Time back...

At the end of May, Liao Mingyu received secret information from the Americans that the Japanese Navy had sent a fleet headed by the battleship Yamato to sail from the mainland of Kure Harbor to the waters off Singapore.

At that time, the U.S. military planned to send the Fifth Fleet to the area to attack the Japanese army, which was a small naval force, but because the battle for Okinawa was entering the white-hot stage, the forces that could be deployed were limited, and it became extremely difficult to eat the other side on its own.

Therefore, I had to ask the allies in Southeast Asia for help, and I wanted Stilwell, the supreme commander of the Burma-India theater, to support one or two.

Originally, according to the situation, the allies in Southeast Asia all wanted to touch the war in the Pacific, and they were simply beyond the reach of the whip.

Even with the "big legs" B29, it is impossible to fly directly from India to the Singapore area to attack, and other fighters are even more impossible, the range is one thing, and the key risk is too great.

But who would have thought that Liao Mingyu's expeditionary force was so powerful, marching all the way from northern Myanmar, conquering almost the entire territory of Burma, and almost reaching the Kra Isthmus, with a great tendency to enter Malaysia.

So this important task of helping came out of his expeditionary force, and he really couldn't find anyone else.

Liao Mingyu was not ambiguous, and immediately asked the air force units under his command to start preparations, and let the two flying squadrons led by Andrew rush to the southern end of the Bago Airport to standby.

However, due to the limited range of fighter jets, if the battlefield can still help in the Andaman Sea or the Strait of Malacca, it will really be beyond the reach of the whip, and you can't drive the B29 to drop bombs on the Yamato.

The plan could not catch up with the change, and the Japanese seemed to have discovered the intentions of the Americans against them, and the Yamato fleet suddenly split into two, causing the two destroyers to change their course, and actively slowing down their speed to expose their whereabouts, so that the American troops misjudged their position.

The weather at that time was not conducive to the attack, and the heavy rain gave the Japanese Navy a good concealment environment, and the Fifth Fleet rushed to the position based on erroneous information, but found that it was not the enemy's main force at all.

At this time, the main force of the Yamato fleet took advantage of the time difference and arrived in the waters of Sulawesi first, heading straight for Singapore, and the two Japanese destroyers also quickly got rid of the tailgating of the American army with their maneuverability.

It was not that the US aircraft carriers did not want to chase after them at that time, but risked the flight in bad weather to attack two destroyers... It's really more than worth the loss.

This time the fleet intercepted the attack, but I didn't expect to be played by the little devils, which really made the top management of the Allied command lose face and be embarrassed.

It would be obviously unrealistic to attack the port of Singapore, and the operation had to be forced to end in failure, and the little devil's Yamato had a few more days to survive.

However, the current occupation was still unfavorable to the Japanese army, and the Yangon battlefield remained relatively stable under Liao Mingyu's deliberate actions.

This relieved Seishiro Itagaki, the new commander-in-chief of the Southern Army, and was no longer in a hurry to send the navy to rescue the troops in Rangoon.

It's just that the good times don't last long, and the Japanese warship is leaking everywhere at the moment, and there is no power to return to the sky on the various battlefields that have been eroded.

First of all, the war in the Philippines was urgent, and the battle of Mindanao, which began in March, was now in a situation where the Japanese army was in a complete rout.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf last year basically confirmed this fact, although the Japanese army was at a disadvantage, after losing the battles of Saipan and the Mariana Islands, if it lost the Philippines or Huaxia Treasure Island, the lifeblood of the empire's "southern front" resources to the mainland would be cut off, and the connection with China, Korea, and the mainland in Southeast Asia would be severed.

The Japanese, the war gambler, made another mistake and decided to take a desperate gamble in an attempt to repel the Allied landing force on Leyte Island and defeat its maritime power.

After some consideration, the Allies gave up attacking the Huaxia Treasure Island and landed in the Philippines first, and were determined to cover the landing with superior military strength and defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy that came to support it in one fell swoop.

As expected, the Japanese were doomed to fail in this reckless behavior, and the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy, which was far inferior in numbers, suffered heavy losses, and 13 heavy warships above the cruiser level were sunk.

The annihilation of Japan's sea-based and land-based air forces in the Philippine area dealt a serious blow to Japan's overall strength, and the Japanese navy ceased to be a contest of strategic strength with the United States in the Pacific War.

This battle also laid the foundation for the later successful capture of the Philippine Islands and Okinawa by the US military.

Due to the hopelessness of the war, Japan launched the first organized kamikaze suicide attack in this campaign. In the first battle, the Australian cruiser USS Australia was severely damaged, which seems to show that the special attack has some effect.

From October 25 last year, the Japanese army began to carry out organized suicide attacks on Allied ships. A large number of so-called "kamikaze squads" joined the frenzied attack on the enemy's naval fleet, attempting to inflict heavy losses on the enemy with their poor flesh and blood and the spirit of fearlessness.

In the original time and space, the Yamato was penetrated by the U.S. Fifth Fleet during a suicide mission and sank to the bottom of the deep Pacific Ocean.

However, due to the butterfly effect caused by some external reasons, the Yamato not only did not sink, but let it survive for nearly half a year, and it came to Singapore in a state of full blood.

The main purpose of the Americans was to liberate the Philippines, end Japanese rule and eliminate the remnants of the Japanese defenders, and cut off the material routes between the Japanese mainland and Southeast Asia, in order to plan for further landings on the mainland.

At present, the Japanese army has reached the moment of life and death in the Philippines, and if it does not take corresponding countermeasures, it is a sure thing to lose the Philippine Islands in the end.

At this time, the Yamato fleet, which had come to escort Singapore, came in handy, and Itagaki Seishiro immediately thought of sending the fleet north to support the Philippines.

But the navy was very angry, and the commander of the fleet, Vice Admiral Ito Junichi, did not take him, the supreme commander of the Southern Army, seriously at all.

The reason is that our navy has been ordered by the base camp to maintain the security of the Strait of Malacca and prevent the enemy navy from attacking Singapore, and nothing else can be done, and no new orders have been received from the base camp anyway.

There was no way, Seishiro Itagaki could only report to the top management first, and after several days of ink pulling, the base camp finally gave the order to the fleet.

But Ito Junichi refused to move the nest on the grounds that the fleet lacked the necessary supplies, which made Itagaki Seishiro jump to his feet.

Time waits for no one, and if it drags on, the US military is about to occupy the southern part of the Philippines, and the war situation has gone wrong within a few days of taking office, and this commander can't do it.

The reason why Ito Junichi disobeyed the law was not only because he didn't deal with the army, but also because of the recent clashes between the troops.

Because the sea navigation routes are now seriously stuck by the Americans, many of the materials plundered by the colonies cannot be transported back, and in addition, the Japanese high-level military force is reckless, giving priority to the supply of limited resources to the army, which has led to the life of the civilian population deteriorating day by day, and famine has swept the entire four islands of Japan, and people have died of starvation in many places.

Even the Japanese Navy, which claims to be the hope of the Empire, is not in much better shape at the moment.

When the officers and men of the Yamato fleet were resting in Kure Harbor, each person could only get less than half a catty of rice and a pitiful amount of vegetarian vegetables every day, and meat was almost impossible to see.

But the situation in Singapore and Malaysia is much better, because they only need to constantly plunder and oppress the local population, and as for the life and death of those "inferior", it is not in charge.

Although it is difficult to transport the looted things out now, the supplies are quite abundant.

This can make the officers and men of the Yamato fleet who came from afar very excited, just like the dirt buns that have never eaten into the city, they want to take whatever they see, just like a group of bandits, the army of the Japanese, who are also Japanese, shook their heads when they saw it.

Originally, the two sides of the Japanese navy and land did not deal with each other, even if they were both burning their eyebrows, they could not bear the quarrel, and in just a few days, there were several incidents of fights between naval soldiers and army soldiers.

When Seishiro Itagaki learned about it, he immediately reprimanded his troops, and punished several waves of army officers one after another, so that the incident would not become serious and the other party could not find fault.

Before leaving, this old devil also held a fraternity party very generously, provided a lot of food and benefits for the officers and men of the fleet, and also sent many young girls to the senior officers of the fleet, which coaxed the navy to praise again and again.

Itagaki Seishiro is smiling and grinning, but for the sake of the overall situation, even if he is unhappy, he has to choose to calm down.

So on the morning of June 5th, the Yamato fleet, which had been replenished for more than a week in the port of Singapore, set out on its journey again...

As everyone knows, their fate has quietly returned to its original trajectory at this moment... (End of chapter)