Chapter 1061 1944: Speed and Lightning (11, 1800 Votes Plus Additional Content)
If it was the old Kakuta, the Kakuta who didn't care much about the lives of pilots, he would have ordered the fleet to turn and escape immediately after launching the attack group. However, after repeated education by Hori Teikichi, he began to understand a truth: warships can be built repeatedly. There are still 6-7 Yunlong-class or Axis-class ships on the slipway of the country. All of them will be completed next year. In the future, warships will be built one after another. If they are not enough, they can be bought from Europe. It is said that Europe started construction of 9 ships in one go after the Axis-class drawings were finalized. This does not include the production of the British. If Britain starts construction, at least 14 Axis-class ships can be built in a year. If there are not enough ships at that time, just ask Germany to buy them. Isn't this tanker relying on Europe?
But excellent pilots are not so easy to get, especially pilots who can fly night attacks. They are all elites who have been cultivated with hard work and accumulated through the trials and tribulations. Otherwise, why can't the Americans change the crew to the tanker? Isn't it because they can't afford to lose the crew? Because of Hori Teikichi's reminder, Arima Masafumi arranged a route to fly to Canada first and then attack south from Canada. The attack distance exceeded 750 kilometers, and it had to fly at least 650 kilometers when returning, which was 1,400 kilometers. In addition, the time spent bombing over the Boeing factory was quite tight at a distance of 650 kilometers, and there was even concern that it might not be enough.
So Arima Masafumi suggested that the warships simply stay where they are, and wait until the attack is successful and Lieutenant Colonel Guan Wei is sure that there is enough fuel to return before they start to retreat. Otherwise, if the aircraft does not have enough fuel, the fleet is still prepared to drive forward about 50 kilometers to meet. The only exception is the escort aircraft carrier Shenying, because the ship is the slowest and only undertakes the fleet's air defense mission. At the same time, in order to avoid dragging down the fleet when running away, it is simply arranged to run 50 kilometers in advance.
After everything was planned, the Kakuta Fleet sent a telegram to inform Hori Teikichi and Tsukahara: The Second Air Fleet's surprise attack on the Boeing factory was successful!
The surprise attack was indeed very successful. With only 16 aircraft lost, Kakuta destroyed more than 70% of the buildings and equipment in the core area of Boeing's production area. At the same time, he also destroyed 184 B-29s that had not been put into use recently. The value of this batch of aircraft alone exceeded $100 million. In addition, more than 1,200 casualties were caused in Boeing factories, the National Guard, and aircraft crews - many of them were caused by trampling on each other, some were burned to death due to incendiary bomb fluid, and more than 60 very important production line engineers were also included. The only thing that made the Americans feel fortunate was that since the attack occurred in the early morning, the experts in the R&D department were almost all resting and survived.
The loss of Boeing's production base was quite serious from the Japanese perspective. If Mitsubishi had suffered such a degree of bombing, it would be estimated that the entire base would have exploded. But for a truly developed country like the United States, the effect was only average. The same was true of the United States' strategic air raid on Germany. It seemed to be a ruin, but it was repaired as usual not long after. According to preliminary estimates, Boeing's damage will only take 6 weeks to fully restore its production line, but due to personnel and equipment issues, it will take about 12-14 weeks to restore full production capacity, affecting the overall production capacity of about 4,000 aircraft.
After hearing that the loss was not too great, Arnold was relieved. The production capacity of more than 4,000 aircraft can only be given to other factories. Not long ago, a decision was made to reduce production and adjust the structure of aircraft production lines with multiple models. This is also an important opportunity.
But the attack was still like a heavy slap in the face of the Truman administration. Even though Truman had shown signs of giving up because he did not care about the presidential election, Arnold still did not dare to neglect it. He ordered all available bombers to attack and requested reinforcements from Canada. Originally, he wanted to transfer planes from Los Angeles and San Francisco to the north to carry out bombing missions, but his subordinates dissuaded him. They knocked on the Tsukahara Fleet, which was said to have arrived in the Mexican waters. Arnold immediately reacted: Yesterday, the Japanese army raided Seattle through Canada, but who knows if the Japanese army will raid Los Angeles through Mexico tomorrow? If all the planes are transferred to Seattle now, what will happen if the Japanese army attacks Los Angeles tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?
Moreover, there is a transport fleet in the Los Angeles waters. This is Hawaii's life-saving fleet - not only a large amount of fuel, but also many land and sea aircraft. If this fleet is destroyed again, he estimates that he can only resign like Turner.
Therefore, he only dispatched the army aviation in the direction of Seattle and Portland to attack, and at the same time asked the Canadians for help.
The army aviation staff judged basically correctly that the Tsukahara fleet was indeed in the Mexican waters, but it was estimated that there was a little problem. The Tsukahara fleet could barely reach Los Angeles in three days, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow as they thought.
The Seattle Army Aviation bomber group, which was in a hurry to prepare for takeoff, did not take off the first plane until 7:15, and did not officially set off until 7:54 after assembling. This was almost the time when the Japanese pilots arrived over the fleet and prepared to line up for landing. The only wise thing the Seattle Air Force commander did was not to send out reconnaissance planes to search first, but to directly dispatch the attack group, divided into several waves, to search and prepare for the attack at the same time, and agreed that it would be best to find the group of planes of the Japanese fleet, report their position, and wait for other groups to gather before launching the attack - this gave the Japanese army time to breathe, and the returning attack group could land and resupply leisurely, and then continue after replacing substitutes.
Arima Masabumi was very stuck on distance and time. After the last few planes landed, the fuel tanks were almost empty. If they delayed for a few more minutes, they might fall into the sea. However, the pilots themselves are not worried. The later they land, the more experienced they are, and they are as familiar with the aircraft as their own bodies.
Tsunoda ran to the deck and high-fived the pilots, and then cheered on the ground crew and sailors: "Look at you next!"
The sky is bright and clear, the sun has risen very high. On the sea is the Tsunoda fleet chopping through the waves and escaping at a high speed of 27 knots. In the sky is the Seattle air raid group in hot pursuit - Truman's order to severely investigate and deal with those who have failed in their duties has been issued. Even if the president is about to retire, this kind of order is no small matter.
It wasn't until 10:27 that the U.S. bombers discovered the Tsunoda fleet. The latter also noticed that there were not many U.S. aircraft in the first batch of attacks, and the staff report also intercepted U.S. telegrams, so he guessed that other enemy formations were searching. He boldly ordered the air defense fighters that had been responsible for direct cover of the fleet since early morning to take the initiative to attack, "after defeating the enemy, they quickly landed for supplies, and other aircraft performed air defense missions."
32 Do-412s immediately pounced ferociously toward nearly 50 US military attack aircraft.
"The Boeing factory in Seattle was attacked in the early morning. The Army Aviation has already severely damaged this fleet? General Arnold wants us to intercept, but Spruance disagrees?" At around 1 p.m., he led the TF50 fleet to prepare to receive the transport force. When Halsey received the telegram from Washington, he suddenly became confused: Why did the Japanese attack Seattle inexplicably?
"Didn't they say they bombed Boeing? They probably thought we wouldn't be able to build airplanes if we bombed Boeing."
After listening to McCain's explanation, Halsey couldn't help but laugh: Not to mention that Boeing couldn't be bombed like this. Even if it was bombed, it wouldn't be able to paralyze its heavy bomber production capacity. American aircraft factories are spread across the country. However, the Seattle shipyard is one of the only three shipyards on the West Coast that can build escort carriers and Liberty Ships. He believes that under the current situation, it is more important than the aircraft factory. The aircraft factory doesn’t matter?)
At 10:41, Japanese air defense fighters repelled the first wave of US attack groups; 11 minutes later, Japanese fighter jets returning in the early morning assumed the main air defense mission and repelled the second wave of US attack groups; 7 minutes later, they repelled the third wave. Attack group... This US military attack group was partly composed of Army aviation and partly Hainan aviation. Due to improper coordination, they all entered the battle in a scale of about 30-50 aircraft. Not only did they fail to cause significant damage to the Japanese army, but they also suffered heavy casualties. , 73 aircraft were beaten down, and the Japanese army only lost 14 aircraft. Moreover, 9 parachuting pilots were "fished" by the destroyer, and they took a short rest and prepared to fly again.
It was not until 11:18 that the US military assembled a large formation of nearly 200 aircraft to attack. More than 20 minutes later, the fleet retreated and sent a result report saying "our attack group severely damaged the enemy fleet."
In fact, the heavy damage was obviously wrong. The Seattle defenders exaggerated the results in order to save face. Whether it was intentional or not is another matter, but the report sounds quite impressive:
Sunk 1 Japanese fleet aircraft carrier (the escort carrier Condor was hit by 4 bombs and sank), was suspected of sinking 1 Japanese fleet aircraft carrier (Unryu was hit by a near-missile bomb, but was actually undamaged), and severely damaged 1 fleet aircraft carrier (Amagi A 1,000-pound bomb hit the stern of the ship. The damage was not too great and did not affect takeoff and landing);
Severely damaged one enemy super battleship (the Musashi was hit by two 1,000-pound bombs, not even a hit), and was suspected of sinking one other battleship (the Kongo was actually hit by only three near-misses);
Sink at least 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and 4 destroyers, and severely damage 1-2 enemy heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers each (the heavy cruiser Kaohsiung was actually hit by a 1,000-pound bomb, so it counts So, two Mutsuki-class destroyers, Bungetsu and Nagatsuki, were sunk, and the rest were near-missiles).
The CCP shot down more than 90 Japanese aircraft in air defense and offensive operations (the Japanese lost 16 aircraft in actual offensive operations and 33 fighter jets in air defense operations).
In order to achieve these results, the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force lost more than 100 additional aircraft in addition to the previous losses. A total of 226 aircraft of various types were lost in the four rounds of attacks. Another 19 aircraft were scrapped after returning to the airport. The overall loss rate was as high as 69 %!
The originally serious war between iron and fire was completely changed by the Canadians' subsequent comedy...