February 5 was the Spring Festival of the Renwu year, and Li Junhao spent it in the military camp in Mandalay with Yang Shixiong, Sun Liren, Peng Xuefeng and other Chinese generals. This time, he even proposed that instead of orderly soldiers and cooks, they each cook a dish and spend Chinese New Year's Eve together.

Although everyone's craftsmanship is high and low, when the various dishes are put on the table, the generals laugh, and they have not eaten such a creative Chinese New Year's Eve meal for so many years!

For men, the experience of a drink is enough to make friends with good nature, and this night was like this, the generals from the national government and from northern Shaanxi became friends through the bitter drinking—although they could not really make friends yet, but in this foreign battlefield, they would cooperate with each other and fight side by side! ——

After the Spring Festival, the recruits in northern Shaanxi began to receive American-style military training, this time Li Junhao did not use those American military instructors, but sent his own New England battalion to take charge, among them Americans, Britons can now speak fluent Chinese, plus enough military literacy and he personally instructed modern tactics, enough to be an instructor.

On 15 July, all the personnel of the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in three groups by boat to begin adaptation training in Tonggu, and Li Junhao made a special hurried over to deliver a speech to the 12,500 officers and men, welcoming them to join the sequence of the Indo-Burma theater.

The next day, accompanied by Li Qiwei, he inspected the grassroots units and thoroughly understood the operation process of the 82nd Airborne Division!

On the third day, when he was leaving, he handed over a textbook that he had written overtime during this period to Li Qiwei, which was a development trend and a new training plan for the airborne troops, so that the other party would be like a treasure!

——

After arranging everyone's work, Li Junhao's attention turned to the counteroffensive operations launched by the US army against the Japanese army, and seriously studied the battle situation in the Pacific theater.

After attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Japanese navy and land launched attacks on various parts of South and Southeast Asia. At the same time, in order to expand its defensive circle on its own territory, the Japanese army launched a sortie to the western and southern Pacific regions, quickly grasped air and sea supremacy in this region, and then carried out coordinated operations between the army and navy, gaining a temporary strategic advantage, controlling a total of more than 7 million square kilometers of land and as many as 150 million people, and waging fierce competition with the United States on a front of more than 10,000 kilometers stretching from the Aleutian Islands in the north, to Australia in the south, the Indian Ocean in the west, and Midway Island in the east.

On April 18, 1942, Lieutenant Commander Doolittle led 16 B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet, commanded by Vice Admiral Halsey, to successfully bomb Tokyo.

The Doolittle air raid was called the first victory of the United States in World War II, and the material damage caused to Japan was actually insignificant, but it greatly shocked the Japanese government and the opposition psychologically.

Losses on the Japanese side: 50 killed, 252 wounded, 90 buildings destroyed, material damage of $3.2 million.

——

On May 7, the Battle of the Coral Sea broke out, the first large-scale confrontation of aircraft carriers in human history.

During the battle, the U.S. forces sank the Japanese aircraft carrier "Xiangfeng" and seriously damaged the "Shozuru", but lost the "Lexington" and the "Yorktown" was also heavily damaged.

The Battle of the Coral Sea played a decisive role in stopping the Japanese invasion of Australia.

——

During this period, the CIA of the United States, the Bureau of Naval Intelligence, the British MI6, the Dutch Intelligence Bureau and other allied intelligence forces worked closely together to successfully decipher the code of the Japanese Navy's JN-25 communication system, and had a clear understanding of its next combat plan, but they obtained information that the Japanese Navy's next attack target was "AF", but they could not determine where this code meant.

At that time, Donovan and Wen Qiang, who were in charge of the CIA, contacted the director of the bureau in Myanmar and asked for help.

After Li Junhao saw this information, he immediately concluded: This "AF" is Midway! The specific plan was to first send a fleet to attack the Aleutian Islands and land on Attu Island and Kiska Island in the archipelago, using this as bait to draw the attention of the US fleet to the north, and then send Nagumo Tadaichi to command the main fleet to seize Midway Island. The date of the operation is tentatively set for early June.

Because of Li Junhao's special status in the US intelligence community, his identification was valued by the US Navy.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, although he had never met the young director of national intelligence, director of the CIA, and commander of the Indo-Burma theater of operations, Vice Admiral Pansen, had a lot of deeds about him, so he believed in the information he had confirmed.

After careful consideration, Nimitz decided to pretend that he did not know about the movements of the Japanese fleet, but ordered three aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise, the USS Hornet, and the USS Yorktown, and eight cruisers, to be sent to Midway.

Midway covers an area of 4.7 square kilometers, 2,800 nautical miles away from San Francisco in the United States and Yokohama in Japan, in the middle of the Pacific route between Asia and North America, and 1,135 nautical miles away from Pearl Harbor.

——

In the Battle of Midway on June 5-6, the Japanese Combined Fleet dispatched most of its main warships, which was its largest naval operation, and the purpose was originally to annihilate the remnants of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, occupy Midway, and blockade Hawaii.

Because the US Pacific Fleet had been prepared for a long time, it won a complete victory in this naval battle with the loss of one aircraft carrier, one destroyer, 307 officers and men, and 147 aircraft.

The four aircraft carriers of the Japanese army, the "Akagi", "Kaga", "Soryu", and "Flying Dragon", and one heavy cruiser were sunk, losing 322 planes (283 planes were sunk with the mothership), and 3,507 officers and men were killed, including dozens of experienced and battle-hardened flight and maintenance personnel.

——

Seeing this, Li Junhao knew that the United States' major counteroffensive in the Pacific theater was about to begin!

After the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Combined Fleet will be in a state of collapse and will no longer be able to launch large-scale naval and air operations, because Japan's industrial capacity will not be able to quickly make up for the loss of warships, and will become weaker and weaker, while the United States will become stronger and stronger.

Before the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan's industrial output value was $9 billion, while that of the United States was more than $200 billion. Japan produces 5.8 million tons of steel annually, and the United States produces more than 33 million tons; Japan relies on grabbing all oil, and the United States is self-sufficient and can export a large amount......

(End of chapter)