Such a strategic decision involving the life and death of the country is definitely not something that can be decided by a small operational staff officer, nor can it be decided by a small Admiralty, and this battle plan was soon sent to Emperor Hirohito, and such a major strategic decision can only be decided by the 42-year-old Emperor Hirohito.

With the exception of some fanatics, the vast majority of sane officers who were still sensible were to believe that if they continued to fight with the Allied forces throughout Asia, all of Japan's elite forces would likely be annihilated by the Allies one by one, and that the only way to save Japan's royal face was to engage in a decisive battle with the Allies on home.

The Japanese base camp believed that it was the most unwise choice for the Allies to attack the Japanese mainland, and their inherent disadvantages made it difficult for them to succeed. If the Empire of Japan could withdraw all its overseas troops to the country, Japan would be able to negotiate with the Allies.

After all, in the case of a decisive battle on the mainland, the Imperial Japanese Army fought on the territory inherited from its fathers and ancestors, and had a perfect backbone of the army, which could concentrate all its forces at the enemy's landing site and launch a continuous offensive against the enemy with strong in-depth combat effectiveness.

Moreover, it can devote all the strength of aviation and naval special attack forces to meet the enemy forces on the coastal sea of the homeland. In addition to the 100 million (actually 70 million) citizens of Yamato, who had the loyal spirit of defending the imperial country and the invincible spirit of Yamato, they cooperated with the army and fought together with the army, and the geographical advantage was also absolute.

In the eyes of the Japanese top brass, in the past, when fighting on islands and oceans in the open sea, the Imperial Japanese Army mostly fought against the enemy in isolation and without supplies. On many occasions, it even fought against the concentrated attacks of the enemy army with a small amount of combat power and achieved final victory. Compared with this situation, the strategic situation of the two sides is now reversed, and presumably the Imperial Japanese Army will not be unable to defend its own door.

Even General Umezu Yoshijiro, who has always advocated foreign warfare, said: "At present, the only way to preserve the Japanese Empire and the inheritance of the Wanshi Emperor is to withdraw the troops and then fight the enemy army on the mainland." When the enemy army comes to attack, carry forward the offensive spirit of 100 million national special attacks to annihilate them; With the determination not to allow not a single soldier of the enemy to survive, and with the belief that if you are not victorious, you will die, and fight with the white-knuckle tactics of fighting with bayonets. ”

"When the enemy's landing force approaches the coastal waters of our homeland, it will first dispatch all its naval and air combat strength to sink the US transport fleet with our country's unique air and water offensive warfare. Fight for the destruction of enemy forces at sea. And against the enemy forces that still landed. Concentrate all the forces of the army on the ground at the enemy's landing site, launch a continuous and fierce attack, and quickly annihilate the enemy in the coastal area. In ground operations, the method of special offensive operations should also be implemented, and the people should go all out to assist the army in all aspects of logistics, air defense, and fortifications. And directly cooperate with the battle. ”

March 25, 1944. The Emperor of Japan gave the order to withdraw troops. At the same time, the Navy and Army were ordered to carry out the withdrawal plan in accordance with the strategic plan of the Admiralty Ono Daisa.

Soon, the top commanders of the strategic commands of the Japanese army stationed in Korea, Wan Island, Hong Kong Island, Burma, French Indochina, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and South Sakhalin Island all received secret telegrams from the base camps, ordering all units to immediately recruit large ships on the spot. And shrink the forces to various port cities, ready to withdraw troops at any time.

At the same time, the headquarters of the 14th Front Army of the Japanese Army stationed in the Philippines received a completely different telegram, ordering the 14th Front Army to immediately start a counterattack against the Allied forces that had broken through into the Philippines, take the initiative to attack, seek opportunities to annihilate the enemy, and carry forward the offensive spirit of the Imperial Japanese Army even if it could not completely annihilate the enemy, with the determination not to let not a single enemy soldier survive, carry out the belief that if you are invincible, you will die, and fulfill the sacred mission of the empire.

As for the more detailed telegram, only Yamashita knew that the Fourteenth Front Army had to make sacrifices for the sake of the millions of Imperial Japanese troops scattered throughout the islands of the South Pacific, and since it knew that it could not be withdrawn, then make the final contribution to the Great Japanese Empire!

MacArthur and others were surprised that the retreating Japanese troops suddenly stopped, and at the same time built fortifications in place and took the initiative to attack and meet the battle. The Allies thought that the Japanese army had been defeated, but they did not expect the Japanese army to suddenly come back with a rifle, and they were immediately taken by surprise, and many troops were heavily damaged.

At the same time, the Allied fleet, which was cruising around Japan, was subjected to a desperate counterattack by the Japanese naval aviation. It means that when the enemy came, he didn't think about going back alive!

March 26 was a black Sunday for many of the Allied forces, a day of unprecedented terror in the Allied fleets near Iwo Jima, the Ryukyu Islands, and the Philippine Islands.

I saw that the day had just dawned, and one Japanese fighter plane after another flew into the battlefield, and unlike the previous dive bombing, I saw a Japanese fighter plane loaded with fuel and aerial bombs and torpedoes crashing into the Allied ships anchored in the sea without looking back. Often with a loud bang, a battleship or cruiser is severely damaged, and some small battleships are even sunk.

In just one morning, more than 70 Allied warships were sunk and damaged, including 3 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, and 13 cruisers.

In fact, it was not uncommon in the entire World War II Asian theater to carry a large amount of high explosives on the plane and place it in front of the pilot's cockpit, and once the target is discovered, even a person will take the plane to crash into it, and the nose of the plane will immediately explode violently when it touches something hard.

It's just that they didn't appear on a large scale like today, and suicide attacks in the past occurred only when the aviation was injured and could not return. These people generally do not want to become captives, or fear being tortured and killed if they become captives. For example, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Itada Botaro once drove his plane into a US military airport hangar. In the Sino-Japanese air battle of Wuhan, there were also Chinese pilots who died with the Japanese army, but this was only an isolated phenomenon, and it was not an organized and large-scale suicide attack like the battle that took place today.

The next day, although the Allies had already made defensive preparations, more than 30 warships were damaged and sunk, and a large number of naval officers and men were killed and wounded.

The Japanese army's frenzied suicide attack shocked the Allied side, and the Allied command had to urgently order the naval retreat, and at the same time send reconnaissance planes 24 hours a day to conduct reconnaissance and radar 24 hours a day.

For this madness of the Japanese army, Chen Feng did not have a very good way, because the principle of the suicide plane is the bomb + plane, it itself can fly at high speed, under the control of the pilot, it is equivalent to a smart bomb, if it is equipped with 2 500-pound heavy aerial bombs or large torpedoes, its explosion effect is very good. Moreover, it is very difficult to intercept suicide planes, you can never hit them and find them, or you can send planes to intercept them, but the Japanese pilots who flew these planes came with the determination to die, and when they encountered warships, they collided with warships, and when they encountered fighter planes, they collided with fighters, so it can be said that they could not be prevented.

If a suicide plane hits its target, it is possible to blow up and sink a US destroyer or even an aircraft carrier. Compared with the results of the battle, the cost paid by the Japanese army was very small, which became the reason why the Japanese military headquarters used suicide planes to attack on a large scale in the future.

What's more, by 1944, the Japanese Navy had suffered a major demoralization. Compared to the Allies, the Japanese Air Force had only a numerical advantage. With the fighting in the Solomon Islands and the northern port city of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, as well as the continuation of the Battle in the Philippine Sea, Japan lost 400 fighters and pilots, and experienced fighter pilots began to be in short supply. The commander and deputy commander-in-chief of Japan's First Air Force, Onishi Hirojiro, realized that the hundreds of pilots under his command, who had little training, could not strike at the enemy in air combat and would only die in vain. Therefore, he decided to form a suicide attack unit, the kamikaze squad.

The Japanese frenzied attack completely disrupted the plans of the Allies, and even caused panic in the navy, and it was terrifying to think about the scene, watching the Japanese planes rush towards the warship, if it was not blown up in the air, then it meant that the warship they were in would have been hit by at least one large torpedo, and the casualties were predictable. It's perfectly fitting that the Grim Reaper is dancing, and no one is not afraid.

This was what the Japanese wanted, and when the Allied navy was far away from the battlefield, a large number of ships carrying Japanese soldiers set off from the ports of Korea, Wan Island, Hong Kong Island, Burma and other places to the Japanese mainland, and at the same time a large number of Japanese ships set off from the Japanese mainland to rush to these overseas colonies.

Japan's withdrawal plan began, and the withdrawal of Japanese troops from the Allies became known five days later, five days after the 15-day plan for the Japanese withdrawal.

After the Allies realized that the Japanese were about to escape, they ordered the navy to immediately go to the vicinity of the Sea of Japan to intercept them, and absolutely not allow those overseas Japanese soldiers to return to the Japanese mainland smoothly.

The role of the Dunkirk retreat is clearest for the Allies, if it were not for Churchill's engine plan at that time, the final outcome of the more than 400,000 British and French troops would be completely annihilated, how could they participate in the follow-up war, and more importantly, Britain would not have the strength to defend the British Isles, so the entire history of World War II would have to be rewritten.

It was precisely because of this that the Allies would not have allowed the Japanese to withdraw their troops from Southeast Asia smoothly no matter what, and the Anglo-French forces at that time were less than 500,000 in total, and only 330,000 had successfully withdrawn to the British mainland. And what about Japan? Nearly 3 million, even if only half of them successfully return to Japan, the consequences will be unimaginable. (To be continued......)