Chapter 950 Paper Tiger Upgrade
"This is all nonsense! Rushing directly from Palmyra Atoll to Midway Island, taking a straight line of 1,300 nautical miles, sailing at a high speed of 25 knots for 52 hours, without considering air cover... This is not fighting the Pacific War. , we are obviously fighting the Russo-Japanese War and the Sino-Japanese War!”
This was the then-Japanese Navy Commander-in-Chief Marshal Nagano Shushen’s evaluation of the “running attack + night attack” combat plan reported by the 8th Fleet Headquarters.
This combat plan took Kami Shigetoku 30 minutes to make. It was very simple and ancient, and did not consider air cover at all (Kami Shigetoku and Mikawa Junyi did not understand aviation warfare). It means to concentrate the main force of the 8th Fleet, attack Midway Island from Palmyra Atoll, calculate the time to enter the battlefield, use the cover of night to fight a night battle with the unknown number, unknown situation, and unknown U.S. fleet before dawn. Go, retreat toward Oahu.
In the eyes of the "ship faction" staff and the "aviation faction" staff in the military command department, this plan is an out-and-out suicide plan. Because the Japanese military estimates that the U.S. Navy has assembled at least 50 aircraft carriers in the waters near Midway Island!
50 ships! There might be 2,000 planes on it!
Moreover, in addition to aircraft carriers, the U.S. Pacific Fleet also has at least two Iowa-class battleships and one USS Washington... These are all battleships with 406mm caliber cannons. The dozen cruisers of the 8th Fleet, What if a destroyer encounters someone other than to die?
Even a night attack? Don’t you know the Americans have radar? The 27 406mm cannons on the three battleships can smash Mikawa Junichi's flagship Chokai heavy cruiser into pieces at a distance of 30 kilometers. The Type 90 torpedoes on it (the three Kaohsiung-class heavy cruisers have not yet been equipped with Type 93 spears) Torpedoes) won’t even have a chance to launch!
This irresponsible combat plan can only have one consequence if implemented in the end, and that is to break the jade!
But now the head of the Japanese Navy is not Military Commander Nagano Shushen, but Navy Minister Isoroku Yamamoto.
"Since we have decided to join the ship together, what else is there to be reluctant to do?" Isoroku Yamamoto argued against all opinions at the combat meeting of the Military Command Department. "And in the 'Jie No. 1' plan, the 8th Fleet was originally going to fight at night. and mine warfare to attack the American fleet. How could such a surprise attack not take risks?
If Mikawa's plan is rejected now, then the 8th Fleet will not be able to do anything in the 'Operation Jie-1'. It is better to transfer the 8th Fleet back to the homeland as soon as possible. "
Yamamoto Isoroku finally made the decision: the combat operations of the 8th Fleet will be decided by Mikawa Junichi freely.
After receiving the permission for combat, Mikawa Junichi immediately gathered the 16 ships he had brought to Palmyra Atoll and swooped towards the waters of Midway Island at high speed with a gamble mentality.
These 16 ships are: Chokai heavy cruiser, Aoba heavy cruiser, Kinugasa heavy cruiser, Kako heavy cruiser, Furutaka heavy cruiser, Tenryu light cruiser, Yubari light cruiser, Kawauchi light cruiser , light cruiser Isuzu, destroyer Shimakaze, destroyer Tanakaze, destroyer Yamagumo, destroyer Kasumi, destroyer Shiroro, destroyer Maysame and destroyer Ekaze.
Among them, the Nadakaze destroyer is not the Nadakaze among the Minekaze-class destroyers built in the Taisho period, but the second ship of the Shimakaze-class destroyer started in Showa 16 (the Minekaze-class Nadakaze was taken over by the United States in 1943 The submarine was sunk in the waters of the Southern Ocean). The Shimakaze class is the perfect fleet destroyer in the eyes of the Japanese Navy. It has been built in large quantities since the second half of 1942 (32 planned) to make up for the shortage of destroyers in the Japanese Navy.
The standard displacement of this class of destroyers reaches 2,567 tons, and the maximum speed is as high as an astonishing 40.9 knots! It also has a terrifying "heavy mine" configuration, equipped with three 5-unit 610mm torpedo launch tubes (used to launch Type 93 spear torpedoes), which can launch 15 powerful Type 93 torpedoes at a time. It is the ideal "torpedo team" "Core!
In addition to the two "Shimakaze" class ships, there are 13 ships in Mikawa Junichi's fleet equipped with terrifying Type 93 torpedoes. Only the flagship Chokai heavy cruiser does not have Type 93 torpedoes. However, the scene of 15 ships launching more than a hundred Type 93 torpedoes at the same time still made Mikawa Junichi and Kami Shigetoku extremely excited. They did not expect that at this time, an American admiral was considering whether to annihilate them immediately. This is their fleet!
"Commander, send out the attack aircraft group," Rear Admiral Browning, chief of staff of the 5th Fleet and chief of staff of Task Force 50, said to his immediate superior Spruance. "According to reports from reconnaissance aircraft and submarines, this is an unmanned attack aircraft group." Small fleet covered by aircraft."
What was discovered was of course the main force of Japan's 8th Fleet under Mikawa Junichi. The reconnaissance plane dispatched by the U.S. 50th Task Force discovered them at 8:35 a.m. on February 8, Hawaii time. At this time, the 50th Task Force had already slipped from the waters northeast of Midway Island to the waters southwest of Midway Island. It was only more than 200 nautical miles away from the Mikawa Fleet that was heading north!
And it is different from the all-fighter configuration of the U.S. aircraft carriers in the previous Battle of Christmas Island. This time, the 16 fleet aircraft carriers (including light fleet aircraft carriers) owned by the 50th Task Force and the 30th Task Force were all equipped with dive bombers. and torpedo bombers.
All Essex-class aircraft carriers have 24 SBD-5 dive bombers and 18 TBF/TBM-1C torpedo bombers, as well as 24 F4Us and 24 F6Fs, and 9 backup aircraft.
The Enterprise aircraft carrier has 24 SBD-5s, 11Cs, 18 F4Us and 18 F6Fs, and 8 backup aircraft.
All Independence-class aircraft carriers have 9 SBD-5s, 1Cs, 12 F6Fs, and 4 backup aircraft.
In other words, the 50th Task Force, which has 10 aircraft carriers (4 Essex-class and 6 Independence-class), has a very strong anti-ship capability!
Moreover, the fleet air defense capabilities of the 50th and 30th Task Forces (with Halsey as commander) were not weak at all, because all the fighter pilots on these two fleets were veterans who had participated in the Battle of Panama, the Battle of Christmas Island and a series of subsequent sea and air battles, and had shot down at least one Japanese fighter.
In addition, all the dive bomber and torpedo pilots on these 16 aircraft carriers were selected from veteran pilots who had participated in many actual combats.
The reason why the 50th and 30th Task Forces were equipped with elite soldiers was, of course, to fight a decisive battle with the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet.
The 740 carrier-based (commonly used) aircraft on these 16 aircraft carriers are definitely the elite of the US Navy Air Force, and they have only one goal, which is the Japanese aircraft carriers!
So Spruance rejected Browning's suggestion without hesitation: "We continue to hide until the Japanese aircraft carriers appear!"
"But what about this Japanese fleet?" Browning asked, "They are likely to go to Midway Island."
"Vice Admiral Turner has enough strength to deal with a small Japanese fleet." Spruance said very confidently.
Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner was personally selected by Spruance as the commander of the amphibious operations fleet of the 5th Fleet (actually responsible for landing). Although the American ships remaining near Midway Island are organized as part of the 51st Task Force, they are under the command of Vice Admiral Turner because they are performing landing missions.
However, the ships remaining near Midway Island are not the main force of the 51st Task Force. Otherwise, with 9 battleships, Mikawa Gunichi and Kamishinobu would really be sending themselves to death.
Since the mission of the 51st Task Force after occupying Midway Island was to lure the enemy and consume Japanese fighter planes (just like the Battle of Christmas Island), Vice Admiral Fletcher assigned a patrol squadron to cover the landing fleet, and then led the main force of the fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands to show its presence.
According to the Americans' wishful thinking, the 51st Task Force could sink at most 100 or 80 ships, and as long as all the Japanese shore-based aircraft in the Hawaiian Islands were destroyed, the air supremacy of the Hawaiian Islands would be in hand.
The 50th and 30th Task Forces were ambushed to attack the aircraft carriers of the Japanese Combined Fleet. As long as they succeeded, the sea supremacy of the Hawaiian Islands would be obtained.
The main mission of the 31st Task Force was to capture Christmas Island, on the one hand as a base of the US Navy near the Hawaiian Islands; on the other hand as a transit station for B-29 to Australia (this role can also be assumed by Midway Island); on the other hand as a base for B-17 and B-24 to bomb the Hawaiian Islands - B-17 and B-24 were prepared to drop solidified narcotics and mustard gas bombs!
Finally, B-29 and hundreds of submarines deployed in the South Pacific and the Western Pacific (there was no sea control in this time and space, so the submarine force became very large) will also play a role in the Second Battle of the Hawaiian Islands!
The deployment of B-29 began in the fourth quarter of 1943, and solidified arsenal, bombs, fuel and B-29 parts have been shipped to Australia. At the same time, the US military in Australia (commanded by MacArthur) has been building large airports for 1,000 B-29s in Darwin and Port Hedland in northwest Australia since October 1943.
Once some B-29s are in place, the devastating bombing of Southeast Asian oil fields and the crazy disruption of submarine forces will be launched at the same time. Japan can either send limited air forces to Southeast Asia to defend oil fields and waterways, or it can only watch its oil source lost.
Without oil, Japan will certainly not be able to defend the Hawaiian Islands.