Chapter Sixty-Five, The Wind Rises
North Pacific, Midway waters
In the early morning mist, a huge fleet flying the Stars and Stripes was cutting through the waves and appeared on the sea level in a mighty manner.
This may be the largest fleet in the world today, and it is also the largest fleet in human history. The number of aircraft carriers alone is as high as thirty, and there are hundreds of destroyers. It also has the largest tonnage in the world today. The super battleship "Hawaii" serves as the backbone. Those eighteen-inch and twenty-inch battleship cannons raised high can show the world their power far better than the aircraft on the aircraft carrier.
When this mighty and murderous huge fleet sailed out of Pearl Harbor, Americans everywhere came to watch and cheer near the entire fleet's channel. Everyone was waving their flags and hats desperately, looking forward to it. Hope that this huge fleet can return triumphantly - instead of just sending back the bad news of the entire army's annihilation and the shame of sinking into the sand by radio like the previous fleet sorties...
Behind the fleet, on the USS Enterprise, the flagship of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Halsey looked smug.
The flagship Enterprise was surrounded by battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers, surrounded by countless destroyers, covering the entire sea surface. Behind the combat ships, there are hundreds of tankers, cargo ships and troop carriers - the number of ships gathered under Halsey's command at this time is the most since he joined the army, and is more than the fleet that set off from Alaska to Japan last fall. , and the scale is much larger. The scene is really spectacular.
Therefore, Admiral Halsey is even more confident about the victory in the Mariana Islands battle: a quarter of the entire U.S. Navy's combat ships, more than 50,000 landing troops, and more than 2,000 aircraft of various types Carrier-based aircraft! No matter what, we 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, and Guam among the Mariana Islands, as outposts to guard against Japan. Because these isolated islands were far away from the mainland of the United States and had few standing troops, they were quickly captured by the Japanese army in the early stages of the war.
In the years after the war began, the navies of the United States and Japan fought fiercely, mainly in the Fiji Islands, Samoa Islands, New Caledonia and New Zealand in the South Pacific, and repeatedly engaged in tug-of-war. But Wake Island, which is remote in the northern hemisphere, has calmed down relatively - Wake Island is 500 nautical miles from Guam to the west and 2,000 nautical miles from Hawaii to the east. It is also small in area, only nine square kilometers, not enough to serve as a base for a large fleet. .
If the U.S. Pacific Fleet were to launch an expedition all the way from Hawaii to Wake Island without seizing absolute sea control, such a laborious attack would be an act of suicide. Even if Wake Island is barely captured, it will definitely not be able to hold it in the face of the Japanese navy's counterattack. Therefore, in the past few years, except for occasional fighter bombings and artillery fleet sneak attacks, the U.S. Navy has never attempted to recapture these lost islands.
They waited until the U.S. Strategic Air Force successfully bombed Tokyo and paralyzed the Japanese command system. Halsey's fleet swept across the eastern part of the Japanese archipelago, causing the old Japanese Empire to collapse for a while. The U.S. Navy that stayed at Pearl Harbor tentatively organized a small fleet and successfully regained the territory that the Japanese took the initiative without firing a shot. Abandoned Wake Island - In view of the sharp deterioration of the situation, the Japanese Combined Fleet Command in Truk ordered hundreds of marines stationed on Wake Island at the end of last year to voluntarily abandon the base and retreat to the Mariana Islands. Saipan and Guam.
Next, with the surrender of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Okinawa, the U.S. Navy has almost cut the territory of the Japanese Empire in half, leaving only the last stumbling block that is still connected - Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. Island (Tinian) is the center of the Mariana Islands.
Now, Halsey took almost all the American warships in Pearl Harbor to attack, trying to crush these last few stumbling blocks!
Moreover, "Bad Bull" Halsey's real target is not just these few small islands. The enemy he most desires to defeat is always the Japanese Navy Combined Fleet - even a layman knows that Japan's wartime base camp is now The large-scale immigration of millions of people cannot be concealed from their opponents. The Japanese wartime base camp was basically kept secret. Therefore, as early as the preparation stage of the "Four Million Men to Nanyang" operation, the US military had obtained a considerable amount of intelligence information, and after confirming the authenticity of the intelligence, it quickly determined the identity of the Japanese fleet. Southbound route.
——The Taiwan Strait is impassable. Even if the U.S. air force stationed in Taiwan and Fujian cannot hit Japanese warships, it can still destroy dozens of percent of the cruise ships transporting immigrants. The South China Sea has basically fallen into the Allies' sphere of influence. No matter how many warships the Japanese fleet escorts, entering it is equivalent to being in a hunting ground. Although the Philippine Islands are still raging with war, the US military has established forward bases on many islands.
The American torpedo boats, destroyers and escort aircraft carriers stationed in the Philippines may be relatively unreliable when used to deal with the combined fleet, but if they are used to conduct maritime guerrilla warfare and carry out piecemeal attacks on the huge Japanese immigrant fleet, it will be enough to make the Japanese miserable. .
Therefore, there is actually only one relatively safe route that the Japanese Combined Fleet and the immigration fleet can take at the moment, which 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. The reconnaissance report sent by the submarine force to Halsey also confirmed this - the "Saury" submarine has just discovered at least four Yamato-class battleships and more than ten Japanese aircraft carriers in the waters of Iwo Jima!
Obviously, a battleship lineup of this size can only belong to the main force of the Japanese Navy's combined fleet that covers the migration convoy going south!
This news excited the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet that had just sailed out of Pearl Harbor. In addition to the excitement, Admiral Halsey also specially issued instructions to the "Saury" submarine and another Little Shark-class submarine that later arrived in the waters of Iwo Jima. After receiving the order, the two submarines were ordered to continue tracking this huge Japanese fleet until they could no longer persist. They only needed to report the position of the Japanese fleet once a day, but attacks were strictly prohibited! The words "no attacks are strictly prohibited" were emphasized several times by Admiral Halsey - for fear that the commanders of the two submarines would not be able to restrain themselves and would attack rashly, sinking several merchant ships, but alarming this prehistoric Mammoth-like super prey will bring more unnecessary variables to the upcoming sea battle...
However, Admiral Halsey, who was bent on beating the Japanese devils at this time, did not expect that his fleet was also prey in the eyes of the enemy...
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More than a hundred nautical miles ahead of Halsey's fleet, somewhere in an empty, shipless sea area, a large submarine quietly surfaced.
After a while, as the water on the submarine deck drained away, various sea radars, air defense radars and satellite antennas that clearly surpassed the technological level of World War II were automatically deployed and operated on the top of the submarine's control tower. As a thick round watertight door hatch opened with a snap, the time traveler Ma Tong, who was wearing a sailor suit, also walked onto the wet front deck of the submarine holding a [weather controller].
Looking around, the surrounding sea was empty, without any smoke pillars or sail shadows. The sky was also clear, and no annoying airplanes could be seen.
"...Well, very good, it seems that this submarine has not been discovered by the Americans yet..."
Ma Tong put down the [Weather Controller] on the deck, took a deep breath of fresh air from the sea, stretched again, and then used the telescope to observe the calm and calm sea around him, while thinking so casually. He looked up, and then shouted to someone unknown, "...Hey! Miss Sophie, has your antenna connected with the satellite? Is there anything wrong with our current position?"
The next moment, a girl with light blue hair appeared out of thin air next to her. She was Miss Sophie's clone on the submarine "Iona". "...has been contacted, according to the satellite The signal indicates that the position of the ship is accurate, and the Halsey fleet is just ahead... Moreover, according to radar reconnaissance, no trace of any ships or aircraft has been found on the sea and in the air within a range of 40 kilometers nearby... …”
"...Very good, then let's bring out a level 18 typhoon and send the Americans on the other side to the 18th level of hell!"
Senior Sister Ma Tong licked her lips excitedly, and was about to start operating the [Weather Controller], but was slapped away by Miss Ship Niang, "...Wait! Stop! You are trying to kill me Did the submarine also capsize? Let’s dive underwater first!”
——Next, with the churning of water and bubbles, the "Iona" submarine, which adopted a large number of future black technologies, disappeared from the sea again... After a while, on the originally calm sea of the Central Pacific, Suddenly the wind began to pick up slowly...
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PS: There is a saying: "I have witnessed the rise and fall of countless empires, the birth and destruction of species. For thousands of years, only the stupidity of mortals is eternal. Your appearance has verified this." And today's Turkey Coup, obviously can be commented with this sentence.
——The Turkish military took advantage of Mr. Egypt's Sudan's absence to launch an attack and occupied the TV station to give a speech. Ethiopia used social network platforms to mobilize civilians to take to the streets to block the movement. Rebel tanks on the streets of Istanbul were occupied by civilians, which seemed to remind people of the August 19th Incident in the Soviet Union. The tank fires, helicopter bombings, and staff shootouts that occurred in Ankara were like Japan's February 26th Mutiny. In the end, the Turkish rebels, who were defeated, hijacked a frigate and went into exile, which was like the Potemkin uprising in Tsarist Russia... In short, it gave the impression that both sides of the coup were stupid. There is news that the rebels in the coup are Turkish religious radicals, the same people who previously colluded with ISIS and brought down the Russian plane. Because the government is now trying to soften its stance on Russia and is planning to blame them as accomplices of terrorists. Therefore, these people do not want to be cooked by a rabbit, so they have no choice but to jump over the wall. That is why the coup is so messy and nonsensical. I guess Türkiye will be in chaos for a while.