Chapter 32 Chapter Thirty-One

Midway (continued) (Excerpt from Armin Von Long's "World Massacre") Phase II The opening phase of the campaign covered most of the morning of 4 June. The intermediate stages lasted five minutes successively. The finale took four days. From the long and hard-to-research records of the war in China and Egypt to the contemporary annals of armed conflict, there is no battle that can compare with the five minutes of this historic second phase, the Battle of Midway. On this day of life and death, from 10:25 in the morning to 10:30 in the morning, in this mere moment of fighting time, the three Japanese aircraft carriers, together with all the aircraft in their establishment, turned into a smoking war. Wreckage floating in the water.These huge victims turned out to embody Japan's national strength and precious wealth, the crowning achievement of half a century of heroic efforts to become a first-class military power.In five explosive minutes, Japan's hard-earned world status was shattered through campaigns from the Tsushima Strait to Singapore, Manila and Burma; although it still had to endure another three years of repeated defeats , and finally tasted the horror of the atomic explosion before accepting this fact.

After the Battle of Midway, as Feng.Admiral Nimitz once said: "We are fighting the Pacific War exactly according to the plan formulated in the military academy for twenty years" (this sentence fully demonstrates the long-planned aggression of the British and American ruling groups intention).The rest of the war is of little interest to the German reader, but this excellent example of naval warfare must be studied. Chance thrust an unknown and junior admiral midway through the campaign into full command of the United States Combined Task Force.Vice Admiral Halsey, the aggressive and pompous Admiral Patton of the Sea, fell ill just before the fleet was dispatched, or he would have led the battle.He suggested his friend, the taciturn Raymond in command of the screen fleet.Ai.Spruance to take over.Frank in command of Task Force Seventeen.Jack.Major General Fletcher was older than Spruance.Nimitz intended for Fletcher to command the campaign.Fortune put the command in the hands of Spruance, and Spruance began to show that he was one of the greatest admirals in the history of the world.The United States of America has always been a fortunate country, and that luck was prominently maintained on June 4, 1942.How long it will last in the future, only those evil gods who have gifted this vulgar and mercenary country with mixed blood and cowboy culture a primitive continent with almost unlimited natural resources.

Spruance made three historic decisions at the Battle of Midway.This shy, silent man, with no prominent family background or background, revealed a surprising talent for thinking and acting in the heat of battle.After Midway he fought victoriously with larger and larger fleets; yet in history he will always be the Spruance of Midway, as Nelson was of Trafalgar. The First Decision Spruance's first great decision was to order the entire Hornet and Enterprise to take off from extreme distances at seven o'clock in the morning, risking everything for the first surprise attack. attack.This move came at a very high price.Several squadrons did not even find the enemy.Almost half the planes ran out of gas and landed in the sea, some came back with bombs, and some did not engage in combat but went straight to Midway Atoll.However, a considerable number of dive bombers flew over Nagumo's fleet and carried out a lightning strike that set the "Akagi", "Kaga" and "Soryu" on fire.Everything else is irrelevant.Spruance won this historic gamble around the world.

This time, he also had the good luck of the Americans, because his squadrons traveling in the air happened to meet over the Japanese fleet and coordinated their attack.It was the dive bombers that inflicted heavy damage on the enemy.The torpedo bombers were annihilated.In contrast, Japanese torpedo bombers on Hiryu attacked later that day, destroying Yorktown.The Americans were numerically and technologically inferior at the Battle of Midway.This, on the contrary, highlights Spruance's commanding skills. Rear Admiral Fletcher cautiously delayed the departure of the Yorktown by more than an hour.He was only flying half the plane.When the torpedoed Yorktown had to be evacuated, Fletcher put his flag aboard an escorting cruiser and gave Spruance command of the entire fleet.This historian can clearly point out that this was the only major act of Fletcher's entire military career.

Translator's Note: When Fletcher had to abandon the Yorktown, he signaled to Spruance: "I will be at your disposal," thus graciously relinquishing the leadership of a major war right.This is what Nagumo has never done.Fletcher knew that Spruance had the staff, communications, and aircraft carriers to keep the campaign going.He was reasonable. --dimension.Heng. Nagumo's indecision Nagumo's performance forms a sharper contrast with Spruance. Spruance was inexperienced, but the general on the aircraft carrier was experienced, commanding the most outstanding aircraft carrier fleet on the ocean.Nagumo had a weather-beaten staff, ships and squadrons that moved with ballet precision, quick to carry out any order he had, but was overwhelmed by the same difficulties that plagued Spruance, and so Lost a battle that was almost impossible to lose.

This time, the Americans got lucky again. The cruiser USS Tone had a problem with its catapult, so the plane sent to scout the area of ​​sea that happened to be hiding the American fleet didn't take off in time. The B pilot sent some vague reports.Widespread reports, however, overemphasized the role played by the famous "Teaplane on the 'Tone'".In war, unreliable reports from scout planes or sentries are all too common.As soon as Nagumo got word of the American warships, he should have assumed that they were aircraft carriers, and had been impatiently preparing to strike.As a result, he was hesitant.Under the harassment of the aircraft from Midway, which had no effect on him, he kept changing his mind about the next step, changing the armament of his Type 97 aircraft.Spruance's dive bomber destroyed him, thus solving his problem.

Nagumo himself survived by climbing off the "Akagi" from the bridge along a rope.Unlike Fletcher, he clung to command, although he had an excellent subordinate, Rear Admiral Yamaguchi aboard the Hiryu, who could continue fighting in his stead.I don’t know how Lieutenant General Nagumo felt sitting in a small boat on the high seas and seeing three aircraft carriers burning in the morning sun in front of him. This is the cremation ceremony for the pilots and aircraft on the first-line aircraft carrier in Japan , is a great loss that cannot be compensated.His subsequent actions showed that he was petrified, for he ordered a hasty retreat, and on one occasion reported to Yamamoto that five US aircraft carriers were chasing him.Yamamoto fired him in the middle of the night.Yamaguchi, who could have won the battle, was willing to sink with the "Flying Dragon".

In addition to being hesitant, Nagumo made another unforgivable mistake.Just five minutes before that fatal moment, he had the entire combat patrol fleet abandoning altitude and swarming down to siege the torpedo bombers.Wherever torpedo bombers appear, dive bombers will not be too far away.The battle, and probably the whole of World War II, would have been different if half the fighters had stayed aloft; Spruance's second resolution, the tragic news of the disaster, reached Field Marshal Yamamoto three hundred miles away after many hours of tense silence, and during that time he had every reason to imagine Nagumo As usual, everything is invincible.As if he had a premonition that something was going to happen, Yamamoto had been feeling sick to his stomach for several days.At this moment, after hearing the bad news, the sick old man recovered.

Well, he seems to have come to the conclusion that Japan lost the first round.Aggressive U.S. Navy regulations would no doubt prompt Nagumo's conquerors to pursue westward.There is a great opportunity here for a counter-ambush to smash Nimitz's meager fleet to pieces!His position was secure; many notable victories were won after initial losses in the field.As far as his main fleet was concerned, Yamamoto was far superior to the enemy both in numbers and in artillery.The other four scattered light aircraft carriers can be called together. The "Flying Dragon" was intact.Emergency telegrams were sent across the Imperial fleet, ordering them to approach Yamamoto's battleship.

From then until dusk on the Fourth of June, on the commander's bridge of the huge battleship Yamato, emotions rose and fell with the constant news.The call back from the aircraft carriers in the Aleutians was discouraging.They were too late to meet up in three days. Hiryu reported that its dive-bombers had hit an enemy aircraft carrier, and later said that its torpedo bombers had immobilized another aircraft carrier in the sea.This made people very happy, but it was a pity that it was wrong. The Hiryu attacked the Yorktown twice—once by dive bombers and a second time by torpedo bombers in a fatal blow—because the excellent American rescue saved the damage caused by the first attack. The fire was completely extinguished.At sundown, the Dragon called, which too was hit and was burning, so the joy was taken away.

Yamamoto still headed east resolutely.His purpose now is to force the opponent to fight at night.If only he could meet those weakly armored American aircraft carriers in person!His cannons could sink them like ferries, and turn the tide of a screened ship; and he could still take Midway afterward.The immediate hope is that the Americans will throw themselves at the muzzle of Yamato's eighteen-inch guns, the amazing firepower of other battleships and cruisers, and the destructive firepower of the Japanese destroyer squadron in the urgent process. On the spear torpedo. Suppose William.f.This could have happened if Vice Admiral Halsey was in command of an American warship.Under such circumstances it was in Halsey's nature to spring upon his wounded foe with reckless combativeness. But it was Raymond who was in charge.Spruance.Spruance sailed straight toward the oncoming Yamamoto's fleet until he encountered Hiryu, blowing it up.He immediately recovered the plane, turned around, and headed east away from the enemy.After midnight he turned back again, and by dawn was in position to defend Midway with air cover against a possible landing. This movement was the key to the victory of Midway; it was the decision of the most brilliant commander in the Pacific War, and one of the most brilliant decisions in the history of naval warfare.It is the crystallization of wisdom. It cannot be simpler, but it has a decisive bearing on the overall situation of the world. People didn't see it that way at the time.While the campaign was underway, Spruance was reprimanded by his superiors at Pearl Harbor and Washington for not pursuing the battered enemy closely that night.His own staff—more specifically, Halsey's staff, who disliked or didn't know the non-pilot general—was confused by his decision.Later, the staff insisted that the radar could detect the oncoming surface fleet, so the task force should never disengage from the enemy.This view is maintained in American military literature, and Raymond.Spruance is still sometimes called an overly cautious officer. This criticism is wrong.Having won a decisive battle with a vastly inferior fleet, the brilliant commander is unwilling to risk a new type of electronic gizmo to ensure victory.Instead of doing so, he placed his fleet in a position that was undoubtedly both safe and dangerous.Neither Spruance nor Nimitz knew where Yamamoto's battleships were.Major General Spruance had acted with excellent military instincts to avoid falling into Yamamoto's astonishing trap.It took many months for U.S. intelligence authorities to uncover the truth about Yamamoto's military operations, proving that Spruance's blind second decision was a historic one. Shortly after midnight on Spruance's third decision, Yamamoto found his plans had failed, the night battle was out of order, and by daylight he might find himself within range of the plane at Midway.A distressed flagship headquarters meeting followed.Yamamoto and his staff sailed through the night with a fleet of astonishing firepower, and now they gather in the command room of the luxurious and intact flagship of the most powerful battleship at sea to discuss. .This Combined Fleet is like a gorilla against a cobra; may one day be able to claw the tiny foe and tear it apart!But the cobra took one bite and slipped away. Yamamoto's combat officer, the Daisuke Kuroshima, made a bold proposal at this time.The imperial fleet will keep heading towards the atoll, and when the dawn breaks, they will use artillery fire to completely destroy the flight facilities and proceed to land!After all, the planes on the atoll had already been defeated by Nagumo, and many of them fell into the sea.The rest must be junk.As for the American aircraft carriers, they had lost many planes, and two (so he thought) had been hors de combat or sunk.The intensive anti-aircraft artillery firepower of the main fleet, together with the seaplanes on the cruiser and the aircraft on the two light aircraft carriers, must be able to deal with the remaining forces on the US aircraft carrier. But the plan was dismissed as a foolish act of suicide.The staff no longer had the drive to act boldly.Yamamoto categorically denied Kuroshima's opinion. Although the author of this article has great admiration for the famous name behind this great warrior, he does not understand why he did so.Spruance was indeed greatly weakened by the loss of his aircraft.Air power at Midway was nothing more than a shoddy hodgepodge of incompetent Army and Marine Corps air units.Helpless war has its own relentless rhythm.Gone are the days when Japan could act aggressively. However, Yamamoto still wanted to fight in his own way.The time was not yet to take the atoll, but the little Pacific Fleet had been drawn far from Pearl Harbor, beyond the limits of its air umbrella, and there was a good chance.If it can be forced to fight and crushed, history can still call the Battle of Midway a victory. Yamamoto arranged two more traps for the enemy.He was going to retreat westward.No problem, the enemy will pursue with harassment tactics.He was eager now to lure the enemy into Wake Island's seven-hundred-mile-radius air circle and pounce upon it with his large fleet--battleship, heavy cruiser, and destroyer squadrons.This huge fleet has never fired a single shot, nor has it encountered an enemy plane.It's absurd that it should retreat for the sake of two war-torn US aircraft carriers and their escorts. At the same time, he ordered the aircraft carriers in the Aleutian Islands to launch another attack.Continue to strive to capture Attu Island and Kiska Island.At that time, the American fleet may be ordered to sail north, and it will encounter four heavy cruisers, a light aircraft carrier, and the formidable "Fighter" that is finally repaired, replenished with new pilots and aircraft, and is heading for the Aleutian Islands at full speed. Zuihe" aircraft carrier. So to speak, the two arms of the gorilla were going to grab the cobra from the west and north. Spruance did catch up.As the Navy people put it well, "Tail pursuit is protracted".Yamamoto retreated as the American fleet searched for him, a final phase that dragged on for two days.Spruance's surviving dive bombers did very poorly against targets smaller than an aircraft carrier.In fact, only one other warship was sunk during this long pursuit.It was a heavy cruiser, which had spotted the submarine once, had collided with a sister ship in a panic, and had already been injured.Black Isle was probably quite right that Spruance posed no threat to this heavy capital fleet.However, the staff on the "Enterprise" kept urging Spruance to attack all the way west.In their view, it is only right and proper to chase and annihilate the fleeing enemy. " Spruance's third major decision was to ignore this urging, and despite Nimitz's emphatic telegram; his decision was to stop the pursuit and end the fight.He didn't want to fall into the air circle of Wake Island.It's almost like clairvoyance.He is said to have said very succinctly to his staff: "We've hit about the same, and no more. Let's get out of here." His ships were low on fuel; his pilots were exhausted; The presence of an unknown but powerful enemy fleet eludes him; the knowledge of a land-based air threat prevents him from acting on the principle of pursuit.raymond.Major General Spruance decided thus, and thus ensured victory at the Battle of Midway. At the last moment, his career was almost ruined because of Chester.Nimitz fell into the trap of feigning the Aleutian Islands and ordered Spruance to move north!Fortunately, Nimitz thought about it later and revoked the order.On June 11th, Task Force 16 returned to Pearl Harbor and learned that Army Aviation bombers had won the Battle of Midway by sinking four aircraft carriers, several battleships, and so on.Every newspaper carried the news.It was also published in the weekly magazine.Hawaiians are convinced.For a while the whole of America was convinced.raymond.Spruance never publicly stated otherwise.The Army Air Corps, in its postwar reports and footnotes to its memoirs, admits that it did little damage to the enemy at Midway. Much later, Raymond.When Spruance was once praised for his victory, he replied, "There are hundreds of Spruances in the Navy. I just happened to be picked to do it." There was only one Spruance. Loones, and luck gave him to America at the juncture of life and death. Strategically speaking, this great victory of Nimitz and Spruance has achieved three results: a U.S. submarine can continue to sail from Midway Island instead of Pearl Harbor with a full load of fuel, and a round trip can shorten two rounds. Thirteen hundred miles.This multiplies their lethality in combat.william.f.Halsey later wrote that submarine warfare was the number one cause of Japan's defeat. Second, the flying squadron on Japan's first-line aircraft carrier either sank with the ship or was shot down in the waters near Midway Island.The loss of the backbone of this large number of lead planes and trainer planes is absolutely irreparable. Sanjapan's morale went from high to low overnight.From 10:30 on the morning of June 4, 1942, Japan began to lose heart, although this heroic people was always good until the end. Yamamoto: Farewell. The battered Imperial fleet sneaks back to Hiroshima Bay.Yamamoto still didn't know that he was defeated not by Nimitz, not even by the famous Halsey, but by an unknown man who was promoted from the rank of rear admiral of the United States Navy to replace Halsey to command. The United States sent only four minor generals into the battle; Fletcher, Spruance, and two commanders of the screen fleet.In contrast, the Imperial Fleet was led by the great Admiral Yamamoto himself, assisted by five lieutenant generals and thirteen major generals.Yamamoto essentially moved his headquarters to sea.Nimitz preferred to keep his headquarters on land, where he could use the radio to obtain intelligence and maintain a wide field of vision to correctly observe the overall situation.Nimitz's approach is more sensible. Yamamoto, who achieved the immortal air victory at Pearl Harbor, took the largest battleship in the world in the Battle of Midway, and ran away without firing a single shot.Looking back today, it seems that he did not fully understand the lesson he himself taught the world how to exert the power of joint naval and air operations.His battle plan is to use an aircraft carrier to eliminate land-based air threats; then lead his main fleet to sail forward majesticly, and open fire with Nimitz's fleet head-on, defeating Skag in the Pacific. Battle of Lark.This delusional fantasy cost him nothing at the Battle of Midway. Tokyo Radio claimed to have won a big victory, but since then, the name of Midway Island has been no longer mentioned in Japanese war reports.Survivors were quarantined.So many documents were suppressed or lost that proper information could never be obtained to ascertain the Japanese view of the battle.However, Yamamoto did not fall.He is the greatest soldier in Japan.He served as a naval attache stationed in the United States.He represented Japan in the Naval Conference in the 1920s, and won for Japan an equal status with the white sea supremacy.He had always opposed war with the United States, but when he was ordered to strike, he did his best. Yamamoto continued to command his navy until April 1943, when Feng.Admiral Nimitz learned that Yamamoto would fly to inspect the South Pacific and ordered an ambush and shot down his plane.The great man was thus ruined.Ultimately, it's a disgrace to Nimitz.In the confrontation between Achilles and Hector, there may be a little more moral than this sneaky assassination. The dramatic military offensive of the colored race in the industrial age was blocked at Midway; perhaps not forever, since the majority of humanity is colored; but certainly would be blocked for fifty to a hundred years .The Battle of Midway restored the white race to the upper hand after the fall of Singapore. However, in the face of the character of Yamamoto Fifty-Six, military analysts have to think deeply about it.If Nagumo's performance--constant, procrastinating, indecisive--is typical of people of color in an emergency, Yamamoto's determination, sublime, wit, etc. can be compared with Moltke or Manstein. quality to cope with a disaster.Europe and America should remember that Asia can produce such characters. The Battle of Midway: A Final Lesson The blows suffered by the Japanese nation during the five minutes of the Battle of Midway forced one to draw a final conclusion. Since then, due to the development of industry and science, it has become possible to inflict a Midway-style lightning mass destruction on the entire country.As we all know, the new Battle of Midway that may take place today is an atomic bomb raid and counter-raid with giant rockets between American capitalism and Russian Bolshevism.The two brutal materialist states of our time are spiritual deserts, incapable of controlling the forces at their disposal.Today, both sides have greatly developed the doctrine of aircraft carrier operations.Their entire continents and entire peoples are now equal to aircraft carriers and their crews; both nations are vulnerable, destructive, and unheard of. If things go on like this, there will be a tragic ending.Perhaps our own battered, divided, dismembered fatherland, through the ordeal of the Second World War, will produce a new philosopher—a Kant, a Hegel, a Nietzsche—to show a way out of that terrible dead end of humanity.The German genius has always been inclined to this Faustian quest beyond the known. Otherwise, the outlook will be bleak.Americans and Russians are alike in brutality and ruthlessness, although the Americans sometimes appear to be hedonistic and the Russians dull.When these two stupid giants duel, most life on earth will be threatened, and everything that mankind has achieved since Roman times will seem to be negated, but to them, it will be nothing or nothing. critical.As things stand, one of their little allies will one day become, unforeseen, the Serbia or Poland of World War III.However, this will not be a war in the traditional sense.It would be a Midway-style blitz on the mainland. English translator's note: Long's racist views are not worthy of approval.Admiral Yamamoto was shot down by a past newspaper publisher, Secretary of the Navy Frank.Knox's order.Chester.Nimitz was informed of the plan and signed his approval on the grounds that Yamamoto is irreplaceable, and for Japan, it may be equal to the value of four aircraft carriers militarily.The Japanese cooperated with Hitler in his heinous attack on civilization and had to bear the consequences, and Yamamoto was no exception. --dimension.Heng.