Chapter 39: The Return of the Combined Fleet (Part II)

U.S. Navy Fleet Commander-in-Chief and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest Brown. Joseph. Admiral King, a veteran of naval aviation, has a life of numerous accomplishments spanning a wide range of specialties, including rescuing a submarine that sank on the high seas in the twenties and bringing it to the surface. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 As a result, he was revered in the U.S. Navy as "God Almighty." However, in addition to his superior ability, Admiral Kim is cold and aggressive by nature, with a resolute character like an iron nail and a burning stick, and can even be said to be somewhat stubborn. He was hard and cold about life, almost to the point of rudeness.

At that time, there was a half-joking, half-serious comment about him in the U.S. Navy, which came from his daughter: "Admiral King is the calmest man in the navy, because he spends almost all his time angry." He didn't have time to be nervous. President Roosevelt once described him as a "man who shaved his face with a blowtorch" -- even his every beard was so impregnated with such a hard-nosed attitude that it had to be burned with fire.

Among the American admirals, there are many people whose self-esteem has been damaged by him and whose future has been ruined in his hands. Therefore, although Admiral Jin has deep qualifications, he is very unpopular. Before the outbreak of the Pacific War, he had been scheduled to be thrown into the Military Council for the rest of his life, a group of advisers for a veteran admiral who had nowhere to be arranged. However, shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt remembered the veteran and appointed him commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy fleet and chief of naval operations, or chief of naval operations for short. It is said that Admiral Kim once had this mean remark after learning of this: "Look at it! When things go wrong, they'll know they're coming to me! ”

However, in this time and space, Admiral Kim's war career was really full of anger and grievances, which made his liver fire more and more vigorous year by year.

In the Atlantic theater, Germany's few large surface ships were almost wiped out by the British long before the United States entered the war. The Mediterranean Sea was the preserve of the British Royal Navy, and the Italians were seriously short of heavy oil reserves before the war, which caused the Italian Navy to shrink into ports for a long time and refused to burn oil. So, the US Atlantic Fleet could hardly find anything to do other than escort transports and hunt whack-a-mole games of German submarines.

In the Pacific theater, for the Americans, it was one defeat after another, one nightmare after another: Pearl Harbor, Singapore, the Philippines, Java, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, Noumea...... Although the Allied forces always had an absolute advantage in strategy by virtue of their strong comprehensive national strength and the innate geographical advantages of the US-British alliance, they had no choice but to lose many battles in terms of tactics, especially several key naval battles, all of which ended in great defeats and losses. At one time, it was even reversed by a sneak attack by the enemy's Yamato-class battleship formation and blew up the Panama Canal!

In short, since the start of the war in the Pacific, the US Navy has hardly encountered anything to be happy about, only a humiliating defeat followed by an even more humiliating defeat, and the new fleet has been constantly formed and destroyed by the Japanese, and its combat effectiveness and cohesion can never be cultivated.

Well, in war, human life is both invaluable and incomparably precious, because a high-quality population itself is the most precious resource, and a qualified soldier needs at least eighteen years, goes through a lot of hardships, and consumes countless resources to grow, and it only takes a bullet to destroy him. If it is a low-tech infantryman, you can also recruit cannon fodder from the colony, but not everyone can be a sailor who needs to master a certain amount of technology.

The United States of America, with its world-class industrial strength, can produce an innumerable supply of goods and equipment, but it cannot quickly produce an inexhaustible supply of qualified soldiers, especially sailors who usually require years of training to graduate...... Although the new warships with more and more advanced performance were still being launched into service, the quality and skill of the sailors were declining and the morale was getting lower and lower, which also made Admiral King's liver more and more vigorous - in the past few years, he had fought hard in Washington for appropriations, built huge fleets again and again, put them into the hands of front-line generals again and again, and again and again hoped to hear the good news of victory, only to be disappointed and even desperate again and again!

As a veteran of the Navy with extensive experience, Admiral King has even vaguely seen the signs of defeat in the war!

In fact, at the beginning of the war between Japan and the United States, although the US military was annoyed and angry because of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, they were still very optimistic about the development of the war situation, and they were even more confident that the United States would be able to achieve the final victory, because the gap in strength between the United States and Japan was too much, which was equivalent to a fight between children and adults.

However, war is not a game of chess, it is not a simple comparison of size, and no one can decide whether to win or lose before the war begins. In the arena of war, which gathers the essence of all human materials and talents, the situation is like a swift wind and water, and there is never a rule that the strong will win.

For example, in the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France, France, with ten times the economic strength of Britain and flexible and ingenious diplomatic means, always occupied an absolute strategic advantage, so that the British, who were already weak, were surrounded by enemies on all sides for a long time, besieged by France, Scotland and other countries, and had to suppress the strategic dilemma of the Irish rebellion. However, the British army, which was weak and isolated, performed against the sky in the three key battles of Cressy, Poitier, and Agincourt, and beat the French who were holding a good hand of cards to the teeth, and almost died with a whimper.

Then, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, Prussia, which was still weak at the time, was besieged from all sides by Russia, France, Austria and Sweden on all sides, and fought almost the whole of Europe with the strength of one country, and the strategic situation could not have been worse. However, with the genius tactics of Frederick the Great and the internal chaos of the coalition army, Prussia, which was originally recognized as the imminent destruction of the country, insisted on holding out to the end, and instead dragged down its opponents......

-- It can be seen from this that no matter how great the overall strategic superiority is, it is meaningless if it cannot be transformed into a real tactical victory on the battlefield. Otherwise, there would be no legends of war in this world in which the weak defeated the strong.

Fortunately, the Japanese Empire was not England in the Hundred Years' War, let alone Prussia in the Seven Years' War. Although the U.S. military was never able to defeat the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet on the sea, it directly destroyed the mind and heart of the Japanese Empire by dropping two atomic bombs on Tokyo!

When the Tokyo nuclear bombing was successful and the Halsey fleet swept across the Japanese archipelago, Admiral Kim, who had always had a straight face, had a rare smile for a few days.

However, good moods come and go suddenly. The cheers of celebration are still in my ears, but the dawn of victory has not yet come.

-- I thought that after the bombing of Tokyo and the bombing of the emperor, the Japanese would lose their government, and naturally they would fall apart. When the Allies give them a way out, millions of Japanese troops will naturally surrender without a fight, and the coveted giant ships of the Japanese Combined Fleet will also fall into the pocket of the United States.

Who would have thought that the destruction of Tokyo would not force the Japanese army to surrender, and the slaughter of the imperial family did not discourage the Japanese, even if a large army was sent to land and occupy the main cities and industrial areas of the Japanese archipelago, it seems that it could not destroy the will of this old enemy to resist, but pushed them into the arms of the Bolsheviks!

Although some of the Japanese did choose to surrender and cooperate, the stubborn Japanese raised the red flag and retreated to the mountains to continue to resist, while the Soviets continued to fight the Allies by transfusing them across the Sea of Japan and sending a steady stream of supplies and equipment to the Japanese Bolsheviks!

Even the intended Japanese governor-general, Admiral MacArthur, became prisoners of the Japanese guerrillas and was paraded through the streets like monkeys in iron cages.

Now, although the hapless Admiral MacArthur has been rescued, the situation in the Japanese archipelago is clearly mired.

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-- At first glance, four months after landing in Japan, the situation of the invading US forces seems to be very good. Although Army Commander General MacArthur was unfortunately taken prisoner for a time, the Pentagon immediately urgently transferred George MacArthur from North Africa. Admiral Patton went to take over his shift, and successively increased the number of ground troops in the Japanese battlefield to 400,000 and organized them into the Third Army Group, which continued to pursue and attack the remnants of Japanese resistance. At present, it has occupied the most important industrial cities in Japan, such as Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Sendai, as well as all the grain-producing plains of the Japanese archipelago.

The Halsey fleet roamed the entire East Asian seas, providing favorable support to the anti-Bolshevik forces in Korea and China. The Star-Spangled Banner has replaced the Rising Sun Banner as the most striking symbol of hegemony on the East Asian continent, even surpassing the red sickle banner in the north.

But in fact, all these domineering and leaky acts of showing off their might are all based on astronomical material consumption.

-- At present, the US military occupies the Japanese archipelago, which seems to have many large cities that were once prosperous and prosperous, but now they have basically been bombed into a scorched earth full of corpses, and all industrial and agricultural production have collapsed. Strictly speaking, the "Provisional Government of Japan," a puppet government that was completely subordinated to US orders, was also an empty shelf, which was neither popular nor effective in its rule, and its practical use was at best to recruit rebels and provide a legal name, and in addition, it was to help the US military raise a group of indigenous vassal armies, and the salaries and supplies had to be paid for by the US military.

Under these circumstances, every bullet, every barrel of fuel used by Halsey's fleet and Patton's Third Army Group, every canned food consumed, every slice of bread, and everything that came to aid the eastern allies had to be delivered from the United States. To this end, there are now more than 1,200 Liberty ships running back and forth on the long supply lines across the Pacific, enduring the occasional sneak attacks by Japanese submarines and sporadic bombing by Japanese planes, transporting supplies to these lads from the other side of the world...... Even with the world's largest industrial power, the United States of America is struggling to maintain a 20,000-kilometer supply line for 400,000 troops, tens of thousands of aircraft, and more than 3 million tons of warships.

What is even worse is that the quagmire that the US military has fallen into is not just one Japanese archipelago, but the whole of East Asia -- in order to resist the expansion of the Bolshevik camp of the Soviet Union and prevent the whole of East Asia from being dyed red, the US military, after breaking through the Japanese blockade, immediately cobbled together an "anti-communist ♂ camp" in East Asian countries in an attempt to curb the development of the red forces in various countries, and as a result, it quickly turned its reputation from a liberator into a stinky ♂:

The original Japanese Empire invaded and expanded in the Eastern world, and made countless enemies, and it was a public enemy of East Asia. So it's easy for the U.S. military to find enough allies in East Asia. Now that the Japanese Empire has collapsed, the colonies that it once occupied have all been abandoned on its own initiative, and the remaining Japanese resistance forces have also raised their red flags one after another, cutting off the old empire that was reckless, brutal and bloody, so it is the turn of the United States, which is meddling everywhere, to suddenly become a public enemy of East Asia...... Although the U.S. military has spent huge sums of money to support several allies in the "free world" camp in East Asia, basically all of them are cheating people who can't support the wall, and often have many shortcomings such as shamelessness, incompetence, and ignorance, and the United States of America is still in a very disadvantageous position in East Asia.

In addition, the maritime capacity of the United States of America, while striving to support the Pacific theater, had to maintain the huge consumption of the British in the Atlantic: before the war, Britain relied on three main sources of oil, one Iraq, one Persian, and the other Borneo, which consumed about 12 million tons of fuel oil per year. However, as the war progressed, first the Borneo oil fields fell into the hands of the Japanese army, and then the Kingdom of Iran rebelled and joined the Axis camp, forcibly confiscating the British-funded oil fields in the territory. Finally, when the British army was defeated by Rommel in North Africa, the Iranian army also invaded Iraq from the east, and all three oil fields in the hands of the British fell and have not been recovered.

Today's North Sea oil fields have not yet been developed, and the British Isles rely on imports for their crude oil supply. After losing the oil source of its overseas colonies, Germany still had the technology to convert coal into oil, and Britain only had three million tons of crude oil reserves left at home, and when they ran out, they could only reach out to the Americans and ask for it.

As a result, starting in 1943, the United States had to transport tens of millions of tons of fuel oil to Britain every year, and it was refined oil...... On top of that, the British had to transport Argentine beef, Canadian butter, American Camel brand cigarettes, Coca-Cola drinks, and canned luncheon meat - John Bull, having lost most of his colonies, lacked almost nothing but turnips and potatoes! I can't even drink Ceylon black tea anymore!

Moreover, such a huge amount of US aid did not end with the fall of the Nazis. On the European battlefield today, although the US military did not directly start a war with the Soviet Union, the anti-Soviet armies of various countries organized by Britain basically relied on the United States to bear all the fuel and supply expenses on the battlefield -- there is no way, Europe today is simply a scorched earth, and its production capacity has almost collapsed, and although Spain did not participate in the world war, it was tossed even worse in the previous civil war, and it has not yet recovered its breath. What could Churchill's war cabinet do other than reach out to the United States?

In the face of such a scene of spending money like water, the United States, no matter how big it is, is already a little overwhelmed -- from the Nationalist Government of China to the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, from Britain to France, from Spain to Italy, from Australia to the Middle East, everyone is reaching out to the White House for this and that, and the transportation channels have to be found by the Americans themselves...... The war has reached this point, and even the United States is already gambling on national fortunes!

What's even more frustrating is that the United States of America is still dragging a group of pig teammates who have not achieved enough to do more than enough to gamble on the fortunes of the country!

However, despite the fact that the US troops were already so mired in the mud on the battlefield that MacArthur, who had just been rescued from the iron cage, was still not making enough trouble and clamored everywhere to recover the Philippines -- although the Japanese troops originally stationed in the Philippines were either withdrawing or waiting to surrender, in order to take over the vacuum left by the Japanese army, the red guerrillas of the CPP, nicknamed "Hook," and the "white guerrillas" supported by the US military, were already fighting in a big way......

Obviously, MacArthur, who had the rank of Philippine marshal, was very eager to wash away his previous humiliation with a victory, but he did not consider at all whether the existing military and national strength of the United States could withstand the huge attrition of opening up another new battlefield.

However, these troubles are all issues that the White House, Congress and Army need to consider. Joseph. Admiral Kim believed that his only task as Commander-in-Chief was to eliminate that hateful old adversary: the Combined Fleet of the Japanese Navy.

In the past, in the field of death in the Southwest Pacific, the US Pacific Fleet has lost many times, literally losing its pants along the way. It is only by relying on the cheating weapon of the atomic bomb and the North Pacific strategy of surprise attack that the current advantage has been achieved by opportunistic means.

However, such a victory was achieved by bypassing the Japanese Combined Fleet, which was mixed with too much moisture.

Now, the return of the Combined Fleet to the north has announced the official opening of the war in the North Pacific, and this time, Admiral Kim no longer wants to lose.

“…… Five Yamato-class battleships, one Kongo-class battleship, two other old battleships, twelve heavy cruisers, about twenty regular and modified aircraft carriers of various types, and 90 to 100 small and medium-sized armed ships...... The Combined Fleet is almost out of the elite this time! ”

Looking at the intelligence documents spread out on the table and the map of Japan with many red and blue circles, Admiral Kim muttered to himself. At the eastern and western ends of the Japanese archipelago, Tokyo and Hiroshima, the huge fleets of the United States and Japan were assembled on the map, and a naval battle was about to break out.

Although the strength of the Japanese combined fleet is not weak, the strength of the Halsey fleet after replenishment is even stronger, and the warships and aircraft currently in Halsey are at least twice as large as the opponent! Although the Japanese Navy has the advantage of fighting at home, it also has the weakness of wavering military morale and disordered command system.

If they are like cowards like this, and do not have the courage to face the enemy in a decisive battle, then the US Navy will have no fighting spirit to speak of.

Moreover, if the Halsey fleet had been avoidance of war and had been delayed, resulting in the US military not being able to obtain sea supremacy in the North Pacific for a long time, at least a safe passage channel between the East Asian continent and the west coast of the Americas, then the legitimate government of China and the pro-American government of North Korea would be destroyed by the interruption of support, which would not only make the momentum of the Bolsheviks sweeping the world even more rampant, but also cause all the previous US aid investments of the United States to be lost.

In the final analysis, as long as the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy cannot be defeated for a day, the United States will not be able to truly become the hegemon of the Pacific Ocean for a day!

“…… The war with the Japanese has been going on for so many years, and it is not allowed to drag on any longer in all aspects, so it is time to make a final end! ”

Admiral Kim sighed and finally made a decision, "...... Send a telegram urging William Jr. (Halsey) to complete the rest of the fleet as soon as possible, and wait for the opportunity to have a decisive battle with the Japanese Combined Fleet! The fleet at hand already has an overwhelming advantage! Moreover, his old nemesis, Yamamoto Isoroku, has been bombed into the sky by an atomic bomb, and the current commander of the Combined Fleet, Inoue Narumi, is said to be a nerd, so it stands to reason that it should not be difficult to deal with......"

Then, at the Yokosuka anchorage in Tokyo Bay on the other side of the world, Admiral Halsey held the telegram he had just received urging the war in his hand, listening to the sound of air defense sirens and the thudding of anti-aircraft guns, but he couldn't help but smile bitterly -- do you want to decide the victory or defeat in a war? How can it be so easy?!!