Film and Television: Starting from the Journey to Guandong

Chapter 166

After the Soviet-German battle, the European battlefield temporarily came to an end.

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it turned into a pot of porridge.

During the Battle of Midway, the U.S. Pacific Fleet dispatched Task Force 16 (under the jurisdiction of the USS Enterprise and USS Hornet aircraft carrier battle groups) and Task Force 17 (under the jurisdiction of the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier battle group) to support Midway Island.

从相关数据显示，美军的整体水面战斗舰艇单位为44艘(3艘航母＋13艘巡洋舰＋28艘驱逐舰)，而日本海军(位居战斗一线)的水面战斗舰艇单位为48艘。

Generally speaking, the Neon Navy has a higher number of ships at the forefront of combat than the Pacific Fleet, and the fleet's weapons and equipment are also at a relative advantage. In other words, Neon Navy's active attack effect will be even better.

However, the Neon Navy's combat plan is not clear. This may easily lead to improper ship coordination or loopholes in the warning curtain during later operations, thereby delaying fighter opportunities.

According to data, on May 1942, 5, the "Sea Order" issued by the Neon Navy Department clearly stated that the strategic goal was to capture Midway Island. However, the combat mission agreed between the army and the navy is: to capture Midway Island, prevent enemy ships from launching military attacks on the mainland from Hawaii, and when launching attacks, focus on annihilating the enemy fleet.

Here arises a paradox of strategic goals. Is the Neon Navy occupying Midway Island or annihilating the US Pacific Fleet in the waters near Midway Island?

Of course, Yamamoto Isoroku hopes to annihilate Ugly's naval power in the Pacific region. From the perspective of the war pattern, even if the Japanese army occupied Midway Island, the military supplies required for the island defense area would need to be transported from outside, which would inevitably consume a lot of financial and material resources.

If military supplies cannot be continuously delivered, the Japanese army's operational purpose for Midway Island must not be long-term occupation. After all, there are essential differences between "ship-to-ship combat" and "ship-to-island combat".

If the purpose of the former (ship-to-ship battle) is to destroy the enemy fleet, then one must hide one's own strength and then win by surprise. Even though the Japanese army's telegram code has been deciphered by the US military in advance. However, the first-line Neon Navy can completely win a head-on battle with the Pacific Fleet based on its fleet's firepower superiority.

At the same time, if the operational purpose of the latter (ship-island operations) is to capture islands or other fixed-point military targets.

Then, as the attacker, the Neon Navy must demonstrate its authority to control nearby waters, thereby increasing the psychological operational burden on the US military on Midway Island, so as to quickly seize the beachhead and capture Midway Island.

Of course, two completely different combat missions will inevitably cause the ships to "go in opposite directions" in actual combat (generally referring to the differences in the deep offensive and defensive systems of the fleet). At the same time, this also weakened the concentrated offensive power of the Neon Navy, thereby allowing the Ugly Pacific Fleet to gradually adjust to the best fighting condition.

The upper-level military's unclear positioning of combat missions resulted in the lower-level fleet's inability to attack effective military targets, which became one of the reasons for the Neon Empire Navy's disastrous defeat in the Battle of Midway.

In fact, it was not wrong for the Neon Empire Navy to regard Midway as a capture target.

After all, Midway's geographical location is very special. Its straight-line distance from San Francisco and Yokohama is 5000 kilometers. Once the Neon Navy captures Midway Island, it can rely on the cooperation of surrounding islands and reefs as a bridgehead to attack Hawaii, which is very conducive to the expansion of the Neon Navy's offensive defense line eastward.

However, the Neon Navy's Midway attack plan has the problem of outdated operational thinking. First of all, gathering the elite of the Neon Navy to attack two far apart islands (note: one is the Aleutian Islands and the other is the Midway Islands) violates the "principle of concentration" advocated by military strategists (the concentrated use of superior forces can quickly break through war stalemate and improve combat efficiency).

Although it expanded the Japanese army's offensive and defensive range at the strategic level, it weakened the Japanese army's tactical assault power.

In other words, although the Northern Fleet of the Neon Empire Navy was designed to contain the Pacific Fleet, it set too many tactical goals for the two mobile fleets with limited strength, causing the later war situation to gradually reach a stalemate.

(Note: Yamamoto Isoroku originally wanted to quickly occupy Midway Island with the surprise attack tactic of "sneak attack on Pearl Harbor", but the decision to invest two aircraft carrier battle groups in the north resulted in a shortage of defense forces for the Midway aircraft carrier battle group, thus reducing the The speed of Neon Navy's attack has enabled the Pacific Fleet to gradually build a complete three-dimensional sea and air combat system on Midway Island)

At the same time, Yamamoto Isoroku's combat thinking also exposed a fatal problem. The Neon Navy's Midway battle formation uses submarine forces as the assault vanguard and aircraft carriers as the core strike force.

In other words, the submarine force is to clear the surface and underwater war barriers for the aircraft carrier battle group, thereby improving the aircraft carrier battle group's battlefield fire suppression and maneuverability to avoid artillery fire.

However, such a combat layout cannot demonstrate the gunfire superiority of the main battleships (Note: During the early planning of the Battle of Midway, Yamamoto Isoroku once again divided the fleet into a battleship fleet and an aircraft carrier fleet, thereby weakening the overall attack power of the aircraft carrier. ). Except for forward assault submarines and patrol forces, Neon Navy ships were divided into six battle groups that could not support each other. The distance between aircraft carriers, battleship squadrons, and other mobile fleets made it impossible to form a centralized offensive.

Even an aircraft carrier can rely on the advantages of carrier-based aircraft to engage in combat with enemy aircraft carrier formations or other mobile formations 200 to 300 miles away from the ship.

However, the combat radius of the supporting battleship is much smaller than that of the aircraft carrier. Taking the "Yamato" as an example, its main gun has a longest range of 26 miles, and it will take at least 27 hours to rescue the Japanese aircraft carrier battle group at the highest speed of 2 knots. Since the confrontation between aircraft carriers was very short, the battle may have been over by the time the battleships arrived in the aircraft carrier battle waters.

From a personal understanding, even if the attack effectiveness of a battleship is outside the range of the main gun, it must act in concert with other mobile fleets and maintain an offensive posture at all times. Otherwise, the battleship will lose its practical significance for heavy firepower attack and defense. It is really puzzling that Yamamoto Isoroku adopts a separate combat configuration of aircraft carriers, battleships and other mobile ships for the main fleet.

At the same time, Nagumo Chuichi, as the supreme commander of the Midway aircraft carrier strike force, also made a tactical mistake. Because the Japanese reconnaissance aircraft were too vague to detect the US aircraft carrier formation, and the aerial reconnaissance could even be said to have done nothing, it was difficult to weigh Nagumo Chuichi's strategic decision on Midway Island.

6月4日8时9分，霓虹侦察机答复外界舰艇为5艘巡洋舰和5艘驱逐舰。

At 8:20, the Neon reconnaissance aircraft once again responded that there "appeared" to be an aircraft carrier behind the fleet. The Japanese reconnaissance aircraft's feedback on the reconnaissance target was inconsistent, and when updating reconnaissance information, it transmitted intelligence "as if there was an aircraft carrier", resulting in the inability of the front-line fleet to accurately prepare for war. At the same time, the Japanese mobile formation exceeded the detection range of the shore-based reconnaissance aircraft, but the formation did not receive early warning information.

Due to the vague feedback information from the reconnaissance aircraft, Nagumo Chuichi fell into a strategic dilemma of whether to attack Midway Island or the US aircraft carrier. He even had a funny scene of repeatedly replacing bombs and torpedoes on the carrier-based aircraft, wasting the time to attack Midway Island. Strategic opportunity.

In the later stages of the Battle of Midway, the aircraft carrier Akagi was the first to be destroyed by the US SBD dive bomber, thus establishing the war pattern in which the Neon Navy lost to Midway. (Note: The internal trauma of Akagi was caused by the disorderly stacking of torpedoes and bombs)

As the saying goes, "If you continue to break things, you will suffer chaos." As the front-line commander of the Midway Island battlefield, Nagumo Chuichi did not have a clear sense of strategic depth. The attack targets frequently changed his orders based on information feedback from reconnaissance aircraft, and he was unable to provide clear combat instructions to the aircraft carrier battle group, thus causing the Neon Empire Navy to lose control of the battle. The Battle of Midway was difficult to win.

From a personal understanding, if Chuichi Nagumo's target is a US aircraft carrier, then all carrier-based aircraft on the ship should be fully equipped with torpedoes and wait for the aircraft carrier to appear and conduct an armed raid, thereby cutting off the military connection between the US military at Midway and the outside world.

If the goal is to capture Midway Island, then all the carrier-based aircraft on the ship should be equipped with sufficient aerial bombs to blow up the firepower points deployed by the US military on the island, thereby clearing the way for the landing troops to seize the beachhead. As a commander, he must not be controlled by the objective current situation. He must clearly define a combat line to gather the combat effectiveness of combat units.

As we all know, radar and radar countermeasures systems were widely used during World War II. At the end of 1942, the centimeter-wave radar jointly developed by Britain and the United States could achieve day and night guidance of a single fighter plane and precise targeting of artillery during sea and air combat.

During the Battle of Midway, the main ships of the US military (mainly aircraft carriers and battleships) had advanced air search radar systems and used them to detect enemy aircraft for mobile reconnaissance outside the detection range.

Due to the military technology blockade of Neon by the allies, the Neon Navy was unable to build a complete air-to-sea search system in a short period of time, so that Chuichi Nagumo's mobile aircraft carrier fleet was unable to effectively detect the surrounding U.S. forces.

If the Neon Navy wants to conduct air and sea searches, it can only rely on searching for enemy aircraft and airships with poor safety, which will inevitably expose the Neon Navy's attack path.

At the same time, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was affected by the Pearl Island incident and expanded the patrol range of Midway Island to more than 700 miles.

However, Nagumo Chuichi was convinced by previous aerial information reconnaissance that the U.S. military's patrol circle on Midway Island was only within 500 miles. In other words, Nagumo Chuichi's mobile fleet was completely exposed to the monitoring range of the US military's enemy aircraft.

Due to the wider coverage of the US military's ship-based radar system, even if the Neon Navy's surface ships are able to evade US air strikes, the radar can accurately determine the time when the Japanese warships arrive in the avoiding waters within a few hours.

To put it simply, the attack direction of Neon ships has long been visible to the US military radar, and most of Neon's attack instructions are under the surveillance of the US military. And it can use naval guns and torpedoes to carry out devastating strikes without the neon ship being completely unaware of it.

Therefore, the backwardness of the radar system caused the Neon Empire Navy to lack the ability to collect strategic intelligence during the Battle of Midway, thereby losing combat opportunities, and failure was naturally inevitable.

Due to the unclear combat objectives issued by the top leaders of the Neon Military Department, the fleet command system had loopholes in offensive and defensive operations. As a result, the Neon Imperial Navy lost 4 main aircraft carriers and gradually lost military control over the Pacific region.

However, the Battle of Midway gradually revealed the modern combat advantages of aircraft carriers. Since the carrier-based aircraft equipped by the aircraft carrier have the advantages of long effective combat range, wide overall detection range (not unlimited detection range), and high coordination with targets, they have become a powerful weapon for the navy in day and night combat.

To put it simply, the era of "big ships and huge guns" has long passed, and carrier-based aviation is the mainstream tactical unit in line with modern naval warfare.

Just one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, Neon had already designated Midway as its next target.

This would not only avenge the U.S. Air Force's air raid on Tokyo (at that time, some senior generals believed that the plane that attacked Tokyo took off from Midway Island), but also open the door to the Hawaiian Islands.

Prevent U.S. forces from dispatching from the Hawaiian side and attacking Neon. The Neon Navy wanted to take this opportunity to lure the remaining warships of the Ugly Pacific Fleet to Midway Island and annihilate them in one fell swoop.

In order to achieve this goal, the U.S. Navy almost mobilized and invested most of its troops. The size of the fleet even surpassed the combined fleet during the later largest naval battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

It was the Neon Navy's largest strategic offensive in World War II. However, due to the constraints of the Coral Sea Battle, the Combined Fleet had to dispatch two less aircraft carriers - the injured "Shoukaku" and the "Zuihe" which was short of pilots. The war had a very serious impact.

If the Neon Navy achieves its goals, the Neon West Coast will be directly threatened by the Neon Navy.

Since the remaining naval warships of the United States have been deployed to the North Atlantic, the United States will not be able to effectively counterattack the Neon Navy in the Pacific in the short term.

Neon is well aware of Chou Country's military potential. Once the Ugly Country's strong industrial production capacity is fully integrated into the war track, it will not be comparable to that of an island nation. In terms of durability, it has never been Xiaoben's strong point. They are only suitable for quick battles and quick rushes.

However, in front of the tall and powerful Ugly people, fighting and rushing quickly loses their effect.

In any case, Xiao Benzi hopes to force Ugly Country to sit at the negotiating table before this situation occurs and quickly end the war with Ugly Country.

Some military scholars also believe that if the U.S. navy threatens or actually attacks the U.S. west coast, it will force the U.S. to transfer military equipment urgently needed to the European front to the U.S. west coast. This will not only cause a shortage of military supplies in the European theater. This phenomenon may even cause the European theater to be lost again and give Germany the final victory.

It's a pity that the ideals of the little book are full, but the reality has given them a painful blow, let alone helping their ally Germany far away in Europe!

(End of this chapter)