In order to protect the aircraft carrier, as many as 100 auxiliary ships of the US military have gone out to intercept the torpedoes, and if they really can't do it, they will block them themselves, and in any case they must protect the aircraft carriers that still have the possibility of turning the tide of the war, but they have also suffered heavy losses as a result. As a result, in the first wave of Japanese attacks alone, 1 light cruiser, 9 destroyers, 2 minesweepers, 5 transport ships, and 1 landing ship were sunk by Japanese torpedoes, and if you count the 7 destroyers and 3 transport ships that were sunk by aerial bombs, as well as the 6 aircraft carriers that sank one after another, it is even more terrifying

However, in this wave of attacks, the Japanese army also paid a lot of price, although the US army's large-caliber anti-aircraft guns almost all lost their effectiveness, but the US fighters and small-caliber anti-aircraft guns still caused a lot of damage to the Japanese planes, so when the Japanese aircraft group retreated, the total number was less than 500, but they also achieved the record of shooting down and blowing up 375 US planes, even if only the exchange ratio of the planes, they did not suffer, In particular, more than half of the losses of the Japanese army (Note 1) were relatively invaluable land-based aircraft (pilots, to be exact, the difference in the aircraft itself is not that large). ）。

Despite such huge losses, Nimitz did not order a retreat, because the reconnaissance planes sent earlier finally found the two Japanese aircraft carrier formations. When the Japanese planes retreated, although they deliberately separated some models with a longer range to make a detour to confuse the pursuing US planes, the US planes that knew the exact location of the target were unmoved. Regardless of the harassment of enemy aircraft, they went straight to the direction where the main forces of the Japanese fleet were located.

Seeing this, the Japanese pilots hurriedly warned the fleet through the radio, and the pilots of the fighters rushed to the enemy's group of planes in an attempt to entangle them, regardless of the fuel consumption of the planes, but the US bombers were able to use the dive to get rid of the entanglement of the Zero fighters again and again, and in addition to the interception and entanglement of the US fighters, although the Japanese fighter pilots tried their best, they still could not stop the US bomber group from constantly closing the distance between them and their own fleet.

On the other hand, Yamaguchi Tawen had already discovered the US reconnaissance planes until the fleet had already been targeted, and immediately took a two-pronged approach, on the one hand, sending some of the fighters left behind to expel the fighters sent by the enemy for reconnaissance, and on the other hand, ordering the fleet to stay away immediately. In order to evade the counterattack of the US military aircraft group.

However. Because the US fighter jets are faster, under the condition that they are bent on self-preservation, it is really difficult for the Zero fighter to catch up with them. It's not far away. Accidentally, the opponent used a blow to break away from the tactics and killed two planes without damage. Yamaguchi, who frowned and paid attention to all this, sighed slightly helplessly. He sighed, "There is only a fighter like the Zero that pursues horizontal mobility, and the type is too single. It is easy to be restrained by the enemy, and it seems that the decision to introduce German FW190 fighters for the production of jishu was really correct, but this battle was not in time after all. ”

The US reconnaissance planes could not be driven away, and the evasion of the Japanese fleet was inevitably in vain, because no matter how fast the warships were, they could not match the planes. Knowing that there was no escape, Yamaguchi had no choice but to turn his heart on the side and order the remaining fighters of each ship to start taking to the air to respond to the battle, although the speed of the Zero fighter was not as fast as the American fighters, it was still stronger than the American bombers, and the interception could still be done

However, in the first wave of attacks, almost all the Japanese bombers were dispatched, and in order to escort them, most of the fighters were naturally dispatched, so the total number of aircraft carriers left to protect them was less than a hundred. As for the Japanese escort fighters that were chased by the US military aircraft group at the beginning, but later turned into chasing the US military aircraft group, with the continuous consumption of fuel, the role they can play is already very limited. However, to Yamaguchi's relief, although the fighters may not be so reliable, the various anti-aircraft guns in his fleet, which totals more than 500 guns, can still give the enemy a head-on blow

Nimitz's belief that the air defense capability of the Japanese warships was not strong was not completely unfounded, because the performance of the Japanese antiaircraft guns was not superior to that of the US antiaircraft guns of the same type, whether it was large or small caliber, but the number was far inferior to that of the US army, and the average number of antiaircraft guns of a single ship was at least 1/3 worse, and the total number of ships was far from being comparable with the huge US fleet.

However, what Nimitz didn't know was that the Japanese army's small-caliber near-fire guns were now equipped with jishu gyroscopic sights derived from Germany, and the shooting accuracy was several times higher than before, while the Soviet Union, an ally of the United States, also mastered this jishu, but because of the mentality of regarding the United States as the ultimate opponent and the dissatisfaction with the late arrival of American aid, it did not transfer it to the United States, so in terms of small-caliber anti-aircraft guns, the US Pacific Fleet actually did not have obvious advantages. As for the large-caliber anti-aircraft guns, at least the Japanese army's close-fire fuse anti-aircraft shells can still be miraculous, which is far stronger than the small probability that the American large-caliber anti-aircraft guns have been reduced to the point that they can only be replaced with grenades to bet on direct hits

As a result, the US military's fleet of only a few hundred planes had already lost more than 100 planes before even a single bomb was dropped (nearly half of which were the results of two groups of Japanese fighters), and what made the US military even more unprepared was that the Japanese Yamato-class giant aircraft carriers may not be as anti-sinking as the US aircraft carriers, but after all, they were far stronger than the Americans thought they were in place

As a result, seven or eight high-explosive bombs weighing more than 500 kilograms accurately hit the huge aircraft carrier Musashi, and one torpedo hit the target, but it still could only make it lose its combat effectiveness, but it could not be blown up and sunk, and its sister ship, the Yamato, as the flagship of the Japanese army, had extremely dense anti-aircraft fire nearby, and the US bombers and escort fighters that attacked it were constantly shot down like scattered flowers, but it was difficult to rush to the sky above it and dive and drop bombs. And the torpedo plane, which had to slow down and fly level for a period of time before dropping the torpedo, suffered heavy losses as if it were given to the enemy to shoot. Although two heavy bombs hit the Yamato with the efforts of the US pilots who sacrificed their lives, they only caused a limited amount of trauma to its huge hull, and perhaps the damage to the deck would affect the take-off and landing of the aircraft, which should be regarded as a little success, but it was still too far from the expectations of the Americans

Note 1: The take-off and landing capabilities of land-based airfields are much stronger than those of aircraft carriers, and this battle has long been prepared for an ambush, so the planes at Midway airfield have been replaced with bombers as much as possible, and the main ones are Zero heavy dive bombers and horizontal bombers carrying torpedoes. Since they posed the greatest threat to US aircraft carriers, they were more naturally attacked by US anti-aircraft fire and fighter jets, so the loss rate was much greater than that of carrier-based aircraft, which objectively reduced the losses of Japanese carrier-based aircraft (to be continued......