"The commander sent a telegram that the support fleet had sailed to a position halfway to Midway, and informed him of a new battle resolve. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info "Kusaka Ryunosuke handed over Horikiyoshi's telegram to Tsukahara 243," Tsunoda also got in touch, he is more than 2,200 kilometers west of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the fleet has not much heavy oil reserves, and it can probably hold out for 30 days, and the enemy has been refusing to come out of the fleet or the transport fleet, asking if he can go to San Francisco or Los Angeles? ”

Tsukahara looked at the chart and pondered for a moment: "Let him make a feint in the direction of Los Angeles, send a reconnaissance plane as much as possible to take a look, and prepare for the US Army to discover it, but it should not be less than 800 kilometers recently." As soon as he is discovered, turn south and then turn west, and I will bring him the oil without any hurry...... Can a submarine outside Pearl Harbor still support it? ”

"Yes, a total of 6 IX-class submarines were sent, and I went to Christmas Island to resupply once some time ago, and there is no problem in holding on for more than 60 days."

"Don't risk attacking, just report the situation."

For two consecutive days on the 15th and 16th, the US military did not receive a single piece of information from the Japanese side, and neither the Japanese fleet outside Pearl Harbor nor the main Japanese fleet leaving Lima seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Nimitz and Spruance were anxious. Now you can't do anything, you can only passively find the enemy and deal with it.

Spruance relieved him not to worry: the Los Angeles transport fleet has been basically completed, the Wasp in Pearl Harbor is about to be repaired, and after the 20th, the situation in Hawaii will improve as soon as the fleet is dispatched and supplies are delivered.

The two are still a little lucky: the main crude oil producing areas in the United States are basically in the Gulf of Mexico, but there is still a California oil field on the West Coast. Without this oil field, and with the Panama Canal not working, all the fuel would have to be refined from the Texas refinery before it could be transported to the West Coast, which would be much more troublesome. Therefore, after the Panama Canal was blocked, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a death order, and all the oil fields in California were given priority to supply the West Coast and Pearl Harbor for military needs, and all other civilian areas were transferred to the Texas production area.

Until now, due to the changes caused by the war, the Transoceanic Railway, which had been sparsely populated by the impact of cheap shipping, has become prosperous again, and there are transportation trains running back and forth everywhere. The same is reflected in the stock market, where railway stocks are bullish and shipping stocks are slumping.

Nimitz suddenly discovered that the U.S. Navy had made a mistake by deploying too many submarines on the front line, so that there were not many submarines that could be called in the rear. If there were a large number of submarines on the west coast and in Central America, combined with aircraft, it would be much easier to grasp the movements of the Japanese army.

As far as the current battlefield is concerned, the so-called forward deployment means that most of the submarines in the Pacific direction are deployed in Australia, New Zealand, and the South China Sea, preparing to attack the Japanese army's South Sea transportation line, while most of the submarines in the Atlantic direction are deployed on the line from the periphery of the Strait of Gibraltar to Cape Verde, preparing to attack the German army's supplementary line to South America.

In fact, the supply systems of the Japanese, German and American forces were completely different. The Ridgway Group stationed in Recife by the US military has higher requirements for supplies, and the recession of the main fleet has made it necessary for the US supply fleet to be transported to Recife in small quantities or multiple trips under the protection of destroyers or frigates, so that Turner has specially studied and formulated the supply routine of "sailing during the day and stopping at night", while Japan and Germany, especially Germany, have adopted a large formation for one-time supply, and the transport fleet has transported military supplies to South America for more than three months at a time, as for other living materials, All were supplemented in situ by the countries of the La Plata Group and Brazil.

Most of the small convoys encountered by US submarines in the waters of the North Atlantic were Argentine or Uruguayan ships that sent agricultural products to Portugal in twos and threes. This brings up a very embarrassing problem, although everyone knows that this batch of agricultural products will eventually fall into the hands of Germany and Italy, but the United States, whether it is the country of origin, the carrier country, or the country of destination, is currently a neutral country, and for the time being, it cannot do anything with them -- the United States has enough allies, and it is not worth the loss to force a bunch of neutral countries into hostile countries. Moreover, most of the goods transported by the neutral countries were only agricultural products and mineral resources, which were useful but not urgent, and the sinking of these merchant ships did little damage to Germany. The United States will not do anything like this, which is of little military or political significance.

What the United States really wants to cut off most is the Axis Indian Ocean route, where there are not only crude oil supply lines from Germany and Japan, but also equipment and material trading lines between Germany and Japan.

But it is very difficult to cut off this route. In 1943, Admiral King made the decision to suspend submarine construction in a hurry to develop surface ships, an opinion that both the Naval Shipbuilding Committee and Nimitz himself agreed, because the United States had more than 300 submarines at that time, and the results of breaking diplomatic relations had been very poor, and it was even more important to concentrate on the development of the surface fleet.

Later, everyone realized that the main reason for the low efficiency of US submarines in breaking diplomatic relations was not submarines, but torpedoes -- inefficient torpedoes that could not explode caused the submarine forces to repeatedly attack with little success. When the torpedoes were improved and the submarine was tried to break the diplomatic relations again, another embarrassing situation arose: with the massive loss of Allied territory, the bases for breaking diplomatic relations in the Indian Ocean were gone.

After India's ideal base was occupied by the Japanese army, US submarines could only attack from bases in South Africa or Australia if they wanted to break diplomatic relations, with the former having a single-trip attack distance of nearly 8,000 kilometers and the latter nearly 7,000 kilometers. However, most of the U.S. submarines do not have such a long-range sortie capability, and the most suitable Little Shark-class submarine is only 11,000 nautical miles (at an economic speed of 10 knots on the surface), which makes submarine combat almost impossible.

The road to a suitable base is not open, and the United States is considering replenishing it halfway, but the chances of this kind are also very slim. U.S. submarines did not develop XIV-class cow submarines like Germany, and usually used third-country merchant ships for covert replenishment. But the road was soon blocked, because the entire Indian Ocean was occupied by Axis or Axis-controlled vassals, and the unreported and inexplicable appearance of a third-country freighter seemed strange. For the now domineering Japan and Germany, sinking ships of third countries at will is nothing at all. Not to mention that the ships of the third countries are not taken seriously, and the ships that are not reported and do not listen to the greetings will be sunk even if they fly the flags of the Axis allies or even the flags of Japan and Germany. I don't accept you to bite me!

After the Spruance fleet attacked the Indian Ocean, Japan and Germany made up their minds to strengthen their monitoring of the Indian Ocean, and Socotra, Madagascar, Maldives, and Sumatra formed a fine monitoring network.

In the southern Indian Ocean area where Nimitz bypassed the previous time, the axis was not strong because of the whip length, but the control of the central and northern Indian Ocean was very strong.

In the South China Sea, although the US submarines are all-powerful, with the improvement of the anti-submarine capability of the Japanese army, they are also in trouble in breaking the diplomatic operation. Under the premise that Horiyoshi repeatedly emphasized that he was in charge of the transportation work with the "coward" Keno Kurita, the anti-submarine capability of the Japanese army has been greatly improved:

First, a large number of cheap D-type destroyers (escort destroyers) were built to protect the merchant fleet, and these speeds were only 25 or 6 knots, and although the destroyers produced with ordinary steel had poor conventional combat capabilities, their anti-submarine capabilities were not weak;

The second is to introduce an advanced underwater hydrophone -- sonar -- from Germany.

The third is to use a professional anti-submarine aircraft -- the East China Sea. Although the Atlantic Inspector was good, it was too expensive for Japan, and even the relatively wealthy Japanese Navy could not afford to use a large number of four-engine aircraft, so it turned its attention to the anti-submarine aircraft in the East China Sea developed by the country. Germany is also very interested in this kind of aircraft, and the head of the East China Sea is completely borrowed from the Ju88, and it can even be said that it is almost identical, with a huge transparent nose and a good downward view.

Tokai, which is currently in operation, is equipped with a Sakae-12 900 hp engine (historically a 410 hp Hitachi Star air-cooled 9-cylinder engine). Due to the early elimination of the Zero, the main fighter of the Japanese army was basically replaced by Gale or Purple Electric, and no matter which of these two aircraft did not need the Rong 12, so this engine was added. The Japanese army adhered to the principle of not wasting, on the one hand, it was used to convert the obsolete Zero into a two-seat training aircraft, and on the other hand, it used the Rong 12 engine for the construction of other aircraft.

In the East China Sea, which requires a long stay in the air, fuel-efficient, and at the same time has no requirements for the maximum speed of the aircraft, the Rong 12 is simply a perfect match, after changing to the engine, the overall power has increased a lot, not only into a 4-member professional anti-submarine patrol aircraft, with 4 20mm cannons, but also can carry 4 250 kg aerial bombs or 24 anti-submarine hedgehog bombs (about 40 kg). The most awesome thing is that if the pilot is very skilled, he can maintain a patrol attitude with only one engine (the other propeller can be smoothed at this time), and the whole aircraft can maintain a flight time of more than 14 hours.

The German side is also very interested in the East China Sea, where the sea and submarine search radars are installed, because Japan has also installed a magnetic detector on it (underwater submarines can be detected according to the change of magnetic field lines, but not too far from the submarine). Previously, Germany's anti-submarine special aircraft was a retired joint attack aircraft, and the performance of cameo anti-submarine was not very strong, but the price was much more expensive (the East China Sea was a twin-engine, the joint attack aircraft was 3 engines, and the engine was a much more expensive BWM801), and finally the East China Sea was simply used for production, and the engine was replaced with a BMW 701 produced in Germany (Rong 21 German improved version), and new equipment was added - anti-submarine rocket.

The BMW 701 is still being used to produce helicopters - engines with more horsepower than the 701 are larger and heavier than the 701, and engines that are about the same size and weight as the 701 are not as powerful as the 701. The 701 is not only fuel-efficient, but also has low oil requirements, and does not need C3 at all, but can have a good effect with B4, and even can barely deal with tank gasoline. This quality is invaluable to helicopters that accompany army operations without a reliable aviation base.

Italy, France, etc. have taken this engine, have taken it to imitate, both countries are stronger than Japanese technology, imitation of the knock-off not only better than the original quality, the price is also low, the Japanese themselves can only shake their heads.

Nimitz could only count on airplanes instead of submarines, and on the 17th the Army finally found the fleet, the Tsunoda fleet bound for Los Angeles, less than 1,000 kilometers away......