"You mean yourself?" Yamamoto realized that the unbearable losses Makino spoke of were not referring to any of the Combined Fleet ships, but to himself.

"Frankly yes, if I die, Japan will not be able to turn the tables around. But during this period, I could not stay on shore. The telegram from the Military Command Department revealed my location. How did those relenting enemies kill Asano? They'll find it and sneak in. Moresby was now in disarray, with 11 divisions concentrated nearby, as well as troops from Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan, and it was difficult for the mere 200 gendarmes to distinguish between Japanese-speaking East Asian spies...... So I'm worried"

"I understand your concern, so get on board. Go to the Musashi. This is the safest warship except for Yamato. ”

"No, I want to get on a warship that is inconspicuous and far from the battlefield. For example, a light aircraft carrier. ”

"Light aircraft carriers? Interesting. Yamamoto found that although Makino was different from Asano's chaotic thinking, he followed his own logic and always had unexpected ideas.

"I need to be at sea, to collect first-hand data on guided weapons, and the Chitose or Chiyoda can send their data by radio, but the enemy, even if they are nearby, will not know which ship I am. And, if things don't go well, I can get on a bomber and go back to land. ”

"I see."

Yamamoto found that Makino's thoughts were really thoughtful, and it was obvious that it was one of his intentions to flee at any time, and the Type 97 ship attack or the 99 ship explosion had enough range to carry out such a mission.

"Go to the Great Eagle, then, and this ship will be on the flank of my fleet, closest to New Guinea. But there is still the possibility of an enemy carrier-based aircraft or an American submarine attack. But let me remind you that the Great Eagle used to be called Kasuga Maru. ”

"I'm not that superstitious. All I know is that the Great Eagle will definitely not be the target of that Chinese nuclear submarine attack. Makino agreed.

"Are you so sure?"

"Yes, I analyzed it hard and finally found their weakness, that is, they don't have enough weapons, and their actions all follow this logic, so it is very likely that they will not attack any warship of the Combined Fleet, let alone an ad hoc aircraft carrier, but they will definitely use other means to carry out conspiracy activities."

"What kind of conspiracy do you judge?"

"They should be exposing your entire deployment to Nimitz by forging communications."

"In that case, you still don't object to me fighting this battle?"

"I'm not that adventurous, but now Japan needs to take a risk to buy time for new weapons to be developed. Moreover, in this operation, as you said, the United States does not have enough troops and cannot sit idly by and watch Australia be occupied, so the US Navy does not have many options, even if it knows our deployment, and they need to take more risks. So I don't object to your plan. ”

"But......" it was Yamamoto's turn to hesitate this time, "if they expose my deployment, it will still be a headache for me." It is my mission to protect every warship here for His Majesty the Emperor. ”

"It's not that hard to solve."

"Oh, tell me about it."

"I don't expect them to show themselves in front of the Americans, because the future world is a pattern of Sino-US hegemony, and they are definitely not willing to expose their Chinese origin at this juncture."

"So ......"

"So, they're going to use their communications advantage to mimic our encrypted telegrams to deliver the real deployment, because they know that the Americans can crack our code."

"yes, so what?"

"We don't have the electronic jamming technology to disrupt their plot, but we can send more information to the Americans to interfere with them."

"Interference?" Yamamoto asked, wide-eyed.

"Yes, inundulging the analytical capabilities of the U.S. military intelligence units with more true and false information, so that even if they have real information in their hands, they will not be able to tell. This is the basic strategy of the future information war. ”

Yamamoto looked at Makino in surprise.

"Then our fleet is going to be messed up."

"Our fleet, on the other hand, only needs to communicate real intelligence within a series of strictly agreed periods of time. The rest of the time, misleading communications can be sent in a dense window, such as 20 times per hour, based on the number of seconds at the end. The communication window is issued to the fleet in the form of a codebook. This is an idea of the future of encrypted communication, we don't have such technology, but it doesn't prevent us from borrowing such an idea. ”

"It's an eye-opener." Yamamoto exclaimed.

"I thought all night yesterday that if they try to take advantage of the chaos, we're going to make things even more chaotic, so they don't have a way to get the Americans off."

"But I'm still worried that they have nuclear weapons in their hands."

"It's just an attack nuclear submarine, and they're just powering a reactor, maybe one or two nuclear* with a small yield. We should be able to afford such losses. ”

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, if they had*, they would have used it a long time ago."

Makino's tone made Yamamoto feel that he was not confident.

In fact, when Makino said this, what flashed in front of his eyes was the scene of being dragged out by Lin Xiuxuan in the Shanghai prison car.

Command of the 5th Army in Northern Burma.

Chu Tingchang saw Xiong Xianghui for the first time at a military meeting, and when Tao Mingzhang introduced him, of course he knew what was going on, so he pretended to be polite. Before the meeting, Tao Mingzhang had already sent a telegram, indicating that the deputy division commander who came this time did not interfere with the command, and it looked quite reliable. It can be seen that Tao Mingzhang is very afraid that he will embarrass the deputy division commander sent from Chongqing.

There was only one Chin Bang sand table in the conference room, and there was no identification arrow on it, which was actually just a retreat meeting, indicating that Chu Tingchang had some ghost ideas to announce.

Under the pretext that he was not available, Sun Liren sent a division commander to participate, but most of the commanders of the US Army and Airborne Forces participated, and Wingate also came in person as a plane. Chu Tingchang also had to coax the British, and he had to rely on the British's power in Chin State to help find the way through this operation.

The meeting began with a discussion of the current situation. It has been ascertained that the strength of the Burmese enemy consists of seven divisions and five mixed brigades below the headquarters of one front, as well as subordinate units. The Independence Army and other local armed forces, about 90,000 men. These forces garrisoned the entire south, including the 2nd and 31st Divisions, both of which were destroyed and rebuilt, and about 10,000 men were responsible for the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway. The remaining troops are less than 70,000, and they are facing the Allied forces in a defense line of more than 1,000 kilometers, and the strength is obviously insufficient.

However, there are many mountains in northern Burma, so the Japanese army is very strategic to hold those key passages, and this method is of course effective.

The simple use of infantry to fight for mountainous terrain is not a dull battle that Chu Tingchang wants, and common sense to fight in the mountains is conducive to the defenders, and it can easily evolve into a war of attrition of personnel and materials.

Therefore, Chu Ting Chang announced that he was going to conduct a quick decisive battle, to find a way, with mechanized troops, to quickly pass through the mountains of Chin State, which the enemy thought was impossible for tanks to pass, into the plains, and take Mandalay directly.

Zhou Youfu and Tao Mingzhang both agreed, and Chu Ting nodded to the general and let Zhou Youfu fight this battle. Tao Mingzhang did not object, although he wanted to suppress Lao Zhou every time, but his 201st Division recruited more than sixty percent, and he really couldn't afford such a heavy responsibility.

The American and British delegates present at the meeting were noncommittal, and they had to be more open-minded and knew how Hitler's troops had passed through the Ardennes Forest and occupied France, but the mountains of Chin State were much higher than the forests on the Franco-Belgian border, and the difficulties were bound to be great.

The meeting was attended by Hu Su, commander of the 30th Division. He was a cautious person and didn't express too many opinions, he knew that if the plan was implemented, it would be nothing more than to let the new army fight a tough battle and attract strong enemies. In any case, Chu now has Stilwell as a backer, and the fact that so many US military liaison officers and airborne commanders participated in the meeting is very telling. Of course, he was well aware that the biggest flaw in Chief Chu's plan was that he had not yet found the path he wanted through Chin Bang.

The new 38th Division was the first to retreat into India on the shortcut from Chin State, and it did not take much trouble on the way to retreat, but the new 38th Division also lost its cars and artillery along the way, and only carried some mules, horses and mortars into India. Purely from a distance, this is indeed the closest way to a sneak attack on Mandalay, but through mechanized troops? Is Pavilion Chief Chu a little reckless in Wei Yan's sneak attack on Meridian Valley this time?

After the meeting, Hu Su quickly reported the meeting to Sun Liren, Sun didn't dare to slack off and checked the map for a long time, and shook his head, most of the mountains here run north-south, that is to say, the valley is also north-south, and there are not many channels that can be used, he doesn't know whether Chu Tingchang really has the bottom in his heart this time, or continues to pretend to be a ghost there. After experiencing too many shocks, he no longer dared to draw negative conclusions about Chu's plan.

At the same time, Xu Chong and Ma Qiang, each with a Sino-Chinese, British mixed reconnaissance and mapping force, re-entered the jungles of northern Myanmar to find the road that Chu Tingchang needed. Based on the topographic mapping done by drones 2 months ago. Reconnaissance units need to connect the already discovered flat paths.

The Japanese army invested only a small number of troops in the entire mountainous area of Chin State, and most of their forces were placed on the road north of Monneva to Rakhine, and they guessed that Chu Tingchang would sweep in again and return to the old way. The Japanese generals had also experienced fighting in China, and knew that the Japanese could only launch a limited attack along the Yangtze River, and that it would be difficult to launch any decent attack if they were too deep into the mountains. The mountains here are much more treacherous.

Two days later, Xu Chong's progress had outpaced Ma Qiang's, and he had quickly walked through a series of mountains and valleys mapped by drones. Some of the passages are pedestrian only, and if you want to pass through vehicles, you still need to get sappers under the nose of the Japanese army and send them in advance for blasting. This undoubtedly increases the difficulty of the implementation of the task. However, the more impossible the path, the less likely it is for the defender to notice.