PS: Thank you for the generous reward of the book friend "The grass is getting green in the long night and spring", and continue to ask for recommendation votes ^_^

On the Japanese side, although the captured fuel allowed the Japanese fleet to hold out for a few more days, and Yamaguchi Tashi deliberately asked Ozawa Jizaburo to lead an aircraft carrier formation to escort the 14 captured American transport ships to the newly occupied French Polynesian islands, leaving only an aircraft carrier formation in order to show weakness and lead the Nimitz fleet into battle.

But Nimitz, who had Roosevelt's support, seemed to have eaten a weighing weight, and he was never fooled, he knew very well that because he had old battleships on his side to drag down the overall speed, and only one aircraft carrier could not be used as the main force of attack, so once the enemy retreated, he would not be able to catch up at all, and if he did not bring battleships, the only remaining aircraft carrier in the United States was not the opponent of the Japanese army in any case, so the choice of war or not to fight was always on the side of the Japanese army, and Nimitz's creed was never to engage the enemy at a time and place

Nimitz believed that with the strategy shown by the Japanese commander in previous battles, he would definitely not really give himself a chance to break through, and this division of troops was just an insight into the weakness of his own lack of aircraft carriers and deliberately lured himself. If he really led the main fleet to attack, the enemy's remaining aircraft carrier formation would definitely not be stupid enough to immediately meet the battle.

They may play hide and seek with themselves, wait for another aircraft carrier formation to arrive, and then take advantage of the advantage that the combat radius of carrier-based aircraft is much larger than the range of naval guns to launch attacks at a long distance; or simply take advantage of the overall speed of the fleet to avoid their main fleet and go straight to New Zealand, which has no capital ships to assist in the defense; It was also a clever move to drag the Nimitz fleet back with the fleet that was left behind, but the fleet sent back quickly interspersed with it. In the worst-case scenario, the U.S. Pacific Logistics Fleet, which has dozens of ships and more than 100 supply ships, is found by the Japanese. The consequences would be even more unimaginable, so Nimitz would rather be ridiculed as a coward by the domestic media than take this risk

The Americans could not be fooled, and the Japanese First Air Fleet, which consumed more than half of the fuel, had no choice but to return home, and Yamaguchi wanted to continue such operations a few more times to see if the Yankees could endure it, but Japan's current national strength, the location of the forward supply base, and the amount of material reserves did not allow him to go on frequent expeditions, so he could only give up temporarily.

Although Chongren's prestige continued to rise after he ascended the throne, he rarely directly intervened in specific military operations, and the courage to delegate power was also an important reason why the Japanese army was smooth sailing in the early days of the Pacific War. But there are always exceptions. It was while Tamon Yamaguchi was discussing with Jizaburo Ozawa and Kenzo Kitano (Note 1), who had just been promoted to commander of the Australian Front, about what to do next. Far away in China, Chongren sent a rare telegram directly to Jihua, asking them to abandon the original plan of directly attacking New Zealand and thus cutting off the Allied supply lines in Australia to force them to surrender, ordering them to choose a landing site on the western or northern coast of Australia and fight a protracted war with the Allies in Australia by encroachment.

Chongren was not unaware that a protracted war would be detrimental to the resource-poor Japanese army. But now that the war had progressed, Japan had no other choice. Today, Japan has committed no less than 500,000 troops to the Pacific theater (excluding the dead and the unhealed). The total number of Japanese troops in the Pacific Ocean is about 400,000. And if you want to take New Zealand, which is heavily defended by the Allies and has the main force of the Nimitz fleet to help defend it, you have to invest another 300,000 people and be prepared for at least 100,000 casualties. New Zealand did not have particularly large attractive resources, and the scale of its industry was pitifully small, so the Japanese army had to take Australia again in order for Japan to obtain tangible benefits, which was unbearable for Japan, which had lost 2 million young people in the original failure of the invasion of China.

However, the western and northern parts of Australia are rich in mineral resources and have already been initially developed, and if the Japanese army can occupy them, Japan can directly benefit and stimulate the capitalists and even the general public in the country to more actively support this "holy war"

In particular, the Pilbara area in the northwest corner of Western Australia has discovered Shijie-level iron-rich ore in the Shijie sexual prospecting frenzy set off by Zhongfu International, and there have been Shijie-level mining giants stationed in the development, and some mines have been preliminarily completed, although the potential total reserves are estimated to be difficult to compare with the first Shijie Soviet Kursk iron ore (Note 2), but even if it is only the current proven 3 billion tons (in fact, no less than 30 billion tons) of iron-rich ore reserves, This is already an astronomical amount for a resource-poor Japan, enough for the Japanese to use it for two or three hundred years at their current consumption!

Moreover, China is also extremely lacking in iron-rich ore, so if the Japanese army can occupy the Pilbara, it will not only have a large number of commodities that can be exported to China in the future, so as to balance the trade between Japan and China, which has been in a huge deficit, and save the Japanese government's insufficient foreign exchange and gold and silver reserves, and may even change its position of reluctance to join the Axis because China no longer relies on the rich iron ore of the Soviet Union. The odds of winning the Shijie battle this time are much better, and the price Japan has to pay is much smaller than it is now.

Although after the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Chinese government has not pursued the war reparations owed by the Japanese government for the sake of more long-term interests and Indonesia's crude oil, but if the treaty is not dissolved, the shadow of Japan's defeat in the war of aggression against China will always linger. The more small victories there are now, the worse it will be for Japan in the future. This was really a matter that made high-ranking Japanese officials such as Chongren and Yamamoto 56 depressed. Moreover, once the treaty is successfully amended, the morale of the Japanese people, who have shaken off the shadow of defeat, will inevitably be boosted, and it will be easier for the Japanese government to fool young people into enlisting in the army in the future

Note 1: Kenzo Kitano was the commander of the division when the Japanese Army was just rebuilt, and now the total strength of the Japanese Army has increased to more than 600,000, and his promotion to the commander of the front army with a command of 200,000 troops is actually not an exceptional promotion, and with his qualifications, if he had not taught in the military academy for a long time, he could have been promoted to this position as early as during the war of aggression against China, but if he was really promoted so early, he was only afraid that he would have died or still undergo labor reform in China at the moment

Note 2: Kursk iron ore is the largest reserves of iron ore and rich iron ore in the history of Shijie, it has been discovered in Tsarist Russia, and by 1980 there were 29 billion tons of iron-rich ore and 15.4 billion tons of poor iron ore, which is more than the iron ore reserves of the whole of Australia combined, and it is also located in the relatively economically developed southwest of Russia (to be continued......