Chapter 150: America Will Never Give in (Part II)

On February 27, 1949, after being bombed by more than 100 Soviet nuclear bombs and the entire country was devastated, the United States of America, which had been beaten to the point of death, finally raised its last bit of strength and launched a dying struggle full of tragic colors. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

-- Thirty-two B-36 "Peacemaker" ultra-long-range bombers, carrying 18 atomic bombs and a large number of poison gas bombs and bacteriological bombs, took off from civilian airports in Washington, the capital, to the accompaniment of military bands and the president's personal send-off, embarking on their last desperate expedition to Europe.

Unlike the previous cross-ocean sneak attacks, which were limited to fuel consumption and range, and only circled around the western edge of the European continent, the target of their nuclear explosion this time was the Soviet Union, which was tens of thousands of kilometers away -- so even if they were able to successfully complete the mission, the pilots were doomed to never return.

However, it has to be said that any once great country, if it really comes to the point of life and death, can always make up such a group of warriors who are willing to sacrifice their lives or even die for the country. Especially in the United States, which is known for its cowboy and Puritan culture, there has never been a shortage of men who are willing to show their blood -- after General Arnold ordered the recruitment of volunteers, more than 1,000 American pilots immediately volunteered to sign up, so after some screening, the crew of the expedition to the Soviet Union was selected, and then in an atmosphere of pathos, they embarked on a journey from which they would never return.

At the same time, another 11 B-36 "Peacemaker" ultra-long-range bombers were also prepared at a secret air base in Oregon on the west coast of the United States, hanging three atomic bombs, poison gas bombs, bacteriological bombs, and conventional high-explosive aerial bombs, preparing to launch a one-way air expedition across the vast Pacific Ocean to attack Vladivostok, the largest city in the Soviet Far East, on the premise of never returning.

Because there are still many patriotic pilots who volunteer to sign up for the suicide one-way expedition, there are no more B-36 "Peacemaker" ultra-long-range bombers capable of carrying out missions (there are also fifteen B-36 "Peacemaker" converted gunboat planes, but it is too late to change back to bomb missions). Therefore, in addition to this batch of B-36 "Peacemaker" ultra-long-range bombers, Admiral Arnold also pulled out a batch of the remaining B-29 "Super Flying Fortresses", hung bombs and followed the B-36 nuclear strike combat long-range bomber group on the road to the expedition to the Soviet Union -- anyway, the maximum altitude of the B-29 "Super Flying Fortress" is not enough, even if it is changed to a gunboat aircraft, it will not be able to hit the Soviet supersonic jet Tu-100 "Flying Bear" at an altitude of 19,000 meters. Rather than letting these aerial behemoths that have been created with countless resources destroyed one after another in the daily nuclear explosions, or slowly rusting in the ground hangars, it is better to use the residual heat while there is still a chance......

In this way, the last group of brave men of the US Strategic Air Force, with the belief that they must die, spread their wings and took off, rushing from the two directions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean to the Soviet Union on the other side of the world to fight the last battle of their respective lives -- this is no longer a war, this is a kind of dying madness!

In fact, in addition to the US Army, which cannot cross the sea and cannot do anything, the US Air Force is like this, and even more so the US Navy -- just as the brave men of the US Strategic Air Force are tragically embarking on a journey from which they will never return, the US Navy is also making its final build-up in Cuba......

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February 27, early in the morning, Caribbean Sea, Cuba, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

Guantanamo, a seaport city in the southeast of the Central American island nation of Cuba, is as unremarkable as other Central American cities that rely on the sugar industry as its main income. What really makes it famous is the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, 20 kilometers south of the city.

Guantanamo Bay is one of the largest and best-barrier bays in the world. It is horseshoe-shaped, located on the southeast coast of Cuba, divided into two parts, the inner harbor and the outer harbor, the bay is about 19 kilometers long, about 9 kilometers wide, and the entrance is only 3 kilometers wide. It is strategically located in the east by the Windward Strait, which chokes the passage of the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea. From 1903, part of Guantanamo Bay was forcibly occupied by the United States as a naval base, and it was the earliest military base established by the United States overseas, and it was also the main training base of the United States Atlantic Fleet. In the wake of the outbreak of the war on terror on another dimension, the Guantanamo naval base has been transformed into a concentration camp for the US military to hold terrorists and suspected terrorists from all stripes in the Middle East, and has been widely criticized for its prisoner abuse scandal and human rights abuses. Although a black president made the closure of Guantanamo one of his campaign promises during his initial campaign. But until he was about to step down, there was no movement to close Guantanamo......

All in all, at the end of February 1949, Admiral Halsey commanded the remnants of the US Atlantic Fleet to carry out the last large-scale build-up at the Guantanamo military port -- the reason why the fleet was not assembled at the ports on the east coast of the US mainland was because the ports on the east coast of the United States unfortunately became the key targets of the Soviet atomic bombs. Admiral Halsey is now overwhelmed by mushroom clouds on his home coast, and has several brushes with death, and finally chooses to assemble at Guantanamo, Cuba.

With the wake-up on the warship, a red glow gradually appeared in the pale gray eastern sky. The red glow slowly rendered the color, gradually dyeing the sky a light blue. A fiery red ball of light, just like this, slowly, step by step, revealed the blue of the water and sky, and gradually, this light cluster finally broke through the shackles of the clouds, stretched the body, and radiated the warmth and light wantonly, scattering it on the surface of the sea, reflecting a colorful light.

And under the light of the morning sun, large and small steel sea beasts suddenly appeared in shape, and one after another the star-striped flags were waving in the wind. Among them, there are not only the towering bridges and huge guns of battleships, but also the flat decks and island-shaped bridges of aircraft carriers, and countless small ships and merchant ships are mixed in, which seems to be high and low.

Standing on the island-shaped bridge of the new flagship "Valley Forge" aircraft carrier, looking at the slightly sparse shadow of the ship on the sea, "Wild Bull" Halsey frowned.

Distance from Ernest. A week has passed since Admiral Kim issued the Atlantic Fleet general assembly order, but the number of ships arriving at Guantanamo is far less than expected -- up to now, including the "Valley Forge" aircraft carrier at Halsey's feet, the US Navy has assembled only one Montana-class battleship "Vermont," one Brooklyn-class light cruiser "Phoenix," two Essex-class regular aircraft carriers "Valley Forge" and "Bunker Hill," and one light aircraft carrier at the Guantanamo base Independence", fourteen destroyers of various types, plus five ocean-going supply ships and twelve obsolete coastal defense ships, as well as eight fast tankers...... Such a chilling lineup of decisive battles is really tearful.

-- It's not that the U.S. Navy has been reduced to just a few ships by the atomic bombs, in fact, even though the U.S. ports on the East Coast have been blown up in a cloud of radiated ruins, and the Pacific Fleet is stuck on the West Coast because of the destruction of the Panama Canal. However, because Halsey had evacuated a considerable number of ships to a remote port in advance, the US Atlantic Fleet under his command still retained about 60 percent of its military ships.

However, although the ships were still there, they were not manpowered—except for the evacuation of the ships, Ernest . Admiral Kim did not forget to evacuate the personnel, and before the Soviets bombed Norfolk Military Port, he organized most of the naval personnel to retreat to the countryside, and as a result, many people ran away after the evacuation, perhaps because they were deserters, or it was simply because the frequent nuclear explosions damaged the domestic communication network, so that they did not receive instructions for the next step. In addition, at a time when the country is disintegrating, society is collapsing, and the military is out of control, many US Navy officers and men have ceased to obey orders and are openly disobedient, and the Pentagon is helpless about this -- not to mention, even under normal circumstances, such a purely death-defying order is bound to cause an uproar.

“…… It turned out to be such an order...... Admiral King, you're looking for a final graveyard for the Atlantic Fleet!! ”

Thinking back to Ernest. At the instructions of Chief King, Admiral Halsey looked gloomily at the sunny tropical sea, and complained with a sad face.

-- According to the Pentagon's plan, this European expedition of the Atlantic Fleet will basically be the last battle of the US Navy. Due to the tight preparation time and the lack of enemy intelligence, the pre-planned plan was very sparse. To put it simply, let Admiral Halsey gather all the naval ships that can sail at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cross the Atlantic Ocean in the shortest possible time, and then let Halsey decide for himself, or through the Strait of Gibraltar, enter the Mediterranean, and wait for an opportunity to engage the Soviet Union's Red Banner Black Sea-Mediterranean Fleet; Or head north to the Strait of Dover, enter the North Sea and even the Baltic Sea, and have a final showdown with the Baltic Fleet of the Soviet Red Navy...... Then, regardless of the outcome of the final battle, the remnants of the ships did not have to return to their home countries - they would be bombed to death, and they could be transferred to South Africa, surrendered to them, and handed over the ships, which was more or less a blockage for the Soviets.

Halsey's feelings about the above-mentioned frenzied battle plan are first to seek death, and the second is to make death -- but under the current situation, it seems that there is no way to come up with a better result, to be honest, no one has long thought about how to eliminate the Japanese yellow-skinned dwarfs and the Soviet Bolsheviks, everyone knows that it is themselves who are eliminated, and it is already the limit to be able to drag the Soviets to a little more blood.

Of course, there is also an opportunistic solution, which is to ignore the Pentagon's operational orders and flee directly to South Africa as soon as it sets sail -- I believe that as long as such a modern fleet is sent free of charge, the South African federal side will certainly be happy to take in and properly accommodate these remnants of the US Navy...... But the problem is that Admiral Halsey is not such a person, and his stubbornness, backbone and patriotism do not allow him to make such a cowardly choice.

Admiral Halsey knew very well that for the United States, this war was over, that the United States had completely lost and was about to perish, and that there could be no second outcome. The puppet navy of the dead country still wants to keep the capital ships? Definitely not, so we must arrange a vigorous and magnificent funeral for these steel battleships that have condensed the dreams of generations of US Navy servicemen before they are completely destroyed.

But the problem is that under the oppression of the crisis of the death of the country, Washington today is like an ant nest on the verge of a flood, and it has long become a sieve, and no one pays attention to any secrecy measures, and at the same time that Admiral Halsey received the order, all the ships that could contact Halsey also learned the inside story of the attack through various channels, and further spread false rumors that the Pentagon wanted them to carry out a complete suicide attack, and directly rushed into the port of the Soviets to smash the open flames, and if they could not smash the open flames, they rushed to the beach and ran aground. When the sea batteries and the Bolshevik red skulls desperately ...... As a result, the pot exploded in a short time -- although Halsey himself had already decided to die for his country, a considerable number of naval officers and men who were not disciplined enough did not yet have the consciousness of death!

As a result, the remnants of the officers and men of the Atlantic Fleet have launched passive resistance to the recent rally order to send them to the point of no return: or pretending that the ship's radio was damaged and did not receive the signal; or falsely claiming that the engine on their ship was damaged, the fuel was leaking, and they could not move; Others simply found a way to collude with the top level of the government, and took over the private work of transferring family property to the government and the business bosses, and by the way, took the Pentagon's order as air......

Even the part of the people who obediently obeyed the order and drove the battleship to Guantanamo had many problems. The most terrible thing is that the number of sailors is still insufficient, and a considerable number of ships have only half or even one-third of the personnel number, and it is barely possible to drive the ships, but it is simply impossible to fire guns, observe, and fire torpedoes while ensuring navigation. Not to mention that the pilots on each aircraft carrier are also generally seriously understaffed.

For this reason, Admiral Halsey, who had no choice but to tear down the east wall and make up for the west wall, abandoned some old ships, especially the coastal defense ships that were not needed for the time being (designed for coastal defense warfare and not suitable for ocean-going voyages), pulled sailors out of them to replenish the capital ships, and forcibly requisitioned some veterans and pilots who had served on ships at the Guantanamo Bay, and reluctantly replenished the personnel of destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers. But in spite of this, the fleet under the command of Admiral Halsey, which is about to embark on a desperate voyage, is still full of problems -- first, of course, the transferred personnel must have a process of familiarization and running-in with the new posts on the ship, and second, the quality of these rookie sailors themselves is very, very worrying.

You must know that the navy athletes who control the ships and cut the waves are not low-tech army cannon fodder, and they can easily and quickly expand the number of additions. In the era of sail and wooden ship naval warfare, the number of merchant sailors in a country determined the country's naval heritage and expansion limit; In the age of oil and steel, the quality requirements of the navy officers and men in the war were further raised. It takes at least one or two years of training to train an excellent sailor from not knowing anything to being proficient in operation. And a naval captain who is proficient in navigation and tactics cannot be trained without five or six years. If you want to get a really good first-class admiral, you need to have at least ten years -- or how can there be a way of saying "a century-old navy"?

In this way, without taking into account the construction period of shipyards, diesel engine factories and gun factories, as well as the training time of shipbuilding engineers and metallurgical technicians!

Even if a country has a strong foundation and strong industrial strength enough to explode warships into the sea like dumplings, if it did not have enough talent reserves and could not muster so many qualified sailors, captains, and admirals, then even if there were more warships, they could only rot in the harbor, or they would be reduced to the other side's easy record -- no surface force that could dominate the ocean throughout the ages could be cultivated overnight.

There is no doubt that before participating in this tragic world war, as a branch of the Anglo-Saxon nation, the hegemon of the seven seas, and the descendants of Mahan, the author of "On Sea Power", the US Navy still had a sufficient talent pool, ranging from low-end sailors to high-end admirals.

However, the problem is that since the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident and the start of the war in the Pacific Ocean more than seven years ago, the US Navy has been completely destroyed and rebuilt many times in the face of the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy, which has opened the super golden elephant legs -- the aircraft carrier fleet is broken, the carrier-based aviation is broken, the land-based air force is broken, the battle fleet is broken, the cruiser fleet is broken, the destroyer fleet is broken, the submarine fleet is broken, the Marine Corps is broken, and the entire federal navy is basically broken.

Although relying on the full efforts of so many shipyards in China, the replenishment of various types of warships can barely keep up, but the training of sailors, captains and professional generals is not able to catch up. As a result, the US Navy is filled with more and more rookies, the quality of officers and men has shown an avalanche-like decline, but the incidence of various accidents has risen like a rocket, and there have been many incidents of accidental hits, collisions, landings, and self-explosions on the battlefield.

Even if they were fortunate enough to retain some experienced and qualified veterans, or trained a group of junior naval commanders who had completed the course during the war, they were given priority to the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which needed to confront the Japanese Combined Fleet. And the Atlantic Fleet under Halsey, because of the relative scarcity of combat missions, was a situation of all kinds of problem sailors and rookie sailors from the beginning.

Although Admiral Halsey stepped up his training and education after they were reactivated, the situation was still far from ideal. Especially after assembling at the Guantanamo base, due to the highly intense operation in the past few days, many sailors have been on the verge of mental breakdown, and after the news of this desperate expedition spread, the nerves of these half-hung sailors were pushed to extreme tension, as if they were about to explode. In the days when the fleet was anchored and reconditioned at the Guantanamo base, it was constantly making mistakes of all kinds, big and small, and it looked nervous from top to bottom. On average, an air raid siren would be raised by mistake once a day, or a patrolling destroyer would signal that a Soviet submarine had been spotted outside the harbor, and would smash it in the face without waiting for instructions, only to find out afterwards that it was all a false alarm. At first, it made the fleet nervous, but it was too many times, and in the end it was numb.

-- Fundamentally, after so many years of fighting, the whole of the United States is basically crippled, and now it is even more in a near-death madness.

Admiral Halsey, however, was to lead such a nervous, half-hung fleet on the last voyage of his career.

Despite this, the indomitable "Brute Bull" Halsey is still determined to do his best and draw a successful end to his military record.

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PS: In order to cooperate with Trump's contraction strategy, the United States has officially terminated "all democratic funds in federal spending" since November 15, and those public intellectuals who rely on values to mix funds have been cut off from food. In the future, there will be no more "five cents", only "self-done beauty"! Don't expect the Clinton Foundation to continue to pay for it, that little money has to be used to fight Trump in the United States! Outcome...... China's public knowledge was split in an instant, with some still boasting about American-style democracy with dead ducks, and some of them becoming fascists, scolding the election as useless and ignorant to the people. The other part quickly jumped back, pretended to be loyal, and wanted to mix into Wumao, the problem is that the tone is still the same disgusting as before - think about what the image of "Wumao" will be tossed into by these former intellectuals in the future, for example, to make a lot of strange political correctness, I don't know what to say.

In the past ten years, we have played a lot of high-end and high-grade terms, such as Miss, public intellectuals, Donglin Party, White Left, Chicken Soup for the Soul, etc., which day will be next, maybe the reputation of the word "Wumao" will also be made smelly, right? (To be continued.) )