On June 14, at 16:35 p.m. Rabaul time, 140km east of Bougainville Island in the Solomon Islands......

A slender submarine is slowly sailing on the sea, and several US submariners on the control tower are vigilantly guarding the surroundings with binoculars.

Soon after, a small black dot appeared in the air in the distance ahead, and everyone immediately raised their vigilance, and two minutes later determined that it was a Ming military plane.

The submarine had to make an emergency dive in case it was discovered by enemy aircraft.

This is the seventh combat patrol of the submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) since the start of the war, and she set sail from Pearl Harbor in early May to patrol the waters off the Solomon Islands.

Prior to this, the poor reliability of torpedoes had caused submarine forces to complain, such as the Swordfish returning empty-handed six times out to sea seven times.

The only battle that won the battle was humiliating to say - the one two months ago, unwilling to miss out on another torpedo failure, the Swordfish simply surfaced and sank a Lanfang merchant ship with a 3-inch deck gun.

This time, however, it was different, and the command issued a pamphlet on temporary measures, stating that the cause of the poor reliability of the torpedoes was the problem of the bathing device, and recommending that all submarines that did not receive the new batch of torpedoes simply set the torpedo depth to zero.

Due to the limited number of torpedoes in the new batch, the Swordfish was allocated only eight, and the remaining sixteen were still Mk14 torpedoes from Pearl Harbor's stockpile.

However, this was enough to boost the confidence of the submariners, and the captain of the Swordfish, Major Evely, was determined to reach a total tonnage of 20,000 tons for this patrol.

At 17:05, Major Yveley gave the order to ascend to periscope height.

A few minutes later, he was pleasantly surprised to see an oncoming fleet about ten kilometers away in front of him, including an aircraft carrier, in addition to cruisers and several ships of unknown type.

"That must be the enemy's, not the Enterprise."

"According to the updated battle briefing on the 8th, the only enemy aircraft carrier operating in the southwest Pacific is the Amaichi Ugaki ".

The submariners judged that this fleet belonged to the Ming army, and the aircraft carrier was undoubtedly the Tenshi Youyuan according to intelligence.

The Swordfish then sounded the battle alarm, and Major Eliv ordered a five-degree deviation to the left and increased speed, hoping to find a suitable position for the ambush.

Ten minutes later, Major Eliv raised his periscope again to observe and confirm the position, course, and speed of the Ming aircraft carrier and escort warship.

Without any suspense, the Swordfish chose to list the Tianshi Youyuan as a priority target.

In the previous month, when the main force of the fleet was on an expedition to Hawaii, the Amaichi Ugaki had been patrolling the waters off the Solomon Sea - she had been active here since she cooperated with the 1st Marine Brigade to clear Kuah Island.

When Zhou Changfeng learned that the Enterprise was heading south, he specially reminded the Tianshi Youyuan to be vigilant, and the officers and soldiers did not quite understand why.

During this month, there were two smaller encounters between the two sides, one of which was a surprise attack by the Enterprise, which attempted to sink the Amanichi Ugaki in one fell swoop with an all-deck attack, but due to the cover of the Ming Air Force units at Kuah Island and Bougainville Island airfields, the Amagichi Ugaki was only slightly damaged.

At 17:41, the two sides were separated by less than six kilometers in a straight line.

The Swordfish fine-tuned the bow pointing to ensure that the angle of incidence of the torpedo was not 90° perpendicular to the target, reducing the probability of a dud.

At this time, there were battleships escorting the Amachi Ugaki in front of and on the left and right, several destroyers in front, and the light cruiser Yuanjiang on the left, and four patrolling carrier-based aircraft hovering in the sky.

The situation was full of murderous enemies, and Major Illiff knew that there was only one chance, and that he was extremely risky.

At 17:47, the torpedo calculator finished solving the firing elements, and two minutes later, he simply ordered to "fire the torpedo" and "dive to 300 feet".

Six new batches of Mk14 533mm torpedoes drilled out of the bow torpedo tubes one after another, and the trajectory was fan-shaped, which perfectly coincided with the next course of the Amaichi Ugaki.

The torpedo was kept at a depth of 9~10 feet and went straight ahead at a top speed of 45 knots.

At this time, it was getting late, the sun was setting in the west, the sunset dyed half of the sky red, and the sparkling sea surface was full of color.

Two minutes later, the Swordfish's sonar crew heard a sudden increase in propeller noise and wake noise.

The sonar soldier lowered his head and said loudly: "The propellers of the enemy ships are accelerating, the rudder is deflecting, maybe they have spotted (the torpedoes)." ”

After another forty seconds or so, a dull sound came from the headphones, and the rest felt a slight but noticeable shaking.

Does this mean that the torpedo got a hit?

At 17:51, the destroyer spotted the incoming torpedo and immediately used flares and semaphore lights to warn it.

The Amaichi Ugaki then maneuvered with full rudder on the right to evade and dodged four torpedoes, but still missed two of them.

The violent shaking caused some people to slam into the bulkheads, and others rolled down the stairs without standing firmly, breaking their heads and bleeding from their heads.

Thankfully, only one of the two exploded, at the 49th rib, and the 533mm torpedo was not capable of withstanding the Amachi Ugaki's underwater protection system, and a huge hole was blown open in her right hull, which the damage control unit claimed was large enough to fit a tank into.

Even more terrifying than the water ingress were the high-energy bubbles from the underwater explosion, which ignited the combustibles in the cabin and caused a fire.

Soon, the fire was already threatening the adjacent aviation gasoline storage tank, and the fire was temporarily contained as more and more damage control team members arrived.

Although the boiler compartment was more than 10 meters away from the torpedo explosion point, it was still affected, and a total of nine leaks of various sizes appeared, from which seawater was sprayed out.

The sailors stuffed all the blankets and support poles they could find, and even threw away the bedding and clothes, but the water was still intensifying.

The pressure of more than four meters underwater should not be underestimated, and in order to combat the water pressure, the sailors were physically exhausted very quickly and had to take turns to fight.

By an hour, the seawater in the boiler compartment was waist-high, and the dewatering pumps operating at full power were only slowing down the intake.

At 20:07, several large heavy oil boilers shut down one after another, and the steam turbines, which had lost their steam supply, immediately stopped, and the power was naturally stopped quickly.

Emergency generators have limited power and can only keep the most basic equipment running.

In the dim red light, the water was close to chest height, and the buoyancy and resistance made it extremely difficult to move, and the exhausted sailors could no longer keep the water intake point plugged, and the crowd was constantly dispersed by the incoming water......

Some of the people on the lower deck of the hangar smelled something was wrong, and at first they thought it was floating up from below, but it didn't take long to realize that it was a fire on the middle deck!

It was initially assumed that some flames had burned along the cable pipes that ran through the decks and cabins.

Major power outages have made damage containment operations extremely difficult, often with waves of unresolved events and sailors exhausted.

At this time, the captain was unwilling to let the situation get out of control, and he said angrily: "How can this be true! How can there be a reason to be blown up and sunk by a torpedo? Drag it back, too! ”

He ordered the entire lower deck to evacuate, concentrating on controlling the fire on the middle deck, and balancing the center of gravity by pouring water into the left bilge.

This decision means that the Ugaki of the Tenchi has completely given up the possibility of relying on its own damage management to restore power, and everything is to ensure that it will not sink.

At 21:35, the Tenshi Youyuan, which was tilted to the right by 17 degrees, gradually recovered to 9 degrees, and there was no risk of capsizing.

Next, the Yuanjiang Light Patrol threw out the steel cable and began to drag the Tianshi Youyuan forward.

In the second half of the night, the cable was also connected.

The Tenshi Ugaki then activated fire extinguishing devices in two cabins on the middle deck where the fire was out of control, and with the help of halon fire extinguishing agent, the fire continued to expand.

The exhausted captain breathed a long sigh of relief, and immediately ordered the sound of lights and the hanging of signal flags, indicating that "the fire on this ship is under control."

Two days later, the turtle-speed fleet returned to Rabaul by chance.

During this period, the fleet was pursued by two U.S. submarines, and the Amaichi Ugaki was hit by a mine, but because the lower compartment had already been filled with seawater, the situation did not worsen.

As a result of the initial resolution of the submarine torpedo problem, US submarines active in various parts of the western Pacific have made a lot of gains in the past month.

Some officials in the Navy Department of the Ministry of War took note of the situation, and there was a marked increase in the losses of merchant ships in the statistical tables.

Even if it is limited to a certain point, such as the Guam-Wake Island-Midway route, the frequency of successful submarine attacks on transport ships has increased dramatically.

On 2 May, while escorting the merchant ship Ryosumi to Wake Island, the destroyer Sumatsu was suddenly ambushed by a U.S. submarine, and the Ryosumo, which was loaded with military supplies, was hit by three torpedoes, and completely capsized four minutes later, and the crew was buried in the sea before they could evacuate.

On 9 May, the oil tanker Dacheng and the destroyer Songyang were attacked in the waters east of Saipan, and the clumsy Dacheng was sunk by a US submarine, and only more than 40 people escaped.

On May 16, the destroyer Linwu ended its mission to escort three merchant ships, including the Yurong, and was sunk by an unknown torpedo on its way back to Wake Island.

On 24 May, the minelayer USS Gaomi was hit stern by a torpedo fired by a US submarine in the Mariana Islands.

The activity of enemy submarines made the Ming Navy quite vigilant, and at one time wondered whether the Americans had put in a new type of torpedo.

The 4th Submarine-Hunting Fleet of the Oriental Fleet was transferred to Guam, and the 1st Squadron of the 11th Maritime Patrol Detachment of the Naval Air Force was transferred to Wake Island.

But for the time being, these are just things to worry about in the rear, and for the generals on the front line, nothing is more important than achieving the planned goals.

The Ming fleet, which had previously pulled anchor and set sail westward, caused the U.S. military to miscalculate, which was an important reason why they couldn't wait to counterattack Kauai.

However, the 180th Special Fleet turned around a day later.

The main force of the fleet turned to Johnston Atoll, 1,300 km southwest of Hawaii, to attract the attention of American troops.

The separated Taiwei Zuoyuan was supplemented by 7 destroyers, 1 super destroyer, 1 light cruiser, and 1 high-speed refueling ship, and was temporarily organized into a 52 air attack fleet and headed straight for the north.

After a series of battles some time ago, the admirals basically figured out the situation, those battleships, cruisers, and destroyers are not worth mentioning, only land airfields and aircraft carriers are the most important.

Therefore, the core task of the surprise attack operation is to suppress the US airfields on Oahu and Maui as much as possible.

In the past two days, the staff officers have rushed to complete the general arrangements and determined the time and place for the two refueling of the 52 nd Air Raid Fleet.

The first refueling is 1,500km northeast of Midway, where two low-speed tankers will arrive early; The second refueling was 1,200 km north of Hawaii and was handled by the high-speed tankers in the fleet.

The timing of the take-off of the carrier-based aircraft formation is the most controversial, too close to Pearl Harbor is easy to be detected by the US military, too far away will cause the pilots to fatigue the battle, and can only carry fewer bombs.

After some debate, the final take-off area was determined to be 360 kilometers north of Oahu – a coordinate just 10 kilometers away from the historical Mobile Force attack on Pearl Harbor.

Ideally, the offensive should be launched at dawn, but this requires carrier-based aircraft to take off from aircraft carriers and form at night, which is obviously fraught with risks and uncertainties, what if there is a serious accident?

The take-off time was changed to dawn, and the attack formation was expected to fly over Oahu at half past seven in the morning.

Taiwei Youyuan called for a meeting of fleet commanders, and all teams were gathering together to discuss the surprise attack strategy.

According to the analysis of the current intelligence, the US military hit its head and bled under the iron wall laid by Zhou during the counterattack on Kauai, and the fleet with a large consumption of ammunition will definitely have to return to Pearl Harbor to replenish supplies.

The Saratoga was of course the preferred target, but it was uncertain whether the carrier would be in port, so the attack was all aimed at the airfield.

The 1st Air Strike Group, consisting of 7 fighters, 6 dive bombers, 6 torpedo planes, was responsible for the Haleiwa airfield in the north.

The 2nd Air Strike Team was responsible for Wheeler Airfield in the center; The 3rd Air Strike Group is responsible for the Eva Marine Corps Air Station in the southwest; The 4th Air Strike Team is in charge of the Hickam airfield in the southeast.

The Fifth Destroyer Group had only five fighters and was responsible for cruising around, attacking the American fighters that came to intercept and covering the rest of the attack formation.

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However, if the Saratoga is spotted, each team should change objectives at their own discretion to ensure that at least two air strike teams attack it.

As for the rest of the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, they were all classified as secondary targets, unless there was really nothing to blow up.

The pilots were more worried about whether they could guarantee the suddenness of the surprise attack, and once the US early warning radar discovered the incoming Ming aircraft group in advance, the surprise attack would lose its greatest advantage.

However, there is no better choice at the moment, and the arrow has to be sent on the string, otherwise it is better to simply be neat and go home directly.

Zhou Changfeng also took this problem into account, and the only feasible way at present is to make a feint to the west or southwest of Oahu to attract the attention of the US military.

It's just that Weiyuan Airport is still suppressed by the US military aviation, and even if it sees a needle, it can only take off a few planes at most.

He wanted to make some chaff to bluff, but due to the conditions of Kauai Island, the chaff was out of play.

However, as the saying goes, as long as the mind does not slip, there are always more ways than difficulties.

After pondering for a while, Zhou Changfeng looked at the corner of the wall and suddenly thought of something, and said excitedly: "Tsk! There's a play! Come on, go find some iron sheets. ”

"Ironhide?"

(End of chapter)