afterglow

Chapter 497 Chapter : Troops arrive in Hawaii; enemy planes! Sound the alarm!

"Weird, are you planning to stage an empty city plan?"

"Based on the current coordinates, it is estimated that it may have set off around the tenth day."

In the bridge of the Yongle, Song Zhongkai and several generals were analyzing the strange information they had learned so far.

Aerial reconnaissance did not detect the presence of an aircraft carrier at Pearl Harbor, but the USS Enterprise actually appeared in New Caledonia. This means that the only potential threat when attacking Hawaii is the missing USS Saratoga.

But this is obviously unreasonable. How can normal people disperse the few defensive forces when the enemy army is pressing down?
Therefore, the naval generals all thought of going together - this was a bit of an empty city strategy.

"Could it be that the British sent reinforcements?" Yi Jie suddenly said.

"Deputy Commander, the Glory has only been commissioned in February and has not been drilled well. I am afraid it will be difficult to even take off and land, so it is unlikely to be dispatched." A lieutenant colonel behind him muttered: "The remaining ships...competition The HMS God is searching for submarines in the Atlantic Ocean, the HMS Glorious and the HMS Fury are guarding the Germans off the coast of Franji, and the only one available for the mainland is the HMS Valiant."

The God of Competition, the Glory, and the Furious have all been out to sea for some time to perform missions. It is impossible for them to keep running. They will definitely have to return to Hong Kong for rest and maintenance.

It is obviously impossible to send a single courageous ship to reinforce the Americans. It is better not to go.

To facilitate command, the Army Air Force and Marine Corps Air Force in Hawaii are all under the unified command of Colonel Clarence of the Naval Air Force. The weather forecast he received last night showed that the sea area 900 to 1100 kilometers west of Hawaii is likely to be cloudy and foggy. , visibility is low.

On May 5, the German Press Agency conveyed the information that "the whereabouts of the Glory is unknown" to the Ming Dynasty's Embassy in Berlin through diplomatic means.

"Impossible." Song Zhongkai flatly denied, "It is indeed possible to do this militarily, but not politically. This cannot be explained to the people. Since the war began, the poor performance of the U.S. Navy has aroused public sentiment. If we avoid fighting at this juncture, what will happen to us? What’s the difference between running away from battle?”

After drifting on the sea for a long time by boat, you will be very happy to see a few small islands and reefs.

On April 4, a Stasi agent discovered that the armored aircraft carrier Illustrious did not return to Plymouth Devonport from its sailing training as scheduled, and subsequently reported it to Berlin.

The sea is vast and the long voyage seems to have no end.

On May 5, in the Galapagos Islands southwest of Panama, the British fleet took the time to complete the most basic rest and then set off again for Hawaii.

This also led to the almost complete destruction of the intelligence networks in Hawaii, Panama, and major cities on the West Coast. Most of the surviving agents and informants were forced to hide and lurk, and the incomplete intelligence networks also became silent.

In the early morning of May 5, the A-9 special agent fleet approached the Hawaiian Islands, leaving less than a thousand kilometers away from the nearest island of Kauai.

On May 5, several formations of the Ming fleet left Midway Island one after another and began to head towards Hawaii.

On May 5, the main fleet of the Ming army completed its rendezvous at Midway Island, where it received supplies from a tanker fleet that had been waiting for a long time.

Zhou Changfeng, who was pacing in the corner of the conference room, was worried that the Enterprise had gone to the southwest Pacific and would pose a threat to Guadalcanal. Hearing this, he casually said: "The situation is special now, and important information will not be released until a few days later."

It is a pity that the vast majority of ordinary officers and soldiers will not have the opportunity to go ashore. A considerable number of them will never set foot on land and die while wading ashore.

"The governor's office still can't even give you an accurate letter?" Yi Jie complained dissatisfiedly.

"It's okay, just be careful." Song Zhongkai waved his hand, "But if you make a joke that scares yourself, you will be laughed at."

Since four days ago, the US military has begun sending aircraft to conduct long-range searches day and night, and it is the same now.

But this cannot explain the Americans' strange behavior - without foreign aid, they dare to divide their troops when the enemy is facing them?
"Perhaps they felt that we wouldn't be able to conquer Oahu even if we let them attack us, so they simply stayed away from the enemy for the time being." Someone put forward an explanation that sounded very reasonable.

Drawing on the experience and lessons of the British and the Dutch, Americans are highly wary of overseas Chinese in various places. All overseas Chinese in Hawaii and Panama were forcibly deported to the United States at the beginning of the year and were intensively detained in several small towns in the northern states of South Dakota and Minnesota. The town, while not restricting movement, is prohibited from leaving on pain of arrest or execution.

The conference room fell into silence, and a few drops of water in the tea cup splashed out with the bumps of the ship.

On May 5, a local informant of the Metropolitan Government Intelligence Service sent a civilian telegram to Bogota because he could not get in touch with the agent.

Therefore, everyone generally believes that the most likely possibility is to wait until May, after the Glorious has been properly trained and has formed a complete combat capability, and then two or three aircraft carriers will be dispatched to the Pacific together.

Both PBY Catalina seaplanes and B-17 bombers can perform long-range search missions within a range of 1200 kilometers, but God is not good, which means that the possibility of discovering the Ming army fleet early is very low.

The U.S. military can now only roughly estimate the position of the Ming fleet through aerial reconnaissance of Midway Island. The error is as large as a day, a night, or hundreds of kilometers.

Colonel Clarence decided to temporarily adjust the reconnaissance plan and release more aircraft to make up for the negative impact of weather conditions.

At 5:15 a.m., one plane after another took off from the airports or piers on Kauai and Oahu, launching a fan-shaped search due west and southwest.

At noon, a B-17 bomber on a search mission sent back a "attack by enemy aircraft" telegram. It was 11:07.

The bomber was besieged by two Ming Army carrier-based aircraft, but the 7.36mm and 12.8mm aviation machine guns were nothing to the thick-skinned B-17.

Eight minutes later, two more carrier-based aircraft came to help. Four aircraft took turns to attack, and almost all their bullets were fired before the B-17 was wounded and forced to retreat.

The base called back to ask what type of enemy aircraft the bombers encountered, and the answer was "four light fighters, painted blue."

From this, the US military judged that the Ming fleet was nearby, and Colonel Clarence immediately asked all nearby aircraft to search the sea area within a 300km radius around the coordinates of the aerial encounter.

However, because the clouds are too dense, the plane will get into the clouds if it flies a little higher, and the visual range will be greatly reduced if it flies lower.

A large-scale search during the day did not find the Ming fleet. Instead, it led to an increase in search windows in other directions and consumed a total of 5.8 gallons of aviation gasoline.

At 16:33 pm, 710km west of Kauai, a PBY Catalina seaplane encountered two Ming Dynasty carrier-based aircraft in pursuit. After half an hour of pursuit, the aircraft was shot down.

As the sun sets, the sun gradually sinks into the sea to the west.

The air encounter during the day has roughly determined the position of the Ming army's fleet - the combat radius of carrier-based aircraft is limited, and the Ming army's aircraft carrier cannot be very far away.

Therefore, Chester-Nimitz ordered the submarine cordon to move eastward and keep an eye out for signs of the enemy.

That night, the Ming fleet continued to sail toward Hawaii at a cruising speed of 14 knots, while a dozen U.S. submarines also turned eastward, surfaced on the sea surface, and drove on at a speed of 18 knots.

At midnight, the main force of the Ming fleet passed through the submarine cordon deployed by the US military in the waters west of Hawaii.

In fact, the Bonito (SS-184) submarine and the Ming fleet were very close to each other.

From 23:50 to 0:15, she was only about nine kilometers away from the light cruiser Liaohe, but neither party noticed the other. They passed each other like pedestrians in the dark without knowing it. On the morning of May 5, the rising sun dispersed the mist on the sea.

At 6:55, the submarine Fugu (SS-198) discovered several ships in the northeast direction and quickly determined that they were the invading enemy.

What was discovered was the first formation commanded by Song Zhongkai himself. A telegram containing its coordinates was immediately sent out and was also detected by the Ming Army's radio monitoring team.

At 7:38, a Type light seaplane taking off from the East Lake seaplane carrier discovered a US submarine secretly following ten kilometers away to the right of the fleet, and then dived and dropped bombs on it.

The Hegu immediately dived to avoid it, and the destroyer Yixing left the fleet to search for the prey.

In a nine-hour cat-and-mouse game, the Yixing carried out four attacks and in the evening successfully sank the submarine with depth charges.

"We have been discovered. The air raid will definitely come." Song Zhongkai raised his hand and glanced at his watch and said, "Send power to inform the second formation and calculate the time to see if they can ambush."

"Order."

The Yongle's radio monitoring team intercepted a large number of U.S. military communications in the past three days. The frequency of U.S. military communications was surprising, with more than 220 messages, which was a bit abnormal.

Thanks to the efforts of Dong Shaojian, the Ming army was able to decipher a small part of it.

However, there is very little useful information in the more than two hundred telegrams. They are basically exchanges about the overall planning of air strikes. The only valuable thing is that one of the telegrams mentioned the call sign of Saratoga.

Song Zhongkai had reason to suspect that the Americans were planning unknown conspiracies.

Because the United States' "gray" diplomatic code is in a state of complete decipherment, Ming Dynasty learned about the replacement of the Pacific Fleet commander in a relatively timely manner.

No one expected that the new commander would be a guy who was suddenly promoted from major general to admiral. There were more than a dozen people in front of him with more seniority, so that the Ming Navy generally felt that this was a cover-up, and the real commander was another There are people.

"Report, Commander, the first formation was spotted by an enemy submarine at 07:02 and is expected to be bombed by the enemy."

After receiving the telegram from the Yongle, Ouyang Zhanghua, who was on the Ziwei Zuoyuan, also issued an order.

"Send the order, half of the destroyer fleet will take off, and the rest will be ready."

Following his order, both armored aircraft carriers turned on their light signals.

Soon, the Type 37 ship driver, which had been warmed up long ago, roared out of the flight deck and jumped into the blue sky.

Although it is unclear where the Saratoga is, most officers believe that it is impossible for her to escape before the battle. She is probably hiding cunningly in the waters near Hawaii, ready for a surprise attack at any time.

With a small number of enemies, there is no chance of winning without some conspiracy.

Theoretically, the Saratoga could appear anywhere, and finding her would be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

Generally speaking, in the absence of precise intelligence support, commanders should consider the worst-case scenario, derive more radical options based on them, and then select the appropriate one.

Ouyang Zhanghua believes that the advantage lies with me, and there is no need to take bold and aggressive actions. The core goal of this expedition is to ensure the safety of the aircraft carrier formation and the successful landing troops to seize the island.

Because of this, the C-20 air attack fleet is located in the farthest southwest, thus ensuring that the two relatively fragile wooden deck aircraft carriers are protected from the threat of US air attacks as much as possible; while the C-22 air attack fleet is located in the north .

In this way, the two Ziweiyuan-class armored aircraft carriers can most likely deal with potential threats without worrying about their survivability.

Even if both are unfortunately injured, the safe Taiwei Zuoyuanhao and Tianshi Zuoyuanhao can immediately carry out a devastating secondary attack.

In the upcoming battle, the most important force is undoubtedly the aviation force. Although the Ming army from afar has the advantage of mobility as the attacker, the total number of aircraft is not as good as that of the US military.

Taiwei Zuoyuan's fleet includes 24 fighter jets, 24 dive bombers, 24 torpedo planes, 8 reconnaissance aircraft, and several backup aircraft of various types.

天市左垣号的机队有战斗机12架，俯冲轰炸机18架、鱼雷机18架、侦察机6架、备份舰载机6架。

The fleet of the Fomalhaut light aircraft carrier underwent a large-scale reorganization after the Battle of Tarawa. It is now dominated by fighters, with 30 fighters, 12 dive bombers, 6 reconnaissance aircraft, and 6 backup aircraft of various types. shelf.

The two Ziweiyuan-class ships were basically the same, and both were fully manned, except that the Ziwei Youyuan lost a fighter due to an accident.

二者均为战斗机12架，俯冲轰炸机18架、鱼雷机18架、侦察机6架、备份舰载机6架。

The Ming army's mighty expedition to Hawaii had a total of 322 aircraft carrier-based aircraft of various types, and even more if you consider the seaplanes of seaplane carriers, battleships, and cruisers.

In comparison, the number of U.S. military aircraft assembled in the Hawaiian Islands is much larger.

However, the quality is uneven. There are new fighters with good performance and old fighters that are lagging behind and clumsy.

海军陆战队航空队拥有47架F2A水牛战斗机、29架PBY卡特琳娜水上飞机、45架SB2U辩护者俯冲轰炸机。

陆军航空队有34架P-40战斗机、15架P-36战斗机、31架B-17重型轰炸机、25架B-18中型轰炸机。

海军航空队有46架F4F野猫战斗机、28架SBD无畏俯冲轰炸机、58架TBD蹂躏者鱼雷机、19架SB2U、14架PBY。

The Fugu submarine discovered the first formation of the Ming fleet at the cost of all the officers and men on board being buried in the deep sea. Although Colonel Clarence did not know the situation there, he was unwilling to delay even a second longer.

Since the invading enemies were still more than 400 kilometers away, the Army's bombers were naturally the first to attack.

At 8:45, green-painted B-17 bombers roared to take off from Hickam Airport on Oahu.

These behemoths formed a formation of 13 aircraft in the air, and then rushed towards the west sky.

At 10:27, the radar soldier of the Ziwei Zuoyuan loudly called the officer on duty.

Several people's eyes were fixed on the sudden waveform on the screen. At this moment, the quiet sound of a pindrop could be heard in the cabin.

"What's supposed to come is here, it's an enemy plane, sound the alarm!"

(End of this chapter)