Is it risky to hit Seattle? Adventure, of course!

On the one hand, Tsunoda had never sent planes to reconnoiter Seattle's air defense, and he thought that it was easy to startle the snake, so could the local defense of the place where the aircraft was produced be not tight?

On the other hand, the Tsunoda fleet has little fuel left, not only the original tanker stock is all exhausted (part of it was destroyed by the US Army bombing), the latest statistics in the evening are basically only 30-35% of the fuel of each ship, the oil tiger Musashi only has more than 2,000 tons of heavy oil (6,300 tons fully loaded), which is only enough to maintain the cruising distance of more than 2,200 nautical miles at economic speed (16 knots), and if it is a full-speed combat speed (more than 24 knots), even 1,500 nautical miles of endurance is dangerous, in other words, The Tsunoda fleet now has no ability to go to Lima, or even to Galapagos Island for supplies. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

If it were someone else, it is estimated that they would have gone crazy by now -- Pearl Harbor obviously still had 400,000 tons of fuel stock, and the US military felt that it was very unsafe, but after discussing it, Tsunoda and Nishimura, two madmen, not only did they have no intention of withdrawing, but they actually decided to pull the fleet to fight the Boeing Company -- they said that they would fight as long as they were not detected by US planes that day, but they won the bet, and they did not see US reconnaissance planes until the sun went down.

Of course, Tsunoda and Nishimura don't think they're sending them to death, and they think there is sufficient basis to fight like this:

The news that the TF50 fleet had left the port and that Horikichi was about to attack Pearl Harbor had been made clear, and the Tsunoda fleet was responsible for opening up a gap for the operation;

Second, Tsunoda thought that the support fleet was approaching the north of Pearl Harbor, and that the Tsukahara fleet was heading north, and that he didn't need to run to Lima or the Galapagos anymore, and that he could just find a fleet to refuel;

Sanjo Tsunoda thinks that even if he doesn't add oil for the time being, he can use it sparingly, and it is no problem to support it for 4-5 days, and on the last day, he will leave some life-saving oil to find a remote corner to hide, and wait for others to save him, and even he has chosen this location, just in the North Pacific, taking the center point of the Aleutian Islands, the West Coast and Hawaii, each of which is more than 2,000 kilometers away from the fleet, he thinks that even if he stops here to anchor, the US Pacific Fleet will not be able to do anything about him.

It sounds like a wild man, and anyone who made such a plan before the war would have been scolded as a "red deer", but now the Japanese have long gone crazy: the soldiers took Midway Island and Christmas Island without blood, besieged Hawaii, blockaded the West Coast, Tsunoda teased Los Angeles, Tsukahara fought Panama three times, and a series of successes have long made the United Fleet up-and-down. At the beginning, the change of tankers by the US military crew made everyone have some scruples, and after waiting for Horiyoshi to approve the consumption, and then dozens of oil tankers were continuously prepared in place, and the Americans could not bear the losses and retracted, even such a calm figure as Tsukahara began to swell, and even the Nagato artillery bombardment of the Americas could be done - I am not convinced that you will fight me!

After all, everyone has no ground troops in their hands, except for Galapagos Island, the others have not yet thought of occupying a territory to land, and the German side said that it will not fight Panama until December, if Germany's attitude is a little hotter and send troops a little earlier, Tsukahara will go directly to Central America to meet the German army ashore.

Horiyoshi was very clear about the mentality of the upper and lower levels of the combined fleet, so he insisted on leading the team out by himself - only he could suppress the scene, and change to someone else, even if it was Yamamoto Isoroku who was not able to speak well now. Of course, hard pressing is not possible, and it has to be guided by the situation, so he takes a safety telegram to Tsunoda - as soon as he hears that Tsunoda is practicing radio silence, he can probably guess what Tsunoda wants to do; Then he sent a telegram to Tsukahara, first praising the success of the three dozen Panamas, and teaching the Central American wall grass a lesson to "greatly boost morale", but hoped that he would pay attention to saving artillery shells -- Lima could replenish fuel and some German aerial bombs through Argentina, and maybe Nagato or Yamato-class shells?

Chiaki Matsuda lamented that the chief's ability to perceive people's hearts was extraordinary, and the two telegrams reminded them very implicitly, but the effect was not at all.

With Hori's reminder to "pay attention to safety", the chief of staff of the Second Air Warfare, Arima Masafumi, was very careful when deploying tactics: the attack group did not fly directly to Seattle, but first flew towards Vancouver (Vancouver and Seattle are only 200 kilometers apart). His reasoning was that although the Americans were the emperors of the British and Canadians, he did not believe that the Americans could directly take over the air defense command system of such a crucial city as Vancouver -- this kind of face still had to be given between countries, and he was prepared to attack the weakness of the Canadians who were slow to react and had little experience.

Tsukahara 243 issued the order to attack the west coast for the Americans, and it was delayed for three weeks, so presumably the nerves of the highly nervous officers and men should have relaxed at this moment.

The Canadians were nervous at the beginning of October, but as soon as the half-month passed, the momentum began to loosen, after all, the Canadian mainland had not been attacked until now - and Newfoundland would have been just a scare. Moreover, although Canada has also strengthened its own air defense measures, these equipment, weapons, installations, and even personnel need to rely on the help of the Americans, and the US military cannot take care of the Canadians when it is too busy to take care of itself, so everything went smoothly after the attack group entered Canada, and even the fact that the aircraft group turned to fly south less than 70 kilometers from Vancouver did not arouse the alarm of the Canadians, let alone intercept it with anti-aircraft guns and night fighters.

At 5:17 a.m., the Japanese assault group officially entered the United States, 125 kilometers from Seattle, and the whole city was still in a deep sleep, except for the early milkers at the dairy farm who heard the low roar of airplanes - they didn't know what it was.

At 5:19, the radar station northwest of Seattle spotted a large number of planes flying in, numbering nearly 140 aircraft, but the sergeant on duty hesitated and gave up, because it was clearly from the direction of Canada - perhaps the Canadians had lost their early morning training flights.

At 5:21, the second radar station finally discovered that something was wrong, the radar station often monitored the take-off of the Boeing company's fleet, and knew that this airspace was rarely intruded into by Canadians, even by the US military itself--he was afraid of colliding with the Boeing group, because the plane was coming from the direction of Canada, he called the garrison command to report, and the phone was quickly connected, but the conscientious sergeant on duty heard that it was from the direction of Canada, and said that he wanted to verify it, and gave a reply in one minute.

A minute later, the reply was no longer needed, for the Japanese planes had arrived at the Boeing plant in the northern suburbs of Seattle, which was exactly 50 kilometers from the city and covered hundreds of hectares of the plant.

The Japanese military knew very well where the Boeing Company was located, because before turning its face, the Japanese army and navy had sent people to visit it, and even imported many planes and engines from the United States.

The shiny flares were thrown, and soon the factory building standing below was discovered - as a place to build large bombers, the layout was really not small. And in order to make up for the consumption of land aviation, Boeing rushed to produce planes day and night, although a certain amount of light control was adopted, but low-flying planes could still see the lights emitted through the curtains.

"Assault of the whole army!"

Molotov cocktails were dropped......

250 kg of bombs were dropped......

The 20mm cannon fired at the ground......

At this time, the anti-aircraft guns guarding the Boeing company sounded as if from a dream, but it was too late.

The huge factory building was blown up with a bang, and the crowd rushed out in a panic, crashing into the volley of strafing and splashing incendiary liquid.

Cries, shouts, screams, sirens, explosions all rolled together.

Dozens of planes on the final assembly line were either blown up by bombs or buried by collapsed concrete stones; Hundreds of B-29s waiting to be driven away on the tarmac were reduced to pieces in the chain explosion of bombs and fuel tanks; A large number of factory buildings were destroyed in the explosion.

The Japanese pilots who dived and dropped bombs hit fixed targets with a hit rate of more than 70 percent, and there were no buildings that could not be destroyed when the 250-kilogram bombs were dropped: the final assembly workshop, several wing and airframe production workshops, administrative centers, research and development buildings, engine storage centers, hangars, test fuel depots, and even ground anti-aircraft fire points were all reduced to rubble one after another

The fire burned brightly, partly due to the incendiary bombs, partly to the oil and even lubricating oil in the production area, and partly to the tires, paint, and wood products, which illuminated the surroundings of the factory area and made it more convenient for the Japanese army to drop bombs and strafe the buildings that had not yet hit.

Army Airlines scrambled to take off fighter jets from other airfields to come to the rescue, and did shoot down a few planes, but the crashed planes eventually crashed into various buildings, stirring up columns of fire with gasoline that had not yet burned out.

At 6:14 a.m., the leader of the flight team, Guan Weizhongzuo, saw that more and more US fighters were arriving at the scene, and that the bombs had basically been dropped, so he issued an order to "retreat of the whole army" and deliberately scattered and retreated in all directions -- the sky was about to brighten up soon, and even if they dispersed and retreated in small formations, it would not prevent the pilots from finding the mothership.

Two minutes later, the Japanese planes left, leaving only Seattle sleepless......

"Sir, the surprise attack has been successful! The pilots have already retreated. ”

"Very good, prepare to gather the planes, prepare the air defense fighters, and we will also start withdrawing!"

At 6:28 a.m., the Tsunoda fleet turned around and withdrew westward, preparing to meet the fleet that would return in 90 minutes, when the fleet was only 650 kilometers from the west coast and was in a very dangerous area.

"An airstrike on a Boeing factory? Isn't this a joke? As soon as Arnold arrived at the Joint Staff Committee, he heard the bad news, "Immediately find out the damage, and at the same time deploy a counterattack!" ”

"How many planes do we have in Seattle?"

"There are fewer than 300 of them, and I'm ready to ask the Canadians to help."

Both Nimitz and MacArthur had ugly faces, Boeing was the main force in the manufacture of bombers, responsible for at least half of the production of four heavy bombardments, although there were factories in other states that could produce B-29s, but the next big trouble would be big.

Truman also quickly learned of the news, and he ordered with a grim face: "Fight back with all your might, and at the same time quickly find out the damage of the Boeing Company and the recovery time, and hand over all the derelict personnel on duty, no matter how high their rank, to be tried by a military court......