Glorious Mission 1937

Chapter 660: Target - Midway Island

Yamamoto 56 is a naval officer with excellent tactical command. He commanded the sneak attack on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii in the early days of the Pacific War. That battle established the absolute dominance of the Japanese Navy in the early days of the Pacific War.

This time, Yamamoto 56 believed that the Navy Command was acting on their own will, and it was just a joke to concentrate all the navy's forces to capture Australia, because the failure of the Coral Sea naval battle had already lost the most favorable opportunity to capture Australia. Even if Australia can be occupied, the price it pays is extremely heavy, and it will even drag down the Great Japanese Empire.

Therefore, Yamamoto 56 immediately returned to Tokyo by special plane, personally explained his ideas to General Shimada Shigetaro, and proposed a strategic vision for capturing Midway Island.

Shintaro Shimada was not an idiot either. After listening to Yamamoto 56’s report, he immediately went to the palace to report to Emperor Hirohito. With Hirohito’s approval, the Japanese navy decided to capture Midway Island from mid-April to early May.

While the South Pacific region was in turmoil, the domestic situation in China quickly improved. With the supply of a large amount of funds from the Chen family, multiple large-scale projects supported by government departments were launched across the country at the same time. Crazy construction can best drive economic development.

其次是军队建设也进入了第一阶段的尾声，经过三个多月的新兵集训，全国184个整编师、54个混成旅、9个骑兵师、18个炮兵师、8个装甲师、4个防空师、12个工兵旅全部完成了集训，各部队的军装、武器装备以及行为规范也都趋向于统一。

All the original military uniforms were replaced by yellow and green camouflage uniforms.The messy weapons and equipment are unified into 3 types, one is German equipment, one is Japanese equipment, and the other is locally produced weapons and equipment in Saibei. All other types of weapons and equipment are retired from active service.

After intensive training and weapon refitting, the combat effectiveness of the army has increased, but the logistical pressure has come down.Because unified weapons and equipment do not require the logistics department to rack their brains to collect ammunition of different nationalities and calibers, this saves the logistics department more than half of their energy.

The gratifying changes in the military also made Chen Feng's prestige in the country unprecedentedly improved, and his position was also increasingly consolidated.However, Chen Feng's initiative to let go of the regime was more suitable for almost everyone's unanimous praise. Before that, many people, including those in Yan'an, worried that Chen Feng would become the second Chiang, or even the second Yuan Shikai.

This is not unfounded worry, because Chen Feng is different from all the warlords that appeared in China before.Most of the warlords that have risen in China in the past century all started in troubled times.They are reckless heroes. Those with strength have no money, those with money have no strength, and those with money and strength have insufficient ambition.Lack of courage.

But Chen Feng was different.He has strength.With more than 200 million elites under his command, he can be regarded as the largest force in China. Even Lao Jiang, who is known as the leader of the Chinese War of Resistance, cannot match him in military affairs; secondly, Chen Feng and the Chen family behind him are rich, with tens of billions of dollars in action.Economic exchanges with the governments of various countries are often in units of billions. Just buying a piece of barren land from the Australian government costs tens of billions of dollars. Such terrifying financial resources are not available to anyone; the last is Chen Feng's own ambition and ability. Whether Chen Feng has ambitions, the answer is yes, he can become the biggest warlord in China in just a few years, if Chen Feng has no ambitions, no one would believe him.

Besides, Chen Feng's ability is obvious to all people in the country. No matter in politics or military, Chen Feng's ability is beyond doubt.In the past five years of the Anti-Japanese War alone, if it is said that the army wiped out the most Japanese troops, Chen Feng's army was the well-deserved champion.Under his governance, Saibei Province has grown from a remote and poor province with a population of less than 400 million to the province with the strongest industry and the most developed economy in China. This ability is definitely beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Rich, powerful, capable, courageous, and ambitious, if such a person really wants to become the monarch of a country, it is actually very easy. Besides, the current situation creates heroes, and Chen Feng can become the nominal leader of China and represent the government of a country without much effort. , and because of this, many people worried that Chen Feng would inflate his self-confidence and dream of being the emperor.

But now Chen Feng actually took the initiative to propose the idea of ​​separating the military from the government, and took the initiative to hand over the power to others, focusing on the military himself, which made everyone quite moved.

Although the newly established government often disagreed on some issues because of the inherent contradictions between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, it still grasped the general direction of the country very well, especially the acting president of the country and the acting president of the Executive Yuan. When formulating policies, we can often point out the disadvantages of the times, and grasp the fire at the right time.

China in the past was like a plate of loose sand, but now under the leadership of Chen Feng, with the efforts of the KMT, the Communist Party, and everyone, this plate of loose sand is gradually consolidating its foundation and striving to become a unified, prosperous and powerful world power.

Although there are still a large amount of land occupied by the Japanese, the top military officials are not worried about the outcome of this war at all, because according to Chen Feng's strategic conception, a counterattack can be launched within a year at most.

While the people of China are working hard to build their own country, the east coast of the United States is busy, and the ports are running day and night. A large number of military and commercial ships travel to and from various ports in the east, and the destination of these ships is only one—— — Vladivostok.

Not long ago, after high-level discussions between China and the Soviet Union, it was decided to temporarily designate Vladivostok as an international free port. Before the end of the war, ships from all allies could go to Vladivostok for supplies without reporting to the governments of China and the Soviet Union. Vladivostok has become the second largest port after Yokohama, Japan.

Under China's money offensive, the efficiency of the US and Soviet governments was surprisingly fast, and a large amount of industrial equipment urgently needed by China was continuously shipped to China. In contrast, China's industrial level and production capacity were increasing day by day.

On April 1942, 4, just one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, under the auspices of Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the Navy's Combined Fleet, the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet was concentrated and sailed to the waters of Midway Island to gather and stand by.

The target of Yamamoto 56 this time is Midway Island. This Midway Island is a small island in the South Pacific with an area of ​​only 4.7 square kilometers. However, the geographical location of this island is very special. The island is 2800 nautical miles away from San Francisco in the United States and Yokohama in Japan. It is in the middle of the Pacific route between Asia and North America, hence the name Midway Island.

In addition, it is 1135 nautical miles away from Pearl Harbor. It is an important military base and transportation hub for the United States in the Central Pacific region, and it is also the gateway and outpost of the US military in Hawaii.Once Midway is lost, Pearl Harbor, the base camp of the US Pacific Fleet, will also die.

The special geographical location of Midway Island determines the importance of its strategic position. As the commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Yamamoto 56 has long been eyeing this important strategic location.

Yamamoto 56 is not only an excellent tactician, but also an excellent strategist.In the first few months before the outbreak of the Pacific War, as the Japanese army made great achievements, the emotions of the Japanese people who were instigated by the war fanaticism became crazy. Every time there was a good news, a large number of Japanese people lined up , waving a paper sun flag, flocked to the gate of the palace to hold a celebration ceremony.

However, behind the excitement, General Yamamoto, the commander of the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy, always seems to be very worried.When the Japanese army attacked Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto once calmly and soberly pointed out that Japan had only awakened a giant. Once this giant fully awakened, the Great Japanese Empire would face catastrophe.Therefore, it is necessary to complete the unfinished attack on Pearl Harbor and completely destroy the US Pacific Fleet before the giant gets up.

Therefore, Yamamoto tried his best to agree with the plan of attacking Midway Island proposed by Rear Admiral Ugaki, Chief of Staff of the United Fleet. He believed that if the island can be occupied, the island can be used as a forward base for Japanese aircraft air patrols, intimidating Hawaii, and can lure out the US fleet. , to be annihilated in the decisive battle.At the same time, it can also avenge the U.S. Air Force's air raid on Tokyo and open the door to the Hawaiian Islands.

Eliminating the U.S. Pacific Fleet was an established strategic decision by Japan, and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was to complete this strategic decision. However, because all U.S. aircraft carriers left the port mysteriously at that time, Japan failed to destroy the Pacific Fleet in one fell swoop.

Today, the strong industrial production capacity of the United States has begun to reveal its huge war potential. Less than a year after the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor incident, the United States has added more than 20 large and small warships to the Pacific Fleet, plus the few surviving warships. With a large aircraft carrier, the US naval power in the Pacific cannot be underestimated.

Last month, U.S. bombers attacked Tokyo, which sent an extremely strong signal to Japan. If the U.S. Pacific Fleet is not destroyed, one day this U.S. fleet will land on the Japanese mainland with overwhelming carrier-based aircraft.

In order to achieve the strategic goal of leading the remaining warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to Midway Island and destroy them in one fell swoop, Yamamoto 56 commanded the United Fleet almost in full force and invested most of its troops.In order to achieve the strategic goal of containing the U.S. Navy, Yamamoto 56 decided to conduct a diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands, which are far away from Alaska and controlled by the United States. First, a fleet was sent to attack the Aleutian Islands. Island landing, using this as a bait to draw the attention of the US fleet to the north, and then the main fleet took the opportunity to seize Midway Island. (To be continued..)