Iron Cross

In order to maintain fuel reserves in Hawaii, the staff racked their brains and thought of many ways, but all of them were rejected:

The first idea was to use heavy-duty transport aircraft to carry out strategic air transportation of thousands of aircraft. After calculation, it was found that only 5,000 tons of fuel could be replenished per week, which was simply a drop in the bucket;

The second idea is that when the ships are stationed in Pearl Harbor, all consumption stops. Not to mention that it is very dangerous to actively stop the ships when the enemy fleet is surrounding them. Simply from the perspective of training, sea trials, and running-in, the ships should not be stopped. , otherwise how would the recruits master the warships;

The third idea is to return all but essential ships in Pearl Harbor to the west coast without consuming the fuel stored in Pearl Harbor, which can greatly extend the maintenance time.

The third opinion is somewhat reasonable, and Halsey also replied to Ingram - "Once the situation is unfavorable, the fleet will protect the transport fleet and return to the west coast to stand by."

But Spruance privately disagreed with this opinion. He said something that made everyone dumbfounded: "Are you planning to hide on the West Coast for the rest of your life?" Because of the deployment of the U.S. Navy, facilities such as the New York Shipyard and Norfolk Shipyard Shipyards, Philadelphia Shipyard, Newport Newford Shipyard, Bethlehem Steel Company's Fall River Shipyard and other major naval shipyards that can build battleships and Essex-class fleet aircraft carriers are all located on the East Coast, while West Coast shipyards can only build escort aircraft carriers , let’s not talk about whether there are enough pilots and sailors to build more escort aircraft carriers. Even if they are fully equipped, can this kind of "Jeep aircraft carrier" that will be paralyzed by a 250 kilogram bomb compete with the Dafeng-class armored aircraft carriers or Shokaku, Yunlong class fleet aircraft carrier?

The United States has always considered deploying its navy in two oceans, but it has never considered the blockade of the two oceans: the paralysis of the Panama Canal and the blockade of Cape Horn have worsened the strategic situation of the U.S. Navy to an impossible degree.

What's even worse is that the maritime transportation line to Hawaii on the West Coast needs to be protected, and the transportation line to Australia and New Zealand is also currently cut off. In Spruance's view, the current problem can be solved by hiding in the short term, but the final solution must be fought. "Otherwise, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii will collapse sooner or later after the Pacific route is blocked by the Japanese fleet."

He even used the Royal Navy's blockade of the German High Seas Fleet during World War I to describe the current situation. "The Pacific Fleet has become a weaker fleet than the German High Seas Fleet. This is not an alarmist..." In his eyes, the High Seas Fleet can still encourage If they had the courage to fight a tactically victorious Battle of Jutland, the main force of the TF50 fleet could not defeat the essence of the Combined Fleet, and the Atlantic Fleet now faced the main force of the Axis Fleet and was unable to reinforce it. Even if there are surplus warship reinforcements in the Atlantic direction in the future, there will be no way out when the Panama Canal is blocked and Cape Horn is blocked.

This conclusion made Nimitz worry so much that he couldn't eat or sleep every day for the past two days. At first, he was annoyed by Tsukahara's "three attacks on Panama" and hoped that the Japanese fleet would get out of the way. But if the Japanese army really doesn't care about the direction of Central America, they can just go north. After rushing to the west coast, he felt that he couldn't stand it again. After all the calculations, there is only one thing missing - the Japanese fleet does not need to maintain a long-distance supply line, and can go to the nearby Galapagos Island and Peru to obtain replenishment.

At the Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting, the Army and Army Aviation also considered launching an attack on Peru. In the end, they discovered that even attacking Peru would not be enough to change the situation. The Japanese could go to Chile for supplies. If they attacked Chile again, this war would be impossible to watch. ——The Peruvians made it clear that the supplies were requested by the Germans through the La Plata Group, and the oil was provided by the Argentines. They did so "reluctantly". If you have the ability, go beat up the La Plata Group and the Germans!

At a meeting late at night on the 22nd, Spruance once again proposed: “There are three ways to change the current situation on the West Coast:

The first is to quickly negotiate peace with Germany, transfer the main force from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and use the two-ocean navy to overwhelm Japan. This is the fundamental solution;

Article 2: The TF50 fleet takes advantage of the opportunity when the main force of the combined fleet is not yet in place, using the transport fleet as bait to attract the enemy's transport fleet to take the bait, and jointly destroy it with its superior force and that of the army and aviation;

Article 3: The TF50 fleet uses itself as bait, regardless of whether it has the cooperation of land and aviation, to try its best to destroy the enemy's engagement-breaking fleet (there will certainly be some left), so that its main fleet cannot be rotated and responds with a war of attrition. "

The first two were implemented in a situation that was beneficial to the US military. The third one was hesitant at first, but Spruance strengthened his confidence after specifically communicating with Halsey.

Halsey's point of view is very clear: Assuming that the TF50 fleet and Tsunoda fleet die together, even if the Tsukahara fleet still has Peruvian supplies, it will not be able to maintain it because of no exchange - if Tsukahara's main force goes to Peru for supplies, then the west coast You can take the opportunity to transport supplies to Hawaii; if Tsukahara's main force is stuck between the west coast and Hawaii and relies only on tankers to deliver oil, submarines, destroyers, escort carrier formations, and land aviation can find ways to eliminate them.

But Halsey's wish may not come true - who stipulates that the enemy must attack the TF50 that is with the transport fleet? Wouldn't they attack the transport fleet? So before the night meeting, Spruance secretly approached Turner and asked him to help find a solution.

In theory, it was against the rules to ask Turner about this matter. Not only was the latter retired, he was not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at all. To discuss this was tantamount to leaking confidentiality. But Spruance believed that although Turner had various problems, he was not treasonous and had many clever ideas. Wasn't it Turner who came up with the Caribbean transportation line's "shipping during the day and stopping at night" method? He humbly asked for advice.

Everyone says Turner has "linear thinking", but linear thinking has an advantage, that is, it will try every possible way to get stuck in a dead end. Facing Spruance who was desperate and tried every possible means, Turner proposed two solutions that were not solutions:

The first is to attack from multiple routes: organize multiple transport forces, escorted only by destroyers and a small number of escort aircraft carriers, and send out several routes at the same time, such as one route from Los Angeles, one route from Canada to the north through the Aleutian Islands, and one route from Mexico to the south. The other routes can be sacrificed, as long as one route can reach Hawaii.

The second is oil transportation by aircraft carrier: each Casablanca-class escort aircraft carrier can carry more than 4,000 tons of various fuels after overloading. 8-12 ships are dispatched at a time and matched with 4-6 fast tankers to perform transportation tasks. Due to the protection of escort fighters (240-360 anti-aircraft fighters), the loss will not be too great. A single trip can net more than 50,000 tons of fuel (excluding the consumption required for the fleet's round trip and fighter escort). The only thing to be prepared for is that the Japanese army will send fast battleships and heavy cruisers to use naval guns to break the deal, but this is another topic, and he thinks it can also be broken.

The first one is fine, the second one is similar to the TL-type escort aircraft carrier developed by Japan, except that the escort aircraft carrier developed by the United States has a large aircraft capacity and a small oil capacity; the escort aircraft carrier developed by Japan can carry up to 7,000 tons of oil, but only 10 aircraft.

Spruance nodded to this crazy idea, indicating that he had an idea in mind. He would see what would happen after Halsey joined the transport force. He would not dare to use this "bad idea" unless it was absolutely necessary. It was bad, but it worked. It was Nimitz who was unwilling to listen to Turner's suggestion to dispatch 50 escort carriers to flatten the Azores, which made the situation more and more troublesome. Turner complained to Spruance: "Every time I was told that my method was too barbaric, I wanted to use a clever method, but the 'clever method' didn't work every time; I didn't want too many people to die, nor did I want to lose a lot, and I still refused to retreat. I wanted to take care of this and that, and I had no chance of winning..."

Halsey, the commander of TF50, knew that life was difficult. Late at night on the 23rd, he was on the Franklin without any fatigue, chatting with his old partner, Vice Admiral John Sidney McCain (Author's note: In real history, the McCain family all achieved great success. Old McCain was promoted to admiral, and Little McCain later became the commander-in-chief of the Asian Theater. Little McCain was a senior Republican senator, but he lost the presidential election to ****** in 2008. Old McCain's legendary life can be found on Baidu). McCain's mentality was relatively positive, and the solution he proposed was slightly different from that of everyone in Washington.

"We will first use the normal formation to welcome the transport fleet. If we are sure that the main force of the Japanese army is gathering, TF50 and the transport force will return to Los Angeles and wait for the enemy to disperse again; if we are sure that the enemy cannot cut off the transport line, we will divide our troops into two columns, front and back, and send 6 escort aircraft carriers to protect the transport force, and the main fleet will protect 200 kilometers behind..."

"What if we encounter the enemy's commerce-breaking fleet on the way?"

"That would be the best, let's **** them first!" McCain waved his fist, "I have disliked them for a long time. If it weren't for the superiors (Ingram and Nimitz) to control me, I would have rushed out long ago!"

Looking at the stars at night, Halsey suddenly asked for some unknown reason: "Last time I took the aircraft carrier formation outside, what happened? The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; this time I am out with my fleet, will the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor again? That commerce raiding fleet has been missing for several days..."

"This..." McCain was stunned for a moment, then laughed again, "Last time there were a bunch of battleships in Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked us by surprise, and it was a bit of a success. This time there are only a few worthless escort carriers in the harbor, what can they bomb? Besides, the war has been going on until now, the Army Air Force and the Army should be on high alert, if they are attacked again, I think we should all learn from the Japanese and commit suicide. I even thought about Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, so that the Army Air Force would have a chance to sink the enemy ships and reverse the current disadvantage in the balance of power. "

Halsey nodded, indicating that he agreed with this judgment. While they were chatting, the 2nd Air Force, which had been missing for a few days, had arrived less than 800 kilometers from the west coast. Kakuta calmly called the flight captains: "It's 3:30 in the morning. Our army is only 600 kilometers away from Seattle. At this time, all of you will attack. Do you understand the target?"

"Yes, go and bomb Boeing's aircraft manufacturing plant!"

"I wish you a successful start, please!"