Chapter 65: The Wind Rises

North Pacific, midway waters

In the early morning mist, a huge fleet flying the Star-Spangled Banner was cleaving the waves and appearing mightily above the sea level. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

This is perhaps the largest fleet in the world today, and the largest fleet ever in human history, with as many as 30 aircraft carriers, hundreds of destroyers, and the world's largest tonnage super battleship "Hawaii" as the backbone. The eighteen-inch and twenty-inch battleship cannons raised high in the air showed the world far more power than the planes on the aircraft carriers.

When this mighty and murderous fleet sailed out of Pearl Harbor, the entire shipping lanes were full of Americans who came to watch and cheer, each waving their flags and hats desperately, hoping that this huge fleet would return in triumph -- instead of radioing back the bad news of the destruction of the whole army and the shame of being lost in the sand, as was the case in the previous fleet-wide sorties......

In the rear of this fleet, on the aircraft carrier "Enterprise," the general flagship of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Halsey looked full of ambition.

The flagship Enterprise is surrounded by battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers, surrounded by countless destroyers, covering the entire sea. Behind the warships were hundreds of tankers, freighters, and troop carriers—the largest number of ships gathered under Halsey's command, and much larger than the fleet that had left Alaska for Japan last fall.

Therefore, Admiral Halsey is also more confident in the victory of the Mariana Islands operation: a quarter of the combat ships of the entire US Navy, more than 50,000 landing troops, and more than 2,000 carrier-based aircraft of various types! I should be able to bulldoze those small islands!

-- Before the outbreak of the Pacific War, the U.S. military controlled Wake Island, a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean, and Guam, one of the Mariana Islands, as an outpost for warning against Japan. Because these islands were far from the continental United States and had few standing garrisons, they were quickly captured by the Japanese in the early stages of the war.

In the years following the war, the U.S. and Japanese navies clashed fiercely in the South Pacific Islands of Fiji, Samoa, New Caledonia, and New Zealand. Wake Island, on the other hand, in the northern hemisphere, is relatively calm - Wake Island is 500 nautical miles west of Guam and 2,000 nautical miles east of Hawaii, and its own area is small, only nine square kilometers, which is not enough to serve as a base for a large fleet.

In the absence of absolute supremacy of the sea, if the US Pacific Fleet were to make an expedition from Hawaii to Wake Island, such a laborer would be taking the initiative to die. Even if Wake Island is reluctantly captured, it will definitely not be able to hold it in the face of the counterattack of the Japanese Navy. So, in previous years, the U.S. Navy had never attempted to regain the lost islands, except for occasional bombing by warplanes and artillery raids.

It was not until the U.S. Strategic Air Force succeeded in nuclear bombing Tokyo and paralyzed the Japanese command system. After the Halsey fleet swept across the eastern part of the Japanese archipelago and caused the old Japanese empire to collapse for a while, the US Navy remaining at Pearl Harbor tentatively organized a small fleet and succeeded in recovering Wake Island, which had been abandoned by the Japanese on their own initiative, without firing a single shot -- in view of the sharp deterioration of the situation, Truk's Japanese Combined Fleet Command ordered several hundred Marines stationed on Wake Island to abandon their bases at the end of last year and retreat to Saipan and Guam in the Mariana Islands.

Then, with the surrender of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Okinawa, the U.S. Navy had nearly cut the Japanese empire in half, leaving only one stumbling block to break the thread -- the Mariana Islands, centered on Saipan, Guam, and Tinian (Tinian Island).

Now, Halsey is taking almost all of the American warships at Pearl Harbor to attack and crush these last stumbling blocks!

Moreover, the real target of "Wild Bull" Halsey is not just a few small islands, the enemy he is most eager to defeat will always be the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy -- even the layman knows that the millions of people in Japan's wartime base camp today cannot hide from their opponents. And Japan's wartime base camp was basically not very secretive. Therefore, as early as the preparatory stage of the "4 million men going to the South Seas" operation, the US military obtained quite a lot of intelligence information, and after confirming the authenticity of the information, it quickly judged the southward route of the Japanese ship group.

-- The Taiwan Strait cannot be passed, and even if the US air squadrons stationed in Taiwan and Fujian cannot defeat Japanese warships, they will be enough to bomb off a cruise ship transporting migrants by several tens of percent. The South China Sea had basically become the sphere of influence of the Allied forces, and even if the Japanese ships escorted more warships, entering it would be tantamount to being in a hunting ground. Although the Philippine archipelago is still at war, the US military has established forward bases on many of the islands.

The U.S. torpedo boats, destroyers, and escort carriers stationed on the Philippine side may be more suspenseful against the Combined Fleet, but if they are used for naval guerrilla warfare and piecemeal operations against the huge Japanese migrant boat groups, they will be enough to make the Japanese feel painful.

Therefore, there is actually only one relatively safe route that the Japanese Combined Fleet and the migrant ship group can take at the moment, and that is to stay away from the islands occupied by the US military, take the ocean route, and go south to Truk along the Mariana Islands. This was also confirmed by the reconnaissance report sent by the submarine force to Halsey -- the "saury" submarine had just discovered at least four Yamato-class battleships and more than 10 Japanese aircraft carriers in the waters off Iwo Jima!

Obviously, a lineup of capital ships of this scale can only belong to the main force of the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet covering the southward movement of the migrant ship group!

In addition to the excitement, Admiral Halsey specially gave instructions to the "saury" submarine and another Shark-class submarine that later arrived in the waters of Iwo Jima, ordering the two submarines to continue to track this huge Japanese fleet until it could no longer hold on, and only need to report the position of the Japanese fleet once a day, but it is strictly forbidden to attack! The words "strictly forbidden to attack" were repeated several times by Admiral Halsey - for fear that the commanders of the two submarines would not be able to hold back and rashly move to sink several merchant ships, but alarmed this super-large prey like a prehistoric mammoth, thus bringing more unnecessary variables to the upcoming naval battle......

However, at this time, Admiral Halsey, who was bent on beating the Japanese devils, did not expect that his fleet was also prey in the eyes of the other party......

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More than 100 nautical miles in front of Halsey's fleet, somewhere in an open and shipless area, a huge submarine quietly surfaced.

After a while, as the sea water on the deck of the submarine ran out, all kinds of sea radars, air defense radars, and satellite antennas, which clearly surpassed the level of science and technology in World War II, were automatically deployed and operated at the top of the submarine's control tower. And with the "snap" of a thick round watertight door hatch opening, the traverser Ma Tong, who was wearing a sailor suit, also walked onto the wet front deck of the submarine with a [weather controller].

As far as the eye can see, the surrounding sea is empty, and there is no pillar of smoke or sail shadow. And the sky is also clear, and there are no annoying planes to be seen.

“…… Well, well, it looks like the submarine hasn't been discovered by the Yankees yet......"

Ma Tong put down the [weather controller] on the deck, took a deep breath of the fresh air on the sea, and stretched again, only then did he use the telescope to observe the calm sea around him, and then he didn't know who to shout, "...... Hey, hey! Miss Sophie, is your antenna connected to the satellite? We're in the right place, right? ”

The next moment, a light-blue-haired maiden appeared out of thin air beside her, she was Miss Sophie's doppelganger on the submarine "Iona", "...... It has been contacted, and according to the indication of the satellite signal, the position of the boat is accurate, and the Halsey fleet is ahead...... Moreover, according to radar reconnaissance, no traces of ships and aircraft were found on the surface of the sea or in the air within a radius of forty kilometers nearby......

“…… Very good, then let's get an eighteen-level typhoon out and give the Yankees on the opposite side to eighteen layers of hell! ”

Senior Sister Ma Tong licked her lips excitedly, and was about to start operating the [Weather Controller], but was slapped by Miss Ship's Lady, "...... Wait a minute! Stop! Are you trying to overturn my sub too? Dive underwater before you do it! ”

-- Next, with the churning splash and bubbles, the submarine "Iona", which has adopted a large number of futuristic black technologies, once again disappeared from the sea...... After a while, the wind suddenly began to slowly start to blow on the surface of the Central Pacific Ocean, which had been calm......

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PS: There is a saying called "I have witnessed the rise and fall of countless empires, the birth and fall of species, and for thousands of years, only the stupidity of mortals is eternal, and your appearance verifies this." And today's coup d'état in Turkey, apparently, can be commented on with this phrase.

-- The Turkish military took advantage of the fact that Lord Essoun was away and seized the television station to make a speech. Essoun mobilized civilians to block the streets through social media platforms, and rebel tanks on the streets of Istanbul were occupied by civilians, as if people saw the August 19 incident in the Soviet Union. And the tank fire, helicopter bombing, and gunfight of the staff in Ankara are like the 226 Mutiny in Japan. In the end, the Turkish rebels hijacked a frigate and went into exile, like the uprising of the Potemkin sailors of Tsarist Russia...... In short, it gives the impression that both sides of the coup d'état are stupid.

According to sources, the rebels of the coup d'état were religious radicals in Turkey, the same people who had previously colluded with ISIS and the Russian planes in the first place. Because the current government wants to ease up with Russia and intends to use them as accomplices of terrorists to take the blame, this group of people does not want to be cooked by rabbits and dead dogs, so they have to jump over the wall in a hurry, which is why the coup d'état will be so messy and nonsensical. I guess Turkey will have to mess up for a while.