Chapter 24 Entertain yourself

On the afternoon of the U.S. raid on Rabaul, a Japanese reconnaissance plane departing from Rabaul spotted the Sherman formation.After receiving the report, Ozawa made a plan. Since attacking during the day is still somewhat risky, he will switch to a night attack from the air. Ozawa was really too clever, he didn't think about whether the Sherman formation still wanted to stay in the old place.In the evening, when the raiding Japanese plane rushed to the original discovery site, the method of "waiting for a rabbit" really failed, and the Sherman formation had already won the battle and left.

However, apparently none of the Japanese had a chance to think that the rabbit was not by the big tree, and they still found the US ship.Of course, what they saw was not the Sherman formation, but the landing craft returning from Bougainville.The Japanese plane only severely damaged one infantry landing craft, but the pilots who returned bragged about it and made a big list: sinking a large US aircraft carrier, two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and a destroyer. A medium-sized aircraft carrier caught fire and capsized. Due to the fierce battle situation, the pilots often made mistakes when counting the battle results, but this time the mistakes were a bit bizarre, but only in this way, Koga and Ozawa could be coaxed from ear to ear.That night, with the accompaniment of "March of Warships", the Japanese base camp announced the "First Victory in Bougainville Sea Surface Air Combat", announcing that the First Air Battle had achieved a brilliant victory.

Since his "brilliant victory", Ozawa has had an addiction to air strikes. On November 8, a total of 97 Japanese planes flew from Rabaul to the Bougainville landing site.On this day, the second echelon of the US military just entered Queen Augusta Bay to unload. Under the protection of fighter jets, none of the transport ships were sunk, but 15 Japanese planes were lost. At dusk, the Japanese reconnaissance plane spotted the US escort fleet, so Ozawa followed suit with his night attack on Dafa.The Japanese planes launched three batches of attacks on the US ships, but only one light cruiser was damaged.

Few achievements did not hinder the writing of a glamorous work summary. "The Second Bougainville Air Battle Victory at Sea" is freshly released.Battle reports claimed to have sunk two transport ships and three destroyers during the day, and three battleships, two cruisers, three destroyers, and two transport ships at night. According to this report, the South Pacific Fleet has almost lost more than half.This is of course not the case.Under extremely dangerous circumstances, Halsey used an aircraft carrier force to conduct a raid on Rabaul and achieved great success, which no one had expected before.Inspired and inspired himself, he resolved to repeat the raid on a larger scale.

He made a request to Nimitz, and then seconded a strengthened aircraft carrier group from the Fifth Fleet, commanded by Rear Admiral Montgomery, with three new aircraft carriers and three light cruisers.The three new aircraft carriers are "Essex", "Bunker Hill" and "Independence". Among these aircraft carriers, except for "Independence", which is a light aircraft carrier of the same level as "Princeton", the other two Both ships are 27,100-ton giant aircraft carriers. On November 11, the Montgomery and Sherman formations were ordered to attack Rabaul again.Halsey was counting on five aircraft carrier flight teams to completely turn Rabaul into rubble, but Sherman's two flight teams were forced to abandon operations due to bad weather after takeoff, and only Montgomery's three flight teams The team successfully reached the sky above the port.

A total of 185 carrier-based aircraft participated in the air strike, including 23 SB2C "Helldiver". The Helldiver, the newest type of dive bomber, was so unsteady and unpopular with pilots that many even called it a "brute."But the Helldiver is faster, has a larger combat radius, and carries more bombs than the SBD Dreadnought. What makes the pilots a little upset is that the Kurita formation has left the port, and all the heavy cruisers have also withdrawn to Truk, and they can only beat the remaining ships.Under the repeated attacks of the "Hell Dives", the Japanese ships were killed next to each other and injured when knocked. A total of one destroyer was sunk, one destroyer and one light cruiser were blown up, and there were many transport ships and cargo ships. was hit hard.

This time Ozawa accurately ascertained the position of the Montgomery formation.That afternoon, he dispatched 120 planes to launch a surprise attack on the U.S. aircraft carrier. The U.S. aircraft carrier was covered by shore-based fighter jets and carrier-based fighter jets.In the end, 35 Japanese planes were lost, and only 11 U.S. planes were lost, while the U.S. ships were unscathed. The Japanese pilots have learned and are used to entertaining themselves. Their report is: one of the US aircraft carriers was moderately damaged, and one was on fire.Accordingly, the Japanese base camp announced the news of the "third victory in the Bougainville Island sea surface air battle".