Chapter 668: Target—Midway

Isoroku Yamamoto was a naval officer with excellent tactical command, and he commanded the sneak attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii in the early days of the Pacific War, which established the absolute superiority of the Japanese Navy in the early days of the Pacific War.

This time, Yamamoto Isoroku thought that the naval command was acting rashly, and concentrating all the forces of the navy to occupy Australia was just a joke, because the defeat of the Battle of the Coral Sea had already lost the most favorable opportunity to capture Australia, and now if it insisted on going its own way, the result would be a defeat for both sides, and even if it could occupy Australia, the price it would pay would be extremely heavy, and it would even drag down the Great Japanese Empire.

Therefore, Yamamoto Isoroku immediately returned to Tokyo by special plane, personally expounded his ideas to Senior General Shigetaro Shimada, and put forward a strategic idea of capturing Midway.

Shigetaro Shimada was not a fool either, and after listening to Yamamoto Isoroku's report, he immediately went to the Imperial Palace to report to Emperor Hirohito, and with Hirohito's approval, the Japanese Navy decided to capture Midway Island from mid-April to early May.

When the South Pacific region is turbulent, the situation in China is rapidly improving, with the supply of a large amount of funds from the Chen family, and a number of large-scale projects supported by government departments are being launched all over the country at the same time, and the crazy construction can best drive economic development.

After more than three months of intensive training for recruits, 184 integrated divisions, 54 mixed brigades, 9 cavalry divisions, 18 artillery divisions, 8 armored divisions, 4 air defense divisions, and 12 engineer brigades have all completed the intensive training, and the uniforms, weaponry, and behavioral norms of all units have also tended to be unified.

The original variety of military uniforms were all replaced with yellow and green camouflage uniforms. The chaotic weapons and equipment were unified into three models, one for German equipment, one for Japanese equipment, and one for local weapons and equipment in Saibei, and all other types of weapons and equipment were withdrawn from active service.

After intensive training and the change of weapons, the combat effectiveness of the army has risen, but the logistical pressure has decreased. Because unified weaponry does not require the logistics department to dig out the trouble to collect ammunition of different nationalities and different calibers, this saves the logistics department more than half of its energy.

The gratifying changes in the military also made Chen Feng's prestige in China unprecedentedly enhanced, and his position was increasingly consolidated. And Chen Feng's initiative to let go of the regime is more suitable for almost everyone's praise, before that, many people, including Yan'an, were worried that Chen Feng would become the second old Jiang, or even the second Yuan Shikai.

This is not unfounded, because Chen Feng is different from all the warlords that have appeared in China before. The vast majority of China's warlords that have risen in the past 100 years have originated in troubled times. It is a reckless hero, those who have strength have no money, those who have money have no strength, and those who have money and strength have insufficient ambition. Lack of courage.

But Chen Feng is different. He has the quality. The more than 2 million elites under his command can be called China's largest force, and even Lao Jiang, who is known as the leader of China's Anti-Japanese War, is not comparable to him militarily; Secondly, Chen Feng and the Chen family behind him are rich, and they are tens of billions of dollars. Economic dealings with governments are often in the billions of dollars, and it costs tens of billions of dollars to buy a piece of barren land from the Australian government alone, and such a terrifying financial resource is not something that anyone can have; The last thing is Chen Feng's own ambition and ability, whether Chen Feng has ambition or not, the answer is yes, he can become China's largest warlord in just a few years, if Chen Feng has no ambition, I'm afraid no one believes it.

Speaking of Chen Feng's ability, this is obvious to all Chinese people, whether it is politically or militarily, Chen Feng's ability is beyond doubt. In the past five years of the Anti-Japanese War alone, if you want to say that the army has eliminated the most Japanese troops, Chen Feng's department is a well-deserved champion. Under his governance, Saibei Province has leapt from a remote and poor province with a population of less than 4 million to the most industrially powerful and economically developed province in China.

Rich, powerful, capable, courageous and ambitious, if such a person really wants to become the monarch of a country, it is actually very easy, and now the situation creates heroes, without Chen Feng's efforts, he can become the nominal leader of China and represent the government of a country, and because of this, many people are worried that Chen Feng will have inflated self-confidence and dream of the emperor.

But now Chen Feng actually took the initiative to put forward the idea of separating the military from the government, and took the initiative to hand over the power to others, focusing on the military himself, which made everyone quite moved.

Although the newly established government often had differences on some issues because of the inherent contradictions between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, it still had a very good grasp of the general direction of the country, and in particular, the acting president of the state and the acting president of the Executive Yuan were often able to point out the disadvantages of the times when formulating policies, and they grasped the timing of the fire.

In the past, China was like a plate of loose sand, but now under the leadership of Chen Feng and with the efforts of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and all people, this plate of loose sand is gradually consolidating its foundation and striving to become a unified, prosperous and powerful world power.

Although a large amount of the country is still occupied by the Japanese, the military top brass is not worried about the outcome of this war at all, because according to Chen Feng's strategic plan, it will be possible to launch a counteroffensive in a year at most.

While China's military and civilians are trying to build their own country, the East Coast of the United States is busy, with ports running day and night, and a large number of military and commercial ships plying various eastern ports with only one destination – Vladivostok.

Not long ago, after high-level discussions between China and the Soviet Union, it was decided to temporarily set Vladivostok as an international free port, and before the end of the war, ships of all allied countries could go to Vladivostok for replenishment without reporting to the governments of China and the Soviet Union, and for a time Vladivostok became the second largest port after Yokohama, Japan.

Under China's money offensive, the efficiency of the U.S. and Soviet governments was surprisingly fast, and a large number of industrial equipment urgently needed by China was continuously shipped to China, while China's industrial level and production capacity were increasing day by day.

On April 27, 1942, just one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japan, under the auspices of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, gathered the main forces of the Japanese Combined Fleet and sailed to the waters off Midway Island to assemble and stand by.

Yamamoto's target this time is Midway, which is a small island in the South Pacific with an area of only 4.7 square kilometers, but this island has a very special geographical location, the island is 2,800 nautical miles from San Francisco in the United States and Yokohama in Japan, and is in the middle of the Pacific route between Asia and North America, hence the name Midway.

In addition, it is located 1,135 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor, and is an important military base and transportation hub of the United States in the Central Pacific region, as well as the gateway and outpost of the United States military in Hawaii. Once Midway Island is lost, Pearl Harbor, the base camp of the US Pacific Fleet, will also be killed.

The special geographical location of Midway determines the importance of its strategic position, and as the commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Yamamoto Isoroku has long set his sights on this important strategic location.

Yamamoto Isoroku is not only a very good tactician, but also a very good strategist. In the first few months of the outbreak of the Pacific War, as the Japanese army made many achievements, the mood of the Japanese people, who had been stirred up by the war fever, also became frenzied.

However, behind all this excitement and jubilation, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander of the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, always seemed to have a lot on his mind. When the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto calmly and soberly pointed out that Japan had only awakened a giant, and once this giant completely woke up, the Japanese Empire would face a catastrophe. Therefore, it is necessary to complete the unfinished business of attacking Pearl Harbor and completely destroy the US Pacific Fleet before the giants get up.

Therefore, Yamamoto strenuously agreed with the plan proposed by Rear Admiral Ugaki, chief of staff of the Combined Fleet, to attack Midway, believing that if the island could be occupied, it would be possible to use the island as an advance base for Japanese air patrols and intimidate Hawaii, and to lure out the US fleet and annihilate it in a decisive battle. At the same time, it can also avenge the US Air Force's air raid on Tokyo and open the door to the Hawaiian Islands.

The destruction of the US Pacific Fleet was an established strategic decision of the Japanese side, and the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was to complete this strategic decision, but because all the US aircraft carriers left the port mysteriously at that time, the Japanese side failed to destroy the Pacific Fleet in one fell swoop.

Less than a year after the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident, the United States replenished the Pacific Fleet with more than 20 large and small warships, plus several large aircraft carriers that survived, and the United States' naval strength in the Pacific Ocean should not be underestimated.

Last month's US bomber air raid on Tokyo sent an extremely strong signal to the Japanese side that if the US Pacific Fleet is not destroyed, one day this US fleet will land on the Japanese mainland with an overwhelming number of carrier-based aircraft.

In order to achieve the strategic goal of luring the remnants of the US Pacific Fleet to Midway Island and annihilating them in one fell swoop, Yamamoto commanded the Combined Fleet to almost pour out of the nest and devote most of its troops. In order to achieve the strategic goal of containing the US Navy, Yamamoto 56 decided to launch a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands, which are far away from Alaska and controlled by the United States, first sending a fleet to attack the Aleutian Islands, landing on Attu Island and Kiska Island in the archipelago, using this as bait to divert the attention of the US fleet to the north, and then seizing Midway Island with the main fleet. (To be continued......)