Chapter 18: The Surprise Attack on Etajima (Middle)

It wasn't until the eve of dawn the next day, when the explosiveness gradually subsided, that Principal Keno Kurita crawled out of the air-raid shelter and returned to the office building where he was lucky enough to be blown up in half, lit a candle and summoned his subordinates to inquire about the damage caused by the air raid, and then he only felt that it was dark in front of him:

Among the four original battleships in Kure Harbor, only the battleship Kumgang left for Korea last week to help the army transport a batch of gold, silver and precious metals. www.biquge.info The remaining three battleships, Haruna, Ise and Hinata, were all sunk, and the place where the Haruna battleship sank was shallow, and half of the bridge could be exposed to the water, while the Ise and Hyuga ships could not even see the tip of the mast. What is even worse is that the four aircraft carriers Amagi, Katsuragi, Fengxiang, and Longfeng were the primary and key targets of the US planes, and none of them survived the air raids.

Of the original eight cruisers, four ships of Iwate, Tone, Yakumo and Kashima were sunk, Kitakami and Izumo, Aoba were broken, and Oyodo was broken. Basically lost their combat effectiveness. There are still 22 destroyers left in the harbor, almost all of them damaged, and some of the destroyers have temporarily lost contact with each other in order to avoid air raids, and they have temporarily lost contact with each other. Then there are all kinds of gunboats, torpedo boats, submarines on the docks, mine-laying ships, minesweepers, supply ships, work boats, transport merchant ships, etc., at least one hundred or more are known to have sunk, and more than 100 are missing, and these ships may have fled to other ports, or they may have been sunk in the distance on the way to escape.

Between 500 and 700 planes of various air units under the Japanese Navy were shot down by enemy planes, and more than 500 planes were destroyed in airfields on the ground and in hangars of aircraft carriers. The losses of the Japanese army aviation are unknown for the time being, but it is estimated that there will be no less than five hundred.

The number of casualties in the Kure Port and Etajima areas has been confirmed at least 40,000 people, half of whom are civilians, and the number is constantly increasing. Due to the basic interruption of communications, the situation in the city of Hiroshima after the bombing has not yet been counted.

Of course, even if it was attacked by surprise at anchorage, the Japanese Navy was not a lamb to the slaughter. After a day and a night of fierce fighting, the Americans also shot down at least 400 planes. But compared to the devastating losses of the Japanese Navy, the price paid by the US military is really insignificant.

-- In a short period of 24 hours, the vast majority of the elite of the Imperial Japanese Navy's home fleet, which appeared to be at the height of military appearance and extraordinary might, was blown into a wreckage and ruins by US planes.

By the way, the naval academy on Etajima Island was also bombed into a large blackened, hideous, ugly, and foul-smelling ruins. The shopping street attached to the school was burned to the ground of fire due to the dense density of houses, and no one escaped. The high-voltage line tower of the steel frame was actually burned alive and turned into a pile of twisted and crooked rotten iron. A 500-kilogram bomb was dropped in the school's dormitory building, causing human flesh, brains and intestines to be sprayed on the red brick wall, making people afraid to go up to bury the corpses. and Principal Keno Kurita's car, which was unfortunately burned to a blackened iron shell.

In the faint morning light, looking at the devastated and smoky campus, Principal Keno Kurita finally couldn't help but feel sad and cried in the sky.

In the final analysis, the catastrophe that has befallen Etajima now, he, as the principal, must bear a lot of responsibility.

-- Throughout the day, although a certain level of security measures were taken, Principal Keno Kurita did not think that the U.S. military would come again.

Because, in his mind, the situation of the Japanese Empire today should be similar to that of the Second German Empire after the defeat of World War I and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but the Paris Peace Conference had not yet been held - although Germany was defeated at that time, the front lines in the east and west were still on the territory of other countries, and the Entente did not set foot on the territory of Germany. Although there was a humiliating Paris Peace Conference, an unequal treaty that left the Germans in agony, the long and brutal war was over for the millions of soldiers of the Second Reich. Since the Entente did not attack the Kiel military port after the Kaiser's abdication, then the current US military should not attack the Kure port again, right?

Therefore, according to Kurita Keno's thoughts, now that Imperial Japan is doomed to defeat and the general trend is basically irreversible, then the next step should be the task of politicians. The first is to elect a new government that is acceptable to both the Japanese military and the people, instead of the current grass-roots team that talks to itself. Then, using the chips in hand, he tried to bargain with the United States and try to get a more lenient peace treaty.

In the past few days, he has actually been waiting for the "Provisional Government of Japan" to send someone to come and offer conditions for peace -- since you want to negotiate peace with the Yankees on behalf of Japan, you can't completely ignore the opinions of the navy and the army, and not arrange seats for the bigwigs of the navy and army!

In Kurita's view, the build-up of the army in the Hiroshima area was in fact a gesture to force the "provisional government of Japan" to consider the interests of the army: even if the war was to be ended, how should the millions of people in the navy and army be accommodated? What about the millions of square kilometers of occupied territories overseas and the millions of Japanese immigrants who have migrated overseas? You politicians and chaebols can't just say the final say on behalf of the whole of Japan!

Perhaps those radical young generals and colonels would have the idea of raising an army to make a rebellion, seizing power if they advance, and separating one side when they retreat: there were many such people at the end of the shogunate. But as a timid old man who has long been out of breath, Principal Kurita Keno, nicknamed "Kurita who escaped", although he holds the second largest fleet in Japan (the main force of the combined fleet is in Truk), he really does not have such a heart, let alone thinks that he is qualified to be added to the yellow robe.

It is precisely because of this consideration that Principal Keno Kurita has been doing nothing in the past month or so, just arranging supplies and resting for the naval ships that have fled from various places, so that these fleeing colleagues can have no worries about food and clothing, but he does not have any idea of taking the initiative to attack at all, and even the defensive guard of the military port anchorage is very sloppy. The various radical proposals of Jizaburo Ozawa are just perfunctory and deliberately delaying time.

The army in Hiroshima, on the other hand, mistakenly believed that with the navy in front of the city, the city should be safe and secure for the time being, so it also made a lot of slackness in air defense vigilance.

In short, Principal Keno Kurita only wanted to stand on the last shift of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and it was better to wait quietly for peace to come -- who knew that the old experience of World War I was completely incompatible with the new environment of World War II: the envoy of the Provisional Government did not wait, but waited for a great air raid by the US Naval Air Force!

It wasn't until this moment, looking at the blazing bay and the smoky sky, that Principal Keno Kurita finally realized:

What the Halsey fleet wanted was not only to let Japan stop the war and sue for peace, but to completely destroy the Japanese navy, which had given them countless humiliations!

As a result, Principal Kurita beat his chest for a while, burst into tears, and regretted in his heart: if he could have arranged the port guard more seriously, instead of passively dealing with the messengers; If he can evacuate some of the ships to the safer Sasebo and Maizuru towns in the face of port congestion; If he could have sent out the ocean-going submarines in the harbor in advance to monitor the movements of the Halsey fleet...... Maybe it's going to be different, right?

However, the bad news that Principal Kurita Keno will receive one after another in this day is far from over.

――“…… What the? The naval oil depot in Deshan Bay was blown up?! General Jizaburo Ozawa failed to organize a firefight and was seriously wounded?!! ”

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-- As an oil-poor island nation, heavy oil is almost second only to warships in the Japanese Navy's concept, and it is very valuable, so all the naval oil storage tanks in Tokuyama Bay are underground, and they can withstand the direct bombing of 500 kilograms of aerial bombs.

But the problem is that the U.S. B-29 Super Fortress bomber formation dropped 12,000 pounds of "earthquake bombs" (5.4 tons) nicknamed "goblets" on the Japanese Navy oil depot in Tokuyama Bay on this day...... Although the B-29 Super Flying Fortress bomber's high-altitude bomb hit rate was not high, after a lot of indiscriminate bombing, after all, there were still a few bombs that accurately smashed through the top of the concrete oil storage tank, and then exploded fiercely, turning the oil storage tank full of oil into a giant burning alcohol lamp, and the ignited oil was thrown everywhere for a while.

In the face of waves of seemingly never-ending air raids by US planes, the firefighting system, which had suffered a large number of casualties and fled from the country, was soon completely paralyzed in a panic and chaos, and the out-of-control fire spread rapidly and out of control.

When Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa, who hurried in a torpedo boat in the face of the US air raids, saw the oil storage tanks turned into giant blowtorches one after another, he was almost frightened: You must know that the Japanese Navy has hoarded 600,000 tons of oil here! If the burning oil tanks in front of you cannot be dealt with as soon as possible, otherwise the fire will spread to the remaining oil tanks, and then the entire Japanese naval home fleet will be lying on its stomach due to the lack of fuel.

No, all the officers and men of the navy who can move will go up with this officer to put out the fire!

However, it is not easy to fight fires, and the smoke from the burning of heavy oil is so irritating that people can barely open their eyes, tears and snot are all over their faces, and it is difficult to even get close to them without wearing a gas mask, let alone extinguish the fire. Moreover, the water pipes and pumping stations also had problems due to air raids, and the water sprayed out of the fire hoses was intermittent, and even the spray of water from a distance could not reduce the temperature, so we could only watch the fire become more and more uncontrollable.

By the time the next wave of American planes came to bomb and strafe, the improvised firefighters were killed one by one, and the already burning oil tanks were hit by several 500-kilogram aerial bombs...... So, with a loud sound like a volcanic eruption, the oil storage tanks finally exploded one by one!

-- The heat radiation generated by the violent combustion on the surface of the oil layer has already boiled the water and oil in the depths of the oil tank, but the bubbles produced by the boiling cannot penetrate the heavy and viscous oil layer, and as a result, a large amount of boiling steam and oil is pressed under the thick oil layer and accumulated, and then finally a certain critical point is reached, just like a soda or champagne that has been shaken vigorously and then opened, and the whole thing is sprayed out!

In an instant, hundreds of tons of oil were thrown into the air dozens of meters away, forming a series of spectacular fountains of flames, splashing all around. Many amateur firefighters who couldn't escape were doused with a large amount of burning fuel and instantly became a lump of burnt barbecue.

Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa, who was commanding the firefighting from a distance, was not fried into tempura by a pan of oil on the spot, but he was also killed in the lungs by a piece of scorching steel, lost consciousness in severe pain, and was hurriedly mounted on a torpedo boat by his entourage and fled. The rest of the rescuers immediately dispersed, almost reflexively running away. All that kind of work ethic has been left behind, and all that is left in my head is to run wild.

-- Fortunately, after the emergency rescue of the military doctor, Principal Jizaburo Ozawa was seriously injured and fell into a coma, but it seems that he has no worries about his life for the time being.

By the time Principal Kenio Kurita, who was at the Etajima Military Academy, learned of the incident, Tokuyama Bay, the largest fuel reserve base of the Japanese Navy, had completely turned into a raging volcano that could no longer be saved. Oil canisters are lit and heated, and then they explode due to the pressure that builds up inside, igniting everything around them, from houses to woods and even human bodies. Even in the far away Etajima Naval Academy, you can see the huge pillar of smoke that runs through the sky and the earth in the direction of Tokuyama Bay at the end of the sky, and the scene is as tragic as a volcanic eruption -- at this point, the Japanese Navy has little fuel on the mainland, except for a small reserve in Sasebo and Maizuru, and several civilian ports.

Even more terrifying, there was more than one column of smoke in the sky: in the direction of downtown Hiroshima, an even thicker column of smoke was rising......

An hour after receiving the bad news that the naval oil storage tank in Tokuyama Bay had been completely destroyed, Principal Keno Kurita learned from several army soldiers who were burned half to death that the US military had first carried out poison gas bombing on Hiroshima and then dropped countless incendiary bombs, and that the entire city and the seven army divisions assembled on the outskirts of the city were not only inhumanely smoked with poison gas, but also burned even more inhumanely, and now they were basically finished......

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In this time and space, the city of Hiroshima, Japan's industrial powerhouse, although it did not suffer a nuclear bomb, endured the same terrible strategic bombing.

Before this day, the city of Hiroshima had never been bombed by American planes, and the citizens did not have much direct experience of the air raids. Although several air raid exercises were organized, they were purely perfunctory, and even more than half of the bomb shelters scheduled to be dug never started.

So on this day, American planes, like flying devils, launched attacks on people who were as defenseless as lambs to the slaughter.

The first thing that was dropped from the sky was a new type of poison gas bomb with a strange fruity scent, because the smell seemed sweet and smelly, completely different from the old-fashioned poison gas such as chlorine gas mentioned by the Japanese military when educating the public, many people would subconsciously take a few more puffs first. By the time they realized that something was wrong, most of them had collapsed to the ground due to tracheal twitching and difficulty breathing, and they were not even able to make the last sound before dying......

Although some people hurriedly put on gas masks, and others covered their mouths and noses with wet strips of cloth, such simple precautions were of little use in the face of the new poisonous gases that could penetrate the skin and penetrate the human body, and the people who did not have time to escape died one by one.

When the gas bombs threw the whole city into chaos, countless red incendiary bombs followed, bursting above the city like blooming fireworks, spraying hundreds of miniature flame bombs, dragging the burning trail like a rain of fire from the sky. Soon the Japanese-style wooden paper house was set on fire, and the flames burned as bright as daytime. For a time, the survivors could no longer care about the threat of poison gas, and the roads were full of people fleeing in panic, as well as their carts and cars. But the collapsed buildings and the wreckage of cars blocked the roads, forcing many people to abandon their cars and flee, and the abandoned cars blocked the roads so tightly that the rest of the people had to leave their immobile cars behind, and eventually the entire road traffic was almost paralyzed, and people had to escape on their own feet or jump into the water for swimming, but it was still difficult to escape the firestorm, and the streets were littered with charred dead bodies.

Indeed, the remaining anti-aircraft artillery and night fighters of the Japanese Army are still struggling to resist, but they are really unable to catch the B-29 Super Flying Fortress bombers flying at an altitude of nearly 10,000 meters. Small-caliber anti-aircraft guns on the ground were of no use at all, except to scare the Americans with their loud sounds. And soon the follow-up was weak, the sound was sparse, and it was estimated that they could not even scare the birds, and it is estimated that the officers and soldiers who operated the artillery were also smoked by poisonous gas.

When those Japanese night fighters who took off urgently fought a fierce battle with the thick-skinned B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" and finally shot down a few enemy planes, and they ran out of fuel or ammunition to prepare for their return, they often found that the airfield was full of burning wreckage, the hangar was also blown to pieces, and the remaining living people were being repeatedly strafed by American planes, and the runway was full of potholes, and it was impossible to land safely.

The Americans' B-29s, on the contrary, seem to be endless! From dusk to dawn, the explosions in Hiroshima City never stopped! Each time, a long series of black dots fell, and then exploded into huge flames on the ground, and the long landing points exploded into a great wall of flames!

At dawn, as soon as the B-29 left, the dive bombers of the US Naval Air Force came again, and the bombs dropped as if they had been blessed by the devil with such precision that they made people wonder if there were traitors in the army! The ammunition depot and barracks in Hiroshima were quickly destroyed, especially the more than 80 tanks that had just been brought in from Manchukuo, all of which were blown up. And the shrapnel that was killed and exploded also opened the head of Major General Toshimoto Hoshino, the commander of the tank brigade of the Kwantung Army.

By this time, the fire in the city of Hiroshima was actually out of control, and both soldiers and citizens were fleeing to the outskirts in a hurry. However, the power of the US army's napalm incendiary bombs was so terrifying that even the mountains and forests outside the city were set on fire, burning a raging mountain fire!

In this kind of chaos, it is naturally impossible for anyone to dig a firebreak to control the fire, and people can only run around in a panic to avoid the flames, but there are still many people trapped in the fire and burned alive into piles of curled up and scorched corpses.

By the time the second air raid was completely over, the more than 100,000 Japanese troops assembled in the Hiroshima area had completely dispersed, and the soldiers could not find officers, and the officers could not find soldiers, and the supreme commander of the Kwantung Army, Umezu Mijiro, and his entire command headquarters also ran away in the air raid evacuation, and it was not until the third day that they were found in a rural nunnery and reconnected with the troops, but they were no longer the strong soldiers they had at the beginning of their return to Japan......

It is estimated that they can't even scare the birds, and it is estimated that the officers and soldiers who operate the artillery are also fumigated by poisonous gas.

When those Japanese night fighters who took off urgently fought a fierce battle with the thick-skinned B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" and finally shot down a few enemy planes, and they ran out of fuel or ammunition to prepare for their return, they often found that the airfield was full of burning wreckage, the hangar was also blown to pieces, and the remaining living people were being repeatedly strafed by American planes, and the runway was full of potholes, and it was impossible to land safely.

The Americans' B-29s, on the contrary, seem to be endless! From dusk to dawn, the explosions in Hiroshima City never stopped! Each time, a long series of black dots fell, and then exploded into huge flames on the ground, and the long landing points exploded into a great wall of flames!

At dawn, as soon as the B-29 left, the dive bombers of the US Naval Air Force came again, and the bombs dropped as if they had been blessed by the devil with such precision that they made people wonder if there were traitors in the army! The ammunition depot and barracks in Hiroshima were quickly destroyed, especially the more than 80 tanks that had just been brought in from Manchukuo, all of which were blown up. And the shrapnel that was killed and exploded also opened the head of Major General Toshimoto Hoshino, the commander of the tank brigade of the Kwantung Army.

By this time, the fire in the city of Hiroshima was actually out of control, and both soldiers and citizens were fleeing to the outskirts in a hurry. However, the power of the US army's napalm incendiary bombs was so terrifying that even the mountains and forests outside the city were set on fire, burning a raging mountain fire!

In this kind of chaos, it is naturally impossible for anyone to dig a firebreak to control the fire, and people can only run around in a panic to avoid the flames, but there are still many people trapped in the fire and burned alive into piles of curled up and scorched corpses.

By the time the second air raid was completely over, the more than 100,000 Japanese troops assembled in the Hiroshima area had completely dispersed, and the soldiers could not find officers, and the officers could not find soldiers, and the supreme commander of the Kwantung Army, Umezu Mijiro, and his entire command headquarters also ran away in the air raid evacuation, and it was not until the third day that they were found in a rural nunnery and reconnected with the troops, but they were no longer the strong soldiers they had at the beginning of their return to Japan......