PS: There are a lot of things during the Chinese New Year, and now I can only guarantee that I can continue to update before the Lantern Festival, and then resume the weekend double watch after the Lantern Festival, I hope the majority of book friends will forgive me

As a veteran admiral, Wegener naturally knew the hidden worries caused by the mixed equipment of the fleet, and most of the personnel of the First Fleet (not counting the Jishu personnel before, the Far East Fleet, including the Marine Corps, was more than 10,000 people. It was only after he took refuge with Ge Fat that he came to China by train via the Soviet Union, and it would take time to pinch them into an army. For this reason, after the transfer of the First Fleet to Japan, Wegener preferred to pay Japan a large fee to almost completely destroy the remaining German assets in the Far East (rather than taking a huge risk and trying to bring them back home, it would be more practical to translate them into the combat effectiveness of the fleet). He even discounted the jishu that Japan was interested in, and refused to send a fleet to fight again, but let his subordinates train for no less than three months with peace of mind, and then tried to avoid big battles for the next three months, until the typhoon season of 1942 passed, and the First Fleet re-exposed its sharp minions

Although the Japanese suffered a lot of losses in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the temporary withdrawal of the German army from the Pacific theater weakened the advantage of the Axis powers in the Pacific, compared to the U.S. Navy, which only had one aircraft carrier available, the aircraft carrier formation of the Japanese Combined Fleet still had the upper hand. The cost of the loss of hundreds of carrier-based aircraft. Nearly 20,000 U.S. troops were annihilated and more than 200 U.S. land-based planes were shot down, exposing New Zealand, the barrier to the east of Australia, to the Japanese army

New Zealand has a population of only 1.6 million, and there have been 20,000 or 30,000 troops killed in the war against China, the United Arab Emirates and the defense of Britain for the sake of the British suzerainty, and there are still tens of thousands of people who have been captured by the United Arab Emirates and have not been released so far, and there are tens of thousands of New Zealand soldiers who continue to fight for Britain in various battlefields, so New Zealand's domestic troops are quite limited at this time, even if the whole people have been mobilized to the maximum extent, and even teenagers, women and the elderly have been incorporated into the army. New Zealand's military is also less than 50,000.

And the U.S. troops were quickly stationed. But after all, time is still short. In addition, Australia's defense should not be neglected, so it adds up to only 2 light divisions and a total of more than 30,000 people, which can only be done after reducing the volume of supplies and heavy weapons.

It is no wonder that the United States' logistical capabilities are unparalleled in the world. But the loss of the Hawaiian Islands, the general logistics base in the Pacific, inevitably caused huge losses. In addition, not only is Japan's main fleet now frequently reported successes. The submarine force has also made rapid progress after learning German tactics, and the Allies are now experiencing an unprecedented shortage of anti-submarine ships to escort transport ships, so the security of the Allied supply lines in the South Pacific Sea has never been more severe. At the same time, there is also the existence of the Nimitz fleet, which is a large household of supplies, and it is not easy to maintain the basic needs of New Zealand's more than 80,000 allied troops.

Of course, this is also because New Zealand's economy is completely dependent on the two pillar industries of mining and animal husbandry, and it is an out-and-out small country, although the degree of modernization is very high, but there is no basically complete industrial system, and the military industry has been relying on the British suzerain, resulting in the fact that New Zealand's more than 80,000 allied troops need all the arms to be transported from the sea by the fleet of the allies, which further increases the pressure on logistics supplies, otherwise if New Zealand can solve part of it by itself, how can it not be so passive

All in all, New Zealand's current Allied forces are less than 90,000, and more than eighty percent of them are rookies with no combat experience, and their supplies are not very adequate, at least far from the average American army under normal conditions. What's even worse is that there are no permanent fortifications on the two main islands of New Zealand, and there are few large airports, and there is no time for temporary repairs, and the Japanese army alone has a full 10 aircraft carriers in the Second Air Fleet, and even if the two repaired American aircraft carriers have not yet formed combat effectiveness for the time being, they currently have as many as 8 aircraft carriers, which undoubtedly gives the attacking side a huge advantage.

In this unfavorable situation, even though Nimitz knew that the Japanese army might attack the west, he had to lead the fleet to aid New Zealand, because even if the islands in the Solomon Islands were regained, the Japanese army would still have to go through a bloody battle to occupy Australia, and once New Zealand fell, the American army in Australia would be cut off from supplies and back routes, or even collapse without a fight. Nimitz knew too well the temperament of the American soldiers, and although they hid the blood and bravery of any strong army, the adjective hard-working and hard-working had nothing to do with them

In addition, Nimitz was also somewhat lucky; if the Japanese really wanted to storm New Zealand, he would use four battleships, one aircraft carrier, and dozens of auxiliary ships to cooperate with hundreds of land-based aircraft on the two islands of New Zealand, and he would not necessarily be unable to win the battle, and if he was lucky, he could also take the opportunity to severely damage the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet, thus reversing the situation in the entire Pacific theater. However, the commander of the Second Air Fleet of the Japanese Navy, Ozawa Jizaburo, was not so reckless, and his actions were indeed to attack the west

As a result, the few islands that the US military had managed to recapture were quickly regained, and at the same time, the airfields on the Japanese-occupied islands were also repaired and a large number of Japanese planes were stationed at this time, so that even if the Nimitz fleet was killed, it would not be able to recapture those islands. The Japanese took advantage of the victory to capture the Gilbert Islands, which had not been attacked before(Note 1), and cleared the worries for their next attack, and the previously extremely active American submarines were also limited by the lengthening of the supply line, although it would take another month or two for the problem to be fully exposed

Subsequently, the two major fleets of the Japanese Navy joined forces to attack the New Hebrides and New Caledonia Islands southeast of the Solomon Islands, but Nimitz weighed and did not risk attacking, which eventually led to the fall of the two islands, and by mid-June 1942, the Japanese army had formed a semi-encirclement of Australia

Note 1: During his stay in China, Yamaguchi learned from the Chinese Navy's tactical research the "island hopping tactic" (naturally proposed by Hu Weidong), which was later used by the U.S. military in history, and directly used it in the Pacific War, causing the U.S. military, which lacked precautions against it at the beginning, suffered a lot of losses. Even after becoming familiar with this tactic, the passive American forces had to fortify everywhere, which not only cost a lot of additional supplies, but also caused the date of the counteroffensive to be greatly delayed (to be continued......