of the lookout. And if it can't be repaired before the connection, it is likely that it will not be able to cooperate with the formation.

"Soon, Captain, half an hour at most."

"Okay, stay safe!" Although he was very anxious, he could only choose to believe in the electronic officer, but he secretly scolded his sister in his heart, because the radar loaded by the Qinling-class destroyer happened to be his family's industry, and after his sister Yang Sisi returned from graduation, he took over the family's business from Sanniang Lu Bicheng.

After returning to the bridge helplessly, he was just about to take off his raincoat, when the captain suddenly pointed ahead: "Captain, look." ”

"What's wrong?"

"It's turning, it seems to be speeding up!" As the navigator spoke, the destroyer Tianmu Mountain in front of him on the left began to turn right, and its speed seemed to increase a little. "What the hell, didn't you tell them our radio was broken? How not to signal? Yang Tiancheng gripped the railing angrily.

There was a reason for his annoyance, because according to normal, the Tianmu Mountain, which was in front of him, should be informed about steering and acceleration through the mast light signal, after all, the Wumeng Mountain was last, and the radio and radar were also broken. But this time, the Tianmu Mountain seemed to have forgotten that there were comrades behind it. This kind of mistake seems incomprehensible, but it is actually normal, because with the rapid expansion of the navy in a short period of time, most of the experienced captains have been transferred, and many destroyer captains are like him, who have been promoted from frigates or simply the coast guard.

"Do you want to signal the lights first?"

"Forget it, let the lookout keep an eye on the point, deviate five degrees and try to stagger the heading angle, and follow the point."

The navigator nodded, and immediately turned the rudder away from the Tianmu Mountain, and then accelerated in the hope of catching closer. But everyone didn't expect that the Tianmu Mountain was getting faster and faster, and soon exceeded the five-kilometer night vision distance, "Bastard!" Full! Pay attention to the surface of the sea. Yang Tiancheng was so angry that he almost wanted to fly over, grabbed the captain of the Tianmu Mountain and beat him violently. You're giving me a signal that something is going on! He was in a hurry, but he couldn't take the initiative to turn on the mast lights to send signals, because it was likely that some target had been discovered, otherwise the formation would not have accelerated for no reason.

At this time, the rain was getting heavier and heavier, and the sea was blurry, and after accelerating the pursuit for ten minutes, there was still no trace of the formation, which made him a little panicked.

At this moment, several bright fireballs suddenly lit up from the port side, followed by a dull sound of shelling. At this time, Yang Tiancheng finally understood what was going on, but the problem was that he only found out at this time, because he was afraid of a night collision just now and deliberately staggered five degrees, but the Tianmu Mountain and the formation obviously made a large left turn, so his position was seven nautical miles away from the battlefield.

"Damn, I ran wrong!" …… (To be continued......)