March 17, 1943, 9:45 p.m.
Eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Ecuador, 180 nautical miles.
The light of several dazzling searchlights pierced the dark night, like several lightsabers, straight into the sky.
A large Japanese fleet aircraft carrier with a full load displacement of more than 40,000 tons turned on its searchlight in a sea area near the Panama Canal, where US reconnaissance planes and submarines were everywhere However, at this time, the little Hersman who was on this aircraft carrier knew that the commander of the First Mobile Fleet, Jizaburo Ozawa, was really a last resort.
The losses of the First Mobile Fleet in this Panamanian naval battle were too great, not only the two "Soryu"-class aircraft carriers, such as the "Soryu" class and the "Yunryu"-class Soryu-class evolution of the Soryu, such medium-sized aircraft carriers may take some time to be built by Japanese shipyards, but if they are built by European Community shipyards, 18 months from laying the keel to completion will be enough.
Now that Britain itself has become a member of the European Community, the European Community's shipbuilding capacity is very rich, and it is not a problem to start 10 or 20 ships at a time.
The problem is that the Japanese are reluctant to give up their money, Germany is not an American tyrant after all, and it cannot afford to play the Lend-Lease Act, so it can only engage in "barter trade", so Japan must come up with something valuable in exchange Of course, in the face of the survival of the country, money is not a problem.
Therefore, what Japan lacks now is not aircraft carriers, but pilots who drive carrier-based aircraft, and Japan's biggest loss in this Panama naval battle is not 2 medium-sized aircraft carriers, but pilots on aircraft carriers.
What about other aircraft carriers, Little Hesman doesn't know, but the situation on the Akagi, Little Hesman is clear.
This morning, there were 72 regular aircraft and 18 reserve planes on board the Akagi, but now there are only 35 planes left on the aircraft carrier, including 10 carrier-based fighters, 19 carrier-based dive bombers, only 6 carrier-based torpedo attack planes without crews, and 2 Zero fighters without aircraft, pilots, and some pilots with parachutes.
In other words, there are still 41 crew members who have not returned, including Hirschman's good friend Shigeru Itaya, who has now been confirmed by the Akagi Air Force as a "god", but Hersman Jr. believes that Shigeru Itaya is likely to eat in a prisoner of war camp for the Americans.
However, this is irrelevant to Ozawa, for Ozawa, the crews of the Zero and the Comet Shipblow, which have not returned, have been lost, and the Japanese Navy will not let the seaplanes risk searching and rescuing the pilots who have fallen overboard.
If only the captain of the most valuable is counted, the losses so far have been as high as 182 people If all the unreturned Tien Shan torpedo bombers were abandoned, the losses would be as high as 290 people, which accounted for almost two-thirds of the number of captains of carrier-based aircraft carriers of the 1st Mobile Fleet.
This is two-thirds of the most elite naval pilots in the entire Japan, and if you want to evaluate it by Little Hersman, these 290 people are definitely worth more than four Soryu-class aircraft carriers.
Moreover, Germany and the European Community can build aircraft carriers for Japan, but it is impossible to replenish Japan with 290 elite pilots.
Because Germany's own elite pilots were also limited in number, they had to deal with the operations in the Atlantic theater and the Soviet-German theater, and they were not much rich.
Therefore, when the Akagi ventured to open the searchlight and wait, all the hull decks on the sea were full of people waiting for the return of the fighters, and there were many Japanese devils who were chanting words as if praying to Amaterasu.
"Your Excellency Commander's radar found that the aircraft group was flying from the southeast, more than 50 in number, at a distance of 100 kilometers" Someone suddenly shouted on the bridge of the Akagi aircraft carrier, and Jizaburo Ozawa, who was looking out of the bridge with his neck tilted, immediately turned his head and asked, "Is it our plane?"
"Recognizing."
At this time, the planes all had friend or foe identification devices, which were actually a set of radio question and answer machines, with interrogation planes installed on ground ships and answering planes installed on their own planes.
After the radar finds the target, the interrogator on the ground ship sends out a coded signal, and the transponder on the aircraft can decrypt the signal and then answer.
Such a set of systems is also available on Japanese aircraft and surface ships at present.
"It's our plane," the radar officer aboard the Akagi shouted again after a short while, "Commander, it's our plane, they're finally back" It's back, it's back, but not 108, it's 56.
Although the 108 attack planes on the Tien Shan warships dispatched by Ozawa were very careful to fly at an ultra-low altitude and evade the radar of the Americans, they also happened to encounter the US military's own planes returning home.
So the Americans were taken by surprise and successfully blew up several airfields.
However, the American anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns arranged on the banks of the canal sluice played a role in the surprise attack of the Japanese planes, inflicting heavy losses on the Tianshan attack planes that flew at low altitude to drop torpedoes It is no exaggeration to say that the four destroyed canal sluice gates were all bought for the lives of Japanese pilots Naturally, the 52 Tianshan attack planes and the 156 crew members on board were all gods.
Therefore, March 17 is really the day when the Japanese naval aviation becomes a god.
"What a loss for 233 captains" Seeing the last attack plane on the Tianshan ship safely landing on the deck of the Akagi, Jizaburo Ozawa turned his head and smiled bitterly at the chief of staff Furumura Keizo beside him.
He also said: "Now, this officer is the sinner of the United Fleet and the Empire, and with 2 aircraft carriers and 233 crews, the vitality of the Combined Fleet has been greatly damaged."
"No, Your Excellency, you are a hero of the Empire," Furumura said through gritted teeth, "and no one will consider you a sinner, for the Battle of Panama was already a difficult one.
At the beginning of the war, Chief Yamamoto predicted that even if the surprise attack was successful, our initiative in the Pacific Ocean would be maintained for a maximum of 12 months, which was caused by the gap in national strength, and could not be completely made up by fighting hard, and now our initiative has been maintained for more than 15 months, and now His Excellency the Commander has commanded the fleet to destroy the Panama Canal locks, so that our initiative can be extended for another 610 months.
With these 610 months, the defense of the Hawaiian Islands should be impregnable.
Therefore, the heroes and martyrs who have become gods today have no regrets."
Jizaburo Ozawa sighed softly, in fact, he did not make any mistakes in today's command, and he also successfully completed the task of blowing up the locks If those pilots of the Tianshan naval attack did not lie.
And the loss of the 1st Mobile Fleet, although there was an element of bad luck, but the main reason was the strength of the enemy "The United States is really as powerful as we imagined," Ozawa Jizaburo smiled bitterly, "It seems that the bitter battle between the Combined Fleet and the Japanese Empire is about to begin." ” "Immediately" Furumura Keizo was stunned, "The Panama Canal has been destroyed" "But the United States still has two large aircraft carriers in the Pacific, at least four light aircraft carriers, and a large number of escort aircraft carriers."
Ozawa sighed, "According to intelligence, most of the U.S. escort aircraft carriers were built in Seattle and Portland on the West Coast. ” "But those are just escort carriers."
Keizo Furumura said.
Ozawa Jizaburo's "grandma face" wrinkled and said: "Furumura-kun, don't you still understand that in the eyes of the Americans, aircraft carriers are just consumables, and now the Americans and us are fighting for consumption."
In today's air battles, the exchange ratio between us and US planes is likely to be less than 1:1, and the United States can equip and train aviation units that are 10 times larger than ours If you are the commander of the US Navy, will you give up the opportunity to fight with us because the aircraft carrier is too small and thin?"
"233 crews, 2 aircraft carriers" On March 18, the Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Hersmann watched his son Hersmann Jr. take advantage of the report sent by the radio on the Emperor Frederick III, and only exhaled lightly, smiled at Halder, Wivell and Raeder in his office, and said: "Fortunately, we took the British mainland in time, otherwise these American planes would have used the British mainland as a base against us sooner or later." ” The outbreak of the Americans was actually expected by Hersmann, if the atomic bomb was not considered in World War II, to put it bluntly, it was to fight oil, whether it was the Axis camp or the Allied camp, in fact, there was enough mechanized equipment production capacity, and the question was whether there was enough oil to start them At present, the United States has the largest oil production, about 2.6 billion tons a year, the Soviet Union has more than 40 million tons, Germany controls more than 40 million tons, and Japan has about 8 million tons.
That is to say, the Axis powers have 50 million tons of oil on the side, and the Allies now have 300 million tons on the side The United States and the Soviet Union also had a sixfold advantage If Britain had not knelt down in January, the United States would have had to fight the war in Europe as long as it could fight the fighter plane exchange ratio with Germany to 15:1 or even 2:1.
Even now, the United States cannot say that there is no chance at all.
As long as the Soviet Union can consume Germany enough, the United States will still have a chance to counterattack the European continent.
It's just that the losses will be larger, the time it will take will be longer, and most of them will not be victorious, after all, Germany will definitely have an atomic bomb by then So the question now is whether Stalin fell first, or whether Emperor Hirohito of Japan became MacArthur's gray grandson first.
If the USSR kneeled, the United States would not have been able to fight the war even if it had several times as much oil.
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Because at that time, the United States was almost at war with the whole world.
At that time, summing will be the only option for the United States.
If Emperor Hirohito had knelt first, then Hersmann's European community would have had a good headache in the future t1706231537: