Although it didn't matter if the emperor told him that he was discovered by the Americans near Wake Island, it was naturally better if he was not discovered, so Yamaguchi Tawen had calculated many times in advance that the departure time was not too early or late, so that the fleet could pass through the vicinity of Wake Island at night, and it was said that it was nearby, but in fact it was two or three hundred kilometers, which exceeded the detection range of the US ground-based radar (Note 1), and at night the US planes could only reconnoiter the naval situation through the airborne radar with a detection range of no more than ten kilometers. It was not easy to spot the Japanese fleet in the distance

In addition, Yamaguchi chose the time very well, it was only a few days before Christmas, and Wake Island was not in a state of combat readiness (Note 2), so it was natural for the island to prepare for the holidays, and the vigilance was much looser, not to mention that there was no permanent air force on Wake Island at all (in history, the US planes dispatched during the Battle of Wake Island were only urgently dispatched after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there was only one squadron of 12 planes). The planes on the island generally only stop on the way to rest and replenish, and the weather has been bad for the past two days, so there are no planes on the island at all, and Yamaguchi's caution is completely superfluous

In any case, the safe passage of Wake Island still made the Japanese army overjoyed, and their morale was getting higher and higher, so that there were no more American-controlled islands on the way east to Hawaii, and there were radar warnings to avoid the merchant ships they encountered in advance. But when Yamaguchi was alone, he couldn't help but feel a hint of melancholy on his complexion. The harsh weather around Wake Island made it easy for the fleet to pass through the area safely, but it would not be easy to do so if the sea area that was scheduled to be the starting point of the attack was also like this

In fact, strictly speaking, the current wind and waves around Wake Island are not particularly severe, after all, the sea conditions in the Pacific Ocean have always been much better than those in the Atlantic, and it is not in typhoon season, but the problem is that the all-weather combat capability of aircraft carriers is the worst of all large warships. Judging from the current weather on Wake Island, Yamaguchi Tabun estimates that only the carrier-based aircraft on the two supercarriers, the Yamato and the Musashi, can take off and land safely, but only the aircraft on the two aircraft carriers can take off and land. How can you take Oahu, which has a strong defense of Liliang? But there's no way around it. During World War II, when there were no satellite images, not to mention Japan, even the United States and Germany, which were more technologically advanced, could not have made weather forecasts over a large range and over a long distance

"Wake Island is 2,000 nautical miles from Hawaii. It's rare to see such a wide range of clouds this season. So the weather here is not good. According to probability, Hawaii is more likely to have good weather," Yamaguchi comforted himself for a moment. His mood improved, but one of his fists was still clenched unconsciously tightly, and although he insisted on this gamble, he had to pin his hopes entirely on luck, so that Yamaguchi heard more about Alexander

Two days later, the fleet drove out of the rain belt, although the sky was still cloudy, but as long as there was not much wind and rain, the carrier-based aircraft could take off and land normally, the hope of the success of the operation would be greatly increased, and after a day, the thick clouds in the sky gradually dispersed, and the long-lost sunlight also reappeared, Yamaguchi Tashi finally breathed a sigh of relief, and lost no time in inspiring the whole army with the slogan "Amaterasu God bless the Imperial Kingdom", although he and most of his subordinates did not really believe much in the local Shintoism, But before carrying out an extremely dangerous mission, it is still very beneficial to have a psychological sustenance, and Yamaguchi Tawen, as an excellent admiral, is naturally very aware of this.

Considering that Mount Kahala, the main peak on the island of Oahu, is more than 1,200 meters above sea level, and although it is an active volcano, Hawaii's volcanic activity is the mildest, and the magma will only slowly overflow without exploding, and it will not flow far before it cools and solidifies. Therefore, as long as it is not built too close to the crater, the safety of the radar station does not have to be worried, and even if it is only a few hundred meters high, the field of view of the ground radar has also increased greatly, and the sea detection distance will naturally be much farther than normal, so when the front of the fleet is still 300 kilometers away from Oahu, Yamaguchi Tawen ordered the fleet to enter a combat state, with the carrier-based bombers on the six aircraft carriers Yamato, Musashi, Akagi, Kaga, Shozuru, and Zuzuru as the main attacking force. The other six aircraft carriers only released fighter jets to escort the aircraft because of the small number of aircraft they carried and the one-time sortie rate was relatively low. And those carrier-based bombers were also dispatched at one time to save time as much as possible, so as not to have too many dreams at night. After they sent back the good news, the ships released a second wave of aircraft to carry out follow-up attacks to expand the results of the battle

After a few moments, the first strike wave, consisting of about 300 bombers and more than 100 fighters, swooped down on Pearl Harbor, the most important base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, with the task of destroying the airfields on Oahu and the large-caliber anti-aircraft artillery fire points on the ground, while sinking as many warships, especially aircraft carriers, if any, in the harbor and, if not sink, as many anti-aircraft weapons as possible. And before that, the accompanying Japanese pocket submarines had already been towed by large submarines (the range of World War II pocket submarines was extremely short, only less than 20 kilometers, so they had to be towed outside the target port with normal submarines to put down, and then they dived into the port to launch a sneak attack, as for weishenme did not use normal submarines to do it directly, it was because the water in Pearl Harbor was shallow, they were relatively large in size, and it was difficult to dive safely, only small and exquisite pocket submarines could do it, but no matter whether the task could be completed or not, The people on board were all dead. Their mission was to take advantage of the chaos of the American forces to infiltrate the harbor and use torpedoes to attack the large warships, especially the battleships, in the harbor when the first wave of attacks had worked

Note 1: Theoretically, the planes of the Japanese army that took off to carry out the alert mission could be detected by the US ground radar, but because these planes were acting alone, the signal characteristics reflected by the radar wave were not strong, and it was basically impossible for the anti-aircraft radar at this time to detect a single plane more than 200 kilometers away.

Note 2: Because of the heavy defeat in the war of aggression against China, even Roosevelt could not help but greatly underestimate Japan's current strength, although he knew that his extortion of Japan to demand islands and force repayment of debts would certainly arouse Japan's dissatisfaction, but Roosevelt never thought that Japan would dare to take the initiative to start a war against the United States, and it was still an undeclared war. Because according to the Western tradition, Japan's doing so is tantamount to cutting off its own way back, and after the start of the war, the United States and Japan will fight to the death until one country completely surrenders, Roosevelt could never have imagined that Japan, which had already lost more than 2 million young and middle-aged people because of the failure of its invasion of China, could still be so crazy, which also led to the Pacific Fleet's combat readiness being very lax, much worse than when the Pacific War broke out in history, after all, the US government had already determined that Japan would go to war against the United States (originally forced by the US government) (to be continued......