Peterson, of course, was going to pull it out and fight, and one of Washington's confessions was to weaken the Japanese fleet with land aviation as much as possible; The second was teased by Tsukahara all night, and it was difficult to explain this tone. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

At about 9 o'clock in the morning, when the reconnaissance planes determined that the position of the Japanese fleet was 1,100 kilometers north-west of Panama, Peterson sent the largest attack group possible, more than 270 B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s with sufficient range, and at the same time transferred more than 70 P-51s with auxiliary fuel tanks to escort the attack group.

However, due to the slow speed of the B-17\24 planes dragging down the entire formation, by the time they really came into contact with the Japanese aircraft group, the time was already about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, not only did the Japanese fleet run to a distance of more than 1,200 kilometers, but the interceptor group had already been eyeing it. More importantly, Tsukahara fine-tuned the overall formation of the fleet, and the aircraft carrier formation was more than 100 kilometers behind the battleship formation, which was equivalent to 1,300 kilometers away from the Panamanian defenders.

Even if the auxiliary fuel tanks are added, the maximum range of the P-51s is only more than 2,700 kilometers, and they can only stay in the sky over the theater of operations for 5 minutes at most, and in the face of the entanglement of Japanese fighters, the P-51s are either shot down, or they are soon forced to return due to the fuel warning, and in less than 10 minutes, there are only bomber groups left in the entire airspace, which is equivalent to making trouble in the end or without escort operations.

The bombers were blocked like never before, and more than 140 Do-412s or Bf-319s pounced on them, and the big guys kept falling from the sky.

Even the bombers that successfully dropped bombs did not have a high hit rate, and yesterday morning the Los Angeles Army Airlines finally sank one water-plane aircraft carrier, and this group of troops only sank one special 1L transport aircraft carrier and one oil tanker. And on the battleship targets that were attacked, the luck of the US military was so-so:

The Yamato was hit by a 1,000-pound bomb, which was minimally invasive;

The unlucky Shinano command tower was hit by a 2,000-pound semi-armor-piercing shell, and just when the American pilots were full of joy that this bombshell with a delay of 0.025 seconds could drill the opponent out of a big hole, the 500mm thick armor on the top of the command tower directly bounced the bomb and detonated it -- it could not get into it at all, and before the disappointed pilot could come to his senses, Akamatsu Sadaaki's Do-412 had already been killed, and the four 20mm cannons simply beat it into the sea.

The only thing that made Tsukahara feel sorry was that the two Akizuki-class air defense destroyers Hatsuki and Crescent Moon were sunk by 2,000-pound bombs, which was a relatively heavy loss.

However, for this result, the US military paid a high price, only 94 of the 278 heavy bombers successfully returned home, 36 of the 79 P-51s were shot down, and 31 Japanese fighters were lost, of which 18 pilots finally parachuted and successfully rescued.

The Panamanian Army Airlines lost more than 220 crew members in one day, with an overall battle loss rate of 62 percent, and with the loss of more than 10 planes in the early morning, nearly a quarter of the total number of aircraft was lost in one day.

Faced with such a result, Peterson not only failed to vent his anger, but became even more depressed.

The Tsunoda's fetters on Los Angeles, the Tsukahara fleet's feint attack on Panama, and the huge losses caused by the two army sorties caused a huge earthquake in Washington. Everyone knew something was wrong, but no one could tell why.

Spruance initially judged that the Japanese fleet feinted to attack the west coast to lure the Pacific Fleet out, and then the main force of the Combined Fleet, which was hiding nearby, took the opportunity to kill and strive to completely annihilate the Pacific Fleet. But judging from today's feint attack by the main forces of the Combined Fleet on Panama, this does not look like the intention of a flanking attack - the distance between the two Japanese fleets is 7,000 kilometers from each other, which is twice as far as the distance between the Halsey fleet and the Tsunoda fleet.

The evidence of the Tsukahara fleet feint Panama is very clear, the air group draws an ugly circle around Panama, and everyone does not believe that Japan cannot find the assumption that Panama will finally give up the attack, if this is the case, what is the Japanese fleet doing in the early morning? Shouldn't a second strike wave be sent?

Nimitz frowned and asked, "Could it be that the Japanese army is deliberately depleting our army crew?" It can be seen from the last confrontation between the crew and the oil tanker that Japan does not care about the consumption of oil tankers at all, and has just lost oil tankers here, and has changed hands and obtained dozens of oil tankers from Europe. ”

MacArthur believed that it was very dangerous for this to continue: the army had managed to pull back more than 400 crews from China, and more than 70 units had been taken from China with abduction, but more than 300 crews had already been consumed before they had fully arrived. Not to mention that Arnold was in great pain at losing more than 300 speeds a day, the other bigwigs also felt unbearable.

After sitting for a long time, Clark hypothetical: "Could it be that Japan is creating an opportunity for the German offensive and involving our troops?" ”

"Tell me more."

"After the Japanese occupied Midway Island and besieged Hawaii, we managed to transfer a large number of units to Hawaii; The Japanese army declared that it was going to attack the west coast, and our army sent a lot of planes to defend the west coast; Now the Japanese army has begun to attack Panama again, and more than 1,800 aircraft have been continuously strengthened and deployed in this direction; Needless to say, Recife has been continuously reinforcing its forces, and now it has more than 2,000 aircraft. Clark walked to the map and drew a few arrows, all without exception not from the east coast, "Hawaii strengthened, the west coast strengthened, Panama and Recife strengthened, where weakened?" ”

"East Coast!" Truman blurted out that he no longer understands military affairs, and he understands it when he looks at Clark's arrows.

"There are still about 2,500-3,000 units available on the east coast, and although it is a bit difficult to defend nearly 3,000 kilometers of coastline, there is still a way to deal with it." Clark said in a worried tone, "The Germans on the East Coast may not be able to do it for the time being, and I'm especially worried about it now!" ”

He tapped the whip lightly in the northeast corner of the map.

"Newfoundland!" Nimitz was so shocked that he almost jumped up, and MacArthur also frowned deeply, realizing that the problem was serious -- Newfoundland is not a US territory, and the US military only has the obligation to assist in defense, and the defense preparations above are insufficient.

Since the London government changed the name of the country to "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Newfoundland", it has repeatedly claimed sovereignty over Newfoundland, and the US government naturally supports the Canadian government's sovereignty over Newfoundland, but whether this land is under the control of London or Ottawa, at least it should not be under the control of Washington, so it not only chose the British (the government of Hill Kee) to be the governor of Newfoundland, but also sent British troops and Canadian troops to the island.

Before London and Washington broke up, there were four British Army divisions trained in the United States, as well as a number of jet pilots and carrier-based pilots. After the two sides turned their faces, London was able to detain all the American troops as prisoners, but the United States could not detain the British troops, on the contrary, they had to provide them with equipment and materials to use them as the force of the Qiu government, of course, the American troops were not worried about the British troops stationed in the United States, so they arranged for two British divisions to return to Canada, and two British divisions to Newfoundland. In addition, Newfoundland also has 1 Canadian division and 1 American division, a total of 4 divisions and nearly 80,000 troops.

Although the Americans really wanted to hold all the British jet pilots in their hands to defend the east and west coasts, after all, they had to get by on face, so they deployed more than 100 Meteor jets on the island of Newfoundland, and nearly 200 of them were deployed in the Great Lakes region on the border between Canada and the United States -- the British Royal Air Force (KAF) -- but in fact they were under the command of the US Army Aviation. After this move, the United States naturally recruited all British and Canadian carrier-based pilots, and even the London government, to recruit all carrier-based pilots who fled from the British mainland to Canada into the US fleet.

Although Turner chased Truman to exert maximum pressure on Churchill, everyone thought that Turner was doing the right thing and doing it well!

Clark elaborated on his personal opinion: "In the first Battle of Newfoundland, our Atlantic Fleet had the main force, and Prince Edward Island had a large number of land flights to be deployed, which also made the German army pull out its teeth, and lost a full 5 million tons of ships and thousands of aircraft, and now the balance of forces is even more unfavorable to us, and I judge the situation to be very bad."

First of all, the Germans were familiar with the situation in Newfoundland and knew that the island's defenses were not particularly complicated;

Secondly, after the destruction of the last campaign, Newfoundland's main defense completely relied on the army aviation, although there are now jets stationed in the army, but other army aviation forces (mainly the United States) are constantly withdrawn, and the deterrent is weakened;

Thirdly, the German army has rocket weapons, if the first wave is covered with rockets 500 kilometers away in the middle of the night, the Newfoundland Army and Army will suffer heavy losses - jet aircraft have much higher requirements for airport facilities and runways than propeller aircraft, and it is difficult to evacuate, in other words, it is easy to be destroyed in the first strike, once the German army has gained a foothold in Newfoundland, its rocket weapons can cover Prince Edward Island in the next step, maybe even the latter cannot be saved;

Finally, the German army has a lot of experience in landing, and the clues of the Icelandic campaign have been seen in one go, and intelligence shows that a large number of its ships will soon set off again, and there are many landing craft in it, and under the triple coverage of its rockets, naval guns, and aviation forces, the anti-landing operation in Newfoundland is likely to fail, and this is not the time to save the situation by throwing in another 82 airborne division. ”

MacArthur thought to himself: The 82nd Division is not useful, and Ridgway is still in South America!

Spruance thought differently: he doubted the fighting power and will to fight of the British and Canadian troops, not so much because they were not good at what they had, but because they had a desire to fight, and why they should fight with the Germans - even the Germans recognized Newfoundland as an integral part of the British Empire, and the last time the Canadian division revealed the problem of giving up quickly.

The more people discussed, the more panicked they felt......