Chapter 459 Caribbean Sea (1)

While blowing up the lock, explosions were heard everywhere on the battlefield. The Marine Brigade blew up all the heavy equipment, and then boarded the destroyer with the Japanese naval officers and soldiers on Mutsu and Hiei to retreat. Night transportation is Japan's hidden talent. There was the "Tokyo Express" at the beginning, and then there was the retreat from Guadalcanal. What the Marine Brigade had to do was to destroy the weapons and board the ship.

Watching the destroyer full of marines and naval officers and soldiers leave, Kusaka Renji frowned and asked: "Sir, the mission is completed, but how to retreat now?"

The staff had studied the retreat route more than once, but there was no particularly good strategy. It seemed that there were crises everywhere: the Caribbean Sea is a semi-enclosed sea area. There is a way to turn northwest to Florida, and there is also a way to go northeast from the Windward Strait between Haiti and Cuba, or the Mona Strait between Dominica and Puerto Rico. The last one is to go east-retreat from the waters of the Windward Islands.

There was another option at first, which was not to destroy the canal first, but to destroy it after retreating to the Pacific Ocean through the canal. However, after hearing that the canal would take at least 6 hours, Hori Teikichi gave up the idea: there are two locks in the Pacific direction. What if the United States knew that he was using the canal to retreat and directly destroyed it? That means the entire fleet is trapped inside, so he still has to find a way to retreat in the Caribbean Sea.

To the northwest, he will be strangled by Nicaragua and the Florida Peninsula, and to the northeast, he will be attacked by Puerto Rico and Florida. Moreover, Hori Teikichi always believed that the US Atlantic Fleet would soon attack him. Since the United Fleet launched a trade disruption in the Antilles and was exposed, the US Atlantic Fleet could not stay there doing nothing. From the perspective of time, it should be very close. If it retreated from the northeast or northwest, it would be hard to guarantee that it would crash into this fleet.

Fleet decisive battle Hori Teikichi may not be afraid of the Atlantic Fleet, but it is very disadvantageous to fight with the main force of the enemy fleet when the enemy can get a lot of land-based aviation support. He thought again and again, approved Tsukahara's suggestion, and moved eastward overnight.

"Sir, tomorrow will be a hard battle."

At 3 a.m., looking at the destroyer formation full of personnel and speeding away, Kusaka Renji said bitterly.

If I make my own analysis and retreat eastward, the enemy will definitely come to a similar conclusion. The only hope is that the aircraft carrier formation retreating in the afternoon will be lucky enough to delay the time of being attacked by enemy aircraft.

At 7:15 a.m. on April 20, Brooke led the first wave of the US military attack and did not attack the Axis Fleet bombardment formation near the Canal Zone. Instead, he crossed more than 900 kilometers and headed straight for the Panama and Colombia triangle area, preparing to attack the Axis aircraft carrier formation discovered here yesterday. According to Brooke's idea, the enemy may not know that they will attack here, because this place is too far from Nicaragua, beyond the normal attack range of the US military fleet. Except for the B-25, other aircraft seem to be unable to attack.

He hoped that the enemy would have this fluke, but he was disappointed when he arrived at the battlefield - the scene was empty, except for a few destroyers, there was not even an aircraft carrier. He did not want to waste time and energy on these small targets. Shortly after he issued an order to disperse the formation and search for the enemy fleet, a large number of enemy planes suddenly emerged from the clouds, with a number of more than 90, all of which were Bf-219. They threw away the auxiliary fuel tanks and rushed towards the US fleet fiercely.

After the second special supplement order was executed last night, the number of fighters in the mobile fleet was restored to 128, but all the fighters that could be used for supplement on the Commander Tasker had been exhausted. If there were any more losses, except for the 8 scattered parts on the two water aircraft carriers, there would be no supplements.

Tsukahara made a major decision in the early morning: to ambush a large number of aircraft in the sea area where the fleet was yesterday. The fleet quickly retreated and only left 36 direct-cover aircraft to protect itself, and the rest were sent out to perform missions. This was a very serious gamble. If the US attack aircraft did not attack the triangle sea area as he expected but continued to attack the canal area, it meant that Hori Teikichi's artillery formation would not get any cover. Now it seems that such a risk was obviously successful.

When Kusaka Ryunosuke asked why he was sure that the US military would launch an air strike and why he was not afraid of not being able to return, he smiled faintly: "If you can't go back, don't go back!"

"Didn't they say that the Americans would not push for a desperate attack?"

"No! If there is such an order, most pilots will refuse, but the United States does not actually need to launch a desperate attack." Tsukahara lightly pointed to the map in the south, "This is Colombia. After they finish the air strike, they can just find a Colombian airport to land. If they can't find an airport, they can just parachute over Colombia to escape - do you think Colombia has the courage to detain American pilots? As for the planes that may fall into the hands of Colombia, the Americans will not care..."

This idea completely coincides with Brooke's: this was thought up by him and Cohen after much thought, and reported to Washington for approval overnight. So he led a large formation consisting of 16 F4Us, 24 P-47s, 36 SBDs, 24 TBFs and 32 B-25s to attack.

More than 200 planes fought desperately over the sea, and the battle situation was one-sided: the American pilots traveled for more than three hours, while the Axis fighter pilots only had to wait in the sky for the enemy to tire themselves out. Their numbers were not much different from those of the US military, and there were no targets to worry about below, so they could completely let go and fight a large-scale fierce battle.

"The enemy's planes are here, their aircraft carriers must not be far away, hurry, spread out and search, spread out..." Brooke shouted loudly in the plane.

But it was useless to spread out, the SBD and TBF were still shot down one after another by the Japanese and German planes - now the East Coast Army Aviation has no pilots capable of flying TBF to carry out anti-ship torpedo attacks. Today's batch is all drawn from the Navy Aviation. The central states are not near the sea, so they can't draw out TBF torpedo pilots, and the pilots on the West Coast have not yet assembled. But the Navy Aviation also has its own difficulties. They don't have many TBF pilots. Apart from this batch, there are only carrier-based pilots left, but Admiral Jin strictly forbids them to be used.

At 7:30, the bombardment formation received news that the fleet was fighting fiercely. At this time, the main force of the fleet was retreating towards Aruba, Venezuela at a speed of 23 knots. Hearing that the American fleet was fighting fiercely with their own fleet, everyone was relieved, but Hori Teiji was still worried.