"Pure defense is not enough, carrier-based aircraft are shells fired by aircraft carriers, the loss of simple aircraft and pilots is not a break for a behemoth like the Allies, we must take the initiative to attack, the scale of our attack may not be large, but we must make the other side feel threatened, only when the opponent's fleet is threatened, and at the same time the carrier-based aircraft force has suffered heavy losses, they will consider retreating." Fletcher replied.

"Tell me about your plans, you're the one of us who has fought the German Navy the most. Your opinion is the most informative. Nimitz encouraged.

"The attack distance of the Germans is relatively short compared to us, the fuel load of their aircraft is very limited, although the engine uses direct fuel injection technology and automatic adjustment technology to reduce fuel consumption, but the range is not far, and in order to provide cruising speed, the Germans must compress their attack distance that is not too far, and the compression of the distance is also an opportunity for us, it is difficult for us to prevent an attack at such a speed, but again, it is difficult for the Germans to prevent it, if the combined fleet is willing to bear a certain loss, Then if we get closer, we still have a chance to break through the opponent's defenses, and after the opponent's first wave of carrier-based aircraft is launched, we will also attack! Then all the carriers went on the defensive, releasing the fighters in full force. In order to replenish the number of fighters as soon as possible, I recommend rearmament in the hangar! "Fletcher's tactics can be described as a broken boat, like two swordsmen attacking each other, the weaker side gives up defense and attacks with all its might, and even if you can't kill the opponent, you have to fight hard to create the opponent!

"Relatively speaking, we have a larger number of aircraft carriers, and if one for one, in fact, we are earning! And the number of torpedo machines in the German man-machine fleet will be on the small side, as long as the fire prevention and battle damage are done well, our battleships may simply lose their combat effectiveness. There's still a chance to come back alive! Fearing that Nimitz would veto his plan, Fletcher hurriedly added two sentences!

"It's just two thin-skinned eggs smashing each other with a hammer! If the Germans abandon the tactics of high-speed attacks at close range, then what will we do? Nimitz's face changed slightly, this tactic was too aggressive and dangerous, this tactic was more like the tactic that Halsey, a brute, liked, than Fletcher, a seemingly cautious man, came up with. Although ready to bear some losses. But this near-lethal style of play is still too extreme, and subconsciously, Nimitz wants to avoid this tactic.

"If the Germans choose to abandon the tactics of close and high-speed, then we have an advantage, they attack with all their might, we defend with all their might, and in the case that there is not much difference in the performance of the fighters, the losses of the opponent's aviation will definitely be relatively large, maybe they will destroy a few of our warships. But in general, we can exhaust the opponent's attack power with limited losses, and the result is that we suffer a slight loss, and the opponent needs a considerable period of time to recover their carrier-based aircraft wing. We may get a few months. Fletcher said with a smile. If the distance is larger, then for the sake of range, the FW190 fighter must reduce the cruise speed, and the reduced cruise speed means that the Entente has more time to prepare as the defending side, and sufficient time means that more fighters can be released! Fletcher believed that the Germans would not do this.

"So can we take the initiative to attack and disrupt the other party's steps?" Nimitz asked, touching his chin. Truth be told, Nimitz didn't like to be beaten up without fighting back. The passive defense was just a temptation that he began to throw, and he was more concerned about what the Entente fleet would achieve if he took the initiative to attack.

"Then the first problem we have to face is the problem of the inconsistency of the range of the Spitfire and the Hellcat fighter, because of the large number of Spitfires on the ship, our Hellcat fighters have become very rare, and even the number of escorts for the first wave of attack aircraft cannot be reached. And if we send Spitfire fighters to provide cover. Not to mention that this time it will greatly weaken our combat effectiveness, and at the same time, our attack radius will become smaller. After all, the Spitfire is almost the shortest leg of any aircraft in our Air Force! Fletcher paused slightly, then continued.

"Even if we take the initiative to attack, we will definitely not attack faster than the Germans, and it is the slowest aircraft that really determines the speed of the attack of the group. If there is a barrel theory, it is the shortest shortcoming that determines the amount of water held in the barrel. Our attack aircraft were much slower than the Germans, whose dive bombers were modified from FW190 and were fighters in their bones. And they had fewer torpedo machines, or with twin-engine aircraft. Therefore, their attack speed is obviously faster than ours, and if the two engines attack with all their might, then the result is very likely that the opponent's attack aircraft will have already dropped bombs on the head of our fleet before the opponent enters our attack range! Although he did not say it explicitly, Fletcher had already dismissed Nimitz's suggestion.

"Well, we can't wipe out all the money that the Germans have accumulated for almost 20 years at once. At the beginning of the war, it was still necessary to be conservative in the formulation of plans. You discuss it with Halsey, and then come up with a plan, I can feel that the Germans will not have much time for us to prepare, and their fleet will definitely not just go around the Atlantic, and there will be action soon! Nimitz said.

Nimitz finished saying that he planned to be polite with Fletcher again, after all, it was already early in the morning, and everyone went back to work tomorrow, but who knows, just a few words, completely let the two of them go back to sleep in the soup. With a quick knock on the door, Nimitz's face changed slightly, and then the officer who entered the door sent a piece of information to Nimitz, and the content on it made the leader of the Allied Navy tremble! A few minutes ago he said that the German Navy would act, and this time it was a real operation!

The main content of this telegram is very little, in a word, the Allied fleet has appeared in the North Atlantic, and has begun to attack the Entente transport flotilla on the North Atlantic route, since yesterday the first convoy was attacked, until 5 o'clock this afternoon, the huge Allied fleet has destroyed 3 convoys, in just one day, the Entente lost more than 70 transport ships of various kinds, and the total transport tonnage reached 650,000 tons! And what's even more terrifying is that these convoys are loaded with supplies and sailing to Europe! This was followed in the remarks of the telegram with the names of the transport ships lost at sea, looking at a long list of ship names. Nimitz seems to see that the giant of the Entente is becoming vulnerable due to blood loss!

The Confederate fleet stretched out its massive body like a giant on the North Atlantic route, and then crushed the ant-like convoy of transports around it one by one. Count Spee didn't even need to use his main forces, as long as he used the strength of a detachment of troops to destroy all the targets he found, hundreds of submarines cruising around the perimeter of the fleet, these bloodthirsty sharks were the captain's cordon and the eyes and ears of the enemy, they searched for targets within hundreds of kilometers or even nearly a thousand kilometers of the fleet's periphery. The received information was then sent to the Count's desk via long-wave communication, and the powerful fleet then launched an interception of the enemy. Kill with one hit, and you don't even need to make up the knife!

The commander of the fleet responsible for attacking the transport fleet numbered AN98 this time was the Austro-Hungarian fleet under Field Marshal Jordy, and compared to their German counterparts, the pilots of the Austro-Hungarian Navy had some gaps in terms of training time and fleet composition, although everyone used FW190 and JU90 carrier-based aircraft. But the Austro-Hungarian fleet had almost no twin-engine aircraft, which made them a little inferior in intelligence perception and attack, and Count Spee asked the Jordi fleet to carry out this order. It also means to let the other party hone and familiarize themselves with the battlefield situation. Of course, this also allowed the Austro-Hungarian emperor to have some boasting capital.

And the Austro-Hungarian fleet in the face of the broiler-like transport fleet and escort forces still behaved decently, all 5 aircraft carriers participated in the attack, because the Germans provided them with air alert, so the Austro-Hungarian fleet was not worried about the problem of the back road at all, at the beginning it was full fire, 5 aircraft carriers released nearly 200 aircraft of various types. With the exception of the 50 FW190 fighters, almost all of the remaining 150 aircraft carried bombs. The huge group of planes rushed towards the target like bloodthirsty sharks. And when the Americans saw the huge fleet of aircraft flying from the southwest, they already understood what they were going to face!

Covering the AN98 transport fleet was an escort fleet of 6 flat-plane destroyers, 2 escort carriers and 1 light cruiser, which were responsible for the security of the entire fleet of 30 ships. Originally, the convoy force was planned to be able to cope with all kinds of crises, from submarine sieges to single aviation cruisers, but this time they ran into a main fleet. A main fleet of almost 500 carrier-based aircraft of all kinds!

When a group of chubby F4F fighters had just taken off and had not yet climbed to the specified height, the murderous Sea Hawks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire tore the opponent's defense to shreds with a simple and fierce attack! The frantic roar of the MG151 cannon was like a deadly scythe that quickly harvested the opponent's life, and the clumsy Wildcat fighter struggled to dodge the opponent's attack until finally the energy was exhausted, and then it was knocked down like a stupid duck. When the last Wildcat fighter was destroyed and the pilot ventured to parachute, in the process of slowly descending, the fatal pilot saw the escort carrier in the distance, which had turned into a large torch.

The whole attack lasted less than 30 minutes in total, and this was the total time from the time when the Americans visually discovered the target to the sinking of all the transport ships to the bottom of the sea, and think about it, as many as 150 aircraft attacked such a small fleet, basically except for the hapless light cruiser, a 500KG bomb in any ship could be killed in seconds, and the Austrians found out for the first time that their opponents were not too strong, but too weak! Attack planes pass through the superior anti-aircraft fire and then rush to attack, and the real decision to get the results is not the technology, but whether you are in the front of the attack! An FW190 aircraft slowly flew past a transport ship, and then dropped the bomb at a height of less than 100 meters above the sea, filling almost the entire scope of the transport ship below! Such an attack will naturally not be lost! With a series of explosions, the AN98 transport fleet loaded with more than 200,000 tons of various materials sank into the sea, and they completely disappeared from the sea except for a pile of garbage and oil!

"We can't wait, the fleet must strike immediately, the Germans have cut off our supply line by sea, just as if we can't open this supply line, the whole of Europe will be doomed!" The other party has already put a knife to his throat, if the Entente does not fight at this time, I am afraid that there will be no chance to fight in the future! So Nimitz did not hesitate, he immediately ordered his subordinates to contact Pound, ready to fight into the Atlantic with the British, and at the same time contact with the United States, hoping to stop transporting supplies to Europe before the situation is decided, the huge attack range of the German fleet and some of the islands occupied almost blocked the entire North Atlantic route, which is much more severe than the situation during the South Atlantic War, the latter is only arteriosclerosis, and this time it is arterial hemorrhage!

Nimitz's proposal was supported by the Entente leadership, and at noon the next day, telegrams from Washington and London agreed to the Allied fleet sortie. As a result, the Allied navy concentrated in the British mainland and the Normandy Peninsula in France belonged to the various detachments of the navy from the port, with the increase of the French naval strength, the Allied naval top also agreed to let the French form an independent fleet, so that the current Allied fleet has a total of 5 fleets, namely three American fleets, a British fleet and a French fleet, of which the TF58-1 and TF58-3 led by Nimitz himself and the British fleet departed from the British mainland, And the TF58-2 and the French fleet set off from the Normandy Peninsula. The largest fleet of all time is represented in the vast ocean, and they are up against the best fleet in the world.

All the Entente fleets became an irregular giant cross. Two sub-flotilla, TF58-2 and TF58-3, were in the front and left flanks of the fleet, respectively. The British fleet led by Cunningham was on the right flank, with the Nimitz fleet and the French fleet in the center and behind, respectively. In general, in order to expand the search area, the front and left and right wings of the fleet are spread outward, and the entire fleet changes from an irregular cross shape into a huge umbrella shape. More than 300 warships of various types sailed in the vast Atlantic. Nimitz stood by the porthole and could see the huge battleships lined up in a neat formation and cleaving the waves. In a trance, Nimitz could hardly imagine any other fleet in this world that could match the navy he led! He was proud to command such a huge fleet! But soon, he realized that in the depths of the Atlantic, a great shadow awaited him, and the fate of the whole world could very well be seen in this battle!

Thanks to the book friend zhouyu1976, the 1st Tank Guards Brigade for the tip~~~, as well as the book friend 1st Tank Guards Brigade, Orphein's monthly ticket support ~~~, and the book friend Canghai ┾ Yu Lingfeng ※ evaluation votes ~~~~~. (To be continued......)