Chapter 1006 The Second Battle of Midway (6, 5100 Votes Plus Additional Content)

At night, the TF48 fleet slowly passed the outskirts of Port-de-France, the port closest to Antarctica in the southern Indian Ocean and part of the French overseas territory. This island is 3,000 kilometers away from Madagascar and there are almost no people on it. After bypassing the island, the journey to Perth, Australia is almost halfway.

The weather was already bitterly cold, gloomy, and visibility was extremely low. Except for the necessary duty personnel, everyone else huddled in the cabin to sleep.

"The Japanese occupied Midway Island?" Nimitz in the bridge lowered his head and asked in a low voice.

In order to maintain maximum confidentiality, the entire TF48 fleet strictly implemented radio silence, only receiving telegrams but not sending them to the outside.

Smith knew that he was sad, and comforted him: "This is an expected result. Except for more than 100 aircraft and thousands of ground troops on the island, there is nothing else that can stop the main force of the Combined Fleet. Now the Pacific Fleet adopts the aviation weakening method, and continuously dispatches B-29 and B-17 heavy bombers to attack the Japanese fleet. More than ten enemy ships have been sunk, including 4 oil tankers that are very important to Japan. I don't think the situation is as pessimistic as you think."

This set of "heavy bombing for ships" method was summarized by Turner, and it was barely a little effective: the continuous attack of the US Army and Navy sank nearly 100,000 tons of Japanese ships and more than 40 Japanese fighters at the cost of nearly 300 heavy bombers.

It is difficult to say whether this deal is worthwhile, because the loss of US aircraft and the bombs consumed are nearly 200 million US dollars, and the results they achieved are at most just over 100 million US dollars. In addition, behind the 300 heavy bombers that were shot down, there were hundreds of aircraft that barely flew back to the base, which were scarred and nearly scrapped. This was also a considerable expense.

In addition to the unfavorable economic losses, the personnel losses were also greatly disadvantageous to the United States. The 300 heavy bomber crews and other losses were nearly 3,000 people, while at least half of the Japanese pilots and crew members who fell into the water were successfully rescued, and the total personnel losses in Japan were only more than 1,200 people.

Midway Island is more than 2,400 kilometers away from Hawaii. The heavy bomber fleet could not be escorted by a fighter jet when it attacked. This kind of attack that was ready to die was even more tragic.

Ingram, Halsey and others watched pilots come from the west coast to support, attack from the base, and then come back sparsely. Each crew was required to write a suicide note before the attack. If the crew members thought they were not mentally prepared, they could wait and attack again. But under the inspiration of patriotic passion and the imitation of their companions, the US Air Force did not disobey orders for the time being, and gritted their teeth and carried out a high-intensity attack for 5 consecutive days.

Compared with the despair of losing hundreds of planes every day in the Iceland, Newfoundland, and Caribbean campaigns, this war of attrition is more like cutting meat with a blunt knife: the Americans are using economic losses and personnel losses of nearly 5:2 to outcompete the Japanese.

In the eyes of ruthless and rational people, although this exchange ratio is high, it is still worth it: 400 heavy bombers are just the output of Boeing in a week at full capacity. If Japan can destroy 100,000 tons of Japanese ships and related materials and fight off 40 opponent aircraft every week, Japan will never win this war - Japan cannot build 5 million tons of warships a year.

Let alone 5 million tons of warships, even 5 million tons of the most ordinary ships cannot be built by Japan. As long as they keep fighting, the final victory must be the United States, but everyone does not know when this turning point will come - at least there is no hope now, only the air force that can never return to the team after attacking.

In this war of attrition, the lives of the crew members are calculated by days and hours.

The Japanese side was also deeply distressed by this war of attrition. After the Midway Airport was repaired and deployed, the land-based Fw-1412s were all deployed, and the electric twin 128mm anti-aircraft guns and 88mm anti-aircraft guns were also set up. The 90mm anti-aircraft guns left by the United States were also used by Japanese officers and soldiers.

But if the United States still maintains such a high-intensity bombing frequency, without the cover of the mobile fleet, it is impossible to survive the continuous air raids in Hawaii with only the more than 100 aircraft and some anti-aircraft guns on the island. Tsukahara, who had no choice but to call for support from the country, prepared to leave a few escort aircraft carriers and precious carrier-based aircraft pilots to deal with the air war of attrition.

The Tokyo headquarters has urgently proposed to Germany to increase the purchase of Do-412 and the purchase of Ta-152, and asked the army to provide pilots and tankers to fight in the Pacific. Considering that Hori Teikichi has won a lot of benefits for the army on the Guinea issue, and even Gustav and K5 can be obtained, the army believes that this face should be given. Ishihara Kanji drew 3 flying divisions with a total of 400 fighter pilots and 12 tankers of varying tonnage from India, China and the Kwantung Army for the Navy to use - the Navy was responsible for all the aircraft, fuel, logistics and sailors on the tankers.

No one could understand why the Americans were fighting like this - wasn't it said that Americans valued the lives of their personnel the most and were the least willing to fight to the death? Why did they start fighting such a bad battle that killed 2,000 enemies and lost 5,000 of their own? Even if the United States was rich and didn't care about consumption, didn't their president care about human lives or votes?

No matter how hard it was to figure it out, the army and navy at the headquarters had the same opinion. It was impossible to give up after taking Midway Island, otherwise the Combined Fleet would not have enough foothold. If the supply line was cut off, the entire Combined Fleet would be at risk of dying overseas, and they had to grit their teeth and hold on no matter how difficult it was.

Lieutenant General Onishi Takijiro, who was once the head of the Air Force and is now the deputy chief of the Army General Staff, made an impassioned speech at the headquarters meeting: "Since the Americans are not afraid of death and send heavy bombers to fight without escort, how can we be afraid of death? We should bravely fight and let the enemy see our courage and tenacity! Let's see who can't stand it first!"

Nimitz didn't know Truman and Marshall's strategy of preparing a big move. He only knew that there was a personnel adjustment in the South American theater: his concurrent position as the commander of the South American theater was relieved and Clark was temporarily acting. Clark's acting time would not be long, because Lieutenant General Stilwell had left Chongqing and rushed to Irkutsk, preparing to return home via Kamchatka and the Aleutian line as soon as possible. In recognition of his contribution to working in the Chinese theater for many years and leading the Allied forces to "recover lost territory", Truman decided to promote him to Army General.

Knowing that Stilwell was leaving, the Chongqing authorities were jubilant. Although the Americans were now busy with their own affairs, everyone believed that the United States was still powerful. At this point, the Axis only dared to ask the United States to cease fire instead of asking the United States to surrender, which showed that they were wary of the United States. The establishment of Pakistan was also beyond the expectations of the Chongqing authorities. Many people believed that there was something to be done. Chongqing had sent secret diplomats to prepare to ask Germany to mediate the Sino-Japanese conflict. Although China and Germany declared war, everyone knew that this was just a superficial article. China and Germany had never fought each other. The relationship before the war was very good. Now that Germany was powerful, it was obvious that it was meant to cling to Berlin's thigh.

With the end of the Indian Campaign, the original Southeast Asian Theater was announced to be disbanded. Chief of Staff Wedemeyer replaced Stilwell and went to China. The stranded US troops in Pakistan also broke off with the British side. This was also included in the Anglo-Japanese Armistice Agreement.

Due to the special nature of the wartime alliance and side-by-side fighting between Britain and the United States, Mountbatten, who was in charge of the overall situation in Pakistan, could neither detain Americans as he did in China, nor hand them over to the Japanese, nor could he continue to take them in. Finally, Mountbatten proposed to send the Americans out of the country to China, and Japan agreed. Although Pakistan's military leaders, including Slim, Auchinleck, and Wilson, have always been unruly, their power will shrink immediately once there is no war. Edward VIII obviously trusts Mountbatten more - the latter was his adjutant when he was young and has a close relationship with the royal family.

In terms of maneuvering and coordinating relations between all parties, Mountbatten is obviously more suitable than several military leaders to deal with the domestic, Iranian, Japanese, and Pakistani autonomous governments.

Under his mediation, most of the US troops took a plane to leave Peshawar for Chongqing, and a small number of grassroots officers and soldiers who could not or did not want to leave continued to stay in Pakistan. In order to complete the agreement with the Japanese army, Mountbatten took a very British approach - let them swear allegiance to Edward VIII and then renounce their American nationality, become citizens of the Pakistan Dominion on the spot, and transform themselves into instructors of the Pakistan Defense Forces.

Japan also knew about the British's tricks on the US military, but now Japan is looking forward to Britain paying compensation materials as soon as possible, and also hopes to cooperate in other economic, trade and technological fields, which is considered to be asking for help from the British. Pakistan obviously has the support of Britain and Germany, but the Japanese side turned a deaf ear to this and turned a blind eye. Yamashita Tomoyuki even took the initiative to release a group of British and Pakistani officers and soldiers who were injured in the Indian campaign in order to ease relations.

After this effort, the situation in India began to stabilize.

Nimitz was worried about more than just the Pacific battlefield. The day after Japan occupied Midway Island, the main German fleet arrived in the Brazilian waters. Machar divided the fleet into two. Most of the army continued to march towards Rio and prepare for landing under the protection of four escort aircraft carriers, while the main fleet went straight to El Salvador.

That afternoon, the main German fleet entered the 800-kilometer air defense circle of El Salvador. After repelling the last round of air strikes by the Salvadoran Army Aviation that day, Marshal, the commander-in-chief of the South Atlantic Theater, decided to use a new tactic to deal with the US troops entrenched in El Salvador.

"Is this tactic really feasible?"

Ozawa shook his head: "I don't know either. Like you, this is my first time seeing it. I never knew that a war could be fought this way."

"Then let's try the Führer's strategy today. It doesn't matter if he fails. He always has many bizarre and unorthodox ideas." Marshal laughed, "The strange thing is that many of his ideas seem to be right in hindsight."

All the staff laughed...