Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four Patiently Waiting

It's not that Yamamoto Fifty-Six is ​​so convinced of the battleship Yamato that is still under construction, but that he has lost confidence in the tactics of relying entirely on Japanese naval aviation to compete for battlefield dominance. Originally, Yamamoto was a general who was very supportive of the development of naval aviation. He also relied on this support to agree to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, won the Battle of Wake Island, the Battle of the Marshall Islands, and forced the US Army away in the Philippines. Malacca sank many British warships. This made him more convinced of his theory and the superiority of Japanese naval aviation.

However, the successive blows made him have to re-examine his trust. After all, the short-lived years when the naval aviation was invincible are gone forever. The current battle situation has proved time and time again that the Japanese naval aviation has lost its original glory.

During the first Battle of Kauai, this force was exhausted, and as a result, Yamamoto had to abandon his insistence on defeating the U.S. Navy's combat plan in one go. This made Japan voluntarily give up the opportunity for a decisive battle for the first time, and it also allowed the Japanese navy to end its invincible history of war.

In the second Kauai Island battle that followed, the Japanese naval aviation fell into a technical disadvantage. The myth of the Zero fighter's invincibility was broken by the U.S. Navy's improved version of the P-40 fighter jet, and because of the hostility with Germany, the United States also obtained first-hand information on the Zero fighter from Germany. As a result, in the second battle of Kauai Island, Japan was forced to lose due to the huge loss of aviation.

This time, Japan lost the Ryujo aircraft carrier in the decisive battle of Midway Island, which once again proved the decline of the Japanese naval aviation. Yamamoto also eventually had another tactical idea. He felt that naval aviation was becoming less and less capable of sustaining the offensive, and that Japan must come up with more deadly tactics in the next battle.

So he was influenced by the battleship commanders who had always been the majority in the Japanese Navy, and began to believe that the battleship decisive battle was a more mature and more advantageous tactic for Japan.

His idea is very simple: since the naval aviation is no longer able to maintain its own advantages, then it is enough to entangle with the US Navy carrier-based aircraft wholeheartedly, and the attack task is handed over to the battleships of the Japanese Navy, which have certain advantages in quality and quantity. , using the super cannons and heavy armor of the new battleships Yamato and Nagato to rush into the US fleet and destroy the US fleet.

I have to say that this idea is actually a tactic used by the Japanese Navy in another time and space. It can be said that this tactic is actually in line with Japan’s national conditions at certain times. Totally fanciful and baseless.

Of course, there is a fundamental difference between Yamamoto Fifty-Six’s ideas and the ideas of the Japanese high-level leaders in the Wright Gulf battle in the late World War II in another time and space. In another time and space, the Japanese navy used the carrier-based aircraft as a bait, and Yamamoto The core idea of ​​Fifty-Six is ​​to use carrier-based aircraft to cover battleships for fleet decisive battles.

This set of tactics is a bit like the Cold War period in the 1970s and 1980s.

The combat idea of ​​the Soviet Navy - use the only carrier-based aircraft on the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to destroy the air supremacy of the United States, cover other warships and use long-range anti-ship missiles to "fight bayonets". However, this set of tactics is not an advanced combat idea, but a compromise made due to the limitations of the weapons in hand.

On the other hand, the Yamato battleship did let Yamamoto Fifty-Six see the reason for the battleship decisive battle. This epoch-making super battleship had the world's number one strength at the time in terms of armor thickness and cannon caliber. A battleship that can overwhelm the opponent is always more reassuring than relying on those carrier-based aircraft units that have lost several times, isn't it?

At the same time that the Japanese Navy retreated to Wake Island and the Marshall Islands, the German Navy's aircraft carrier fleet sailed in the North Atlantic for a week. The purpose of this huge fleet going to sea is to completely cut off the supply line between Iceland and the United States.

Lütjens is watching the fighter jets released by his own aircraft carrier fleet take off from the deck. Except for one German aircraft carrier, the Bismarck, which is being repaired in France, the remaining four aircraft carriers are all present. There are currently three aircraft carriers in the fleet. It is not difficult at all to fly 6 carrier-based fighters in one go.

"Long live the head of state! Report to the general that the first batch of 18 planes responsible for reconnaissance and patrol have been sent out. According to the news from the peripheral destroyers, no suspicious targets have been found in the nearby waters." An officer stood in Lütjens Behind him, he stood at attention and saluted and reported to him: "The security helicopter on the Empire is taking off, and the security helicopter on the Zeppelin is also ready to take off."

"Order the entire fleet to remain vigilant. We will encounter enemy aircraft taking off from Greenland on this route. Be careful not to enter the radius of movement of land-based aircraft." Lütjens put down the binoculars in his hand and ordered the officer behind him. : "Is there any news about attacking the squadron?"

The officer opened the notebook, looked at it and said, "Apart from the report telegrams sent on time, there is no news. They are keeping the radio silent. According to their pre-fixed route, they may run into the patrolling British navy." Squadron."

The largest aircraft carrier formation commanded by Lütjens is 4 ships. Now that Germany has one more battleship, it is obviously not suitable for the entire fleet to be handed over to Lütjens. Therefore, the aircraft carrier Tirpitz and Raeder The battleship Admiral formed the First Squadron, more than a hundred nautical miles away, as a guerrilla fleet attacking American shipping lines.

The commander of this squadron is Vice Admiral Lindemann, a 45-year-old middle-aged general. Like Lütjens, he came from the traditional gunboat faction of the navy, and he also has a bright future with Lütjens' promotion. bright. Because of his eye-catching performance and tenacious combat in the Battle of the English Channel, he was eventually promoted to vice admiral.

He was originally a gunboat commander, but now he has transformed into an aircraft carrier commander along with Lütjens. It is also because he was the gunboat commander first and then served as the aircraft carrier commander, this time he was appointed as the squadron Commander, responsible for commanding the German attack fleet.

The mission plan of the Navy of the Third Reich this time is as follows: the attack fleet will attack and disrupt the American transport ship, lure the main British fleet to come to support, and then lure the opponent out of the cover of land-based aviation, and use the three aircraft carriers ambush in the open sea The main fleet formed to annihilate the opponents and achieve the purpose of severely injuring the British army.

It can be seen that the tactics of the German army are almost the same as the decisive battle tactics drawn up by Yamamoto Fifty-Six, except that the German army used the aircraft carrier fleet for the decisive battle, while Japan used the battleship fleet for the decisive battle.

"Order the modified fw-190 fighter jets to mount torpedoes, and the Stuka dive bombers to mount aerial bombs and stand by in the hangar." Lütjens is different from Yamamoto. To put it bluntly, the German Navy is still a guerrilla force at sea, but the scale of this guerrilla force is a bit large.

There is no need to take on the offensive task, but simply responsible for destroying and annihilating the enemy's vital forces. This is the combat purpose of the German Navy, and it is almost the purpose of all military operations in Germany today-as is the army, the air force, and the navy. A means to an end.

Happier than the Japanese Navy is that the performance of the FW-190 fighter equipped with an air-cooled engine is better than that of the Zero fighter. After continuous improvement, the speed of this fighter is 100 kilometers faster than the Zero fighter. Moreover, the battle damage of German pilots is much smaller than that of Japan. These advantages allowed the German army to firmly control the air supremacy in the Atlantic Ocean. Except for some troubles caused by the British secret weapon being put into battle in the air over Iceland, the German naval aviation was in the air over the Atlantic Ocean.

In terms of the quality of the pilots, the German pilots are much stronger than the Japanese pilots, at least under the command of Lütjens, the German pilots, including Günter Lahr, have more aces or even super aces than can be counted Come. Just how powerful are these pilots? Almost relying on less than 300 aircraft, the entire Polish Air Force can be wiped out.

It stands to reason that such a powerful German naval carrier-based aircraft force should have trapped Iceland in its infancy. But the story is divided into two parts. The geographical location of Iceland really makes the German fleet feel a little bit like a hedgehog and can't say anything. Transport ships departing from Canada, as long as they detour to the north for a certain distance, they can always drive under the shelter of the Greenland field airport. This has left the German naval forces with no good way.

Similar to today, the German navy has harassed the transportation and supply lines many times. Each time, the German army took advantage of it, but it still failed to achieve the desired strategic effect. After all, the fleet needed a lot of fuel to sail, and returning empty-handed again and again made the German Navy lose its ambition to show off.

After all, large corps operations on the Eastern Front required a lot of fuel, so in order to raise fuel, naval surface ships had not appeared on the North Atlantic for two months. The helplessness of the navy under the national command.

"Just wait." After giving the order to stand by, Lütjens looked at the sea in the distance again. He didn't know whether the Royal Navy would appear as he wished this time, and he didn't know how much he could find when he went hunting this time. prey. All he can do now is wait patiently.