If Kusato Renyi still doesn't understand Hori Teiki's entire command idea, he is a complete fool who is not worthy of being the chief of staff of the Joint Fleet. If he considers everything together, he will understand the other party's careful arrangements one after another:

The first step is to attack Guadalam at night.△The large-scale fleet shelling is certainly to cover the retreat of Guadalam Army, but more importantly, to completely destroy Guadalam Airport and completely lose the reconnaissance vision centered on Guadalam. The reason why more than 200 203mm caliber naval guns were used to perform shelling missions was of course to make Guadalam Airport unusable for a longer period of time.

The second step is to conceal the maneuver fleet. Now the mobile troops of Tsukahara are still hiding in the triangular waters between the three islands of Bougainville, Monda and Schwarzer. They do not hide behind the artillery fleet like conventional thinking. Instead, they are in the northwest, 260 nautical miles away from the artillery fleet - it is difficult to guess, and it increases the difficulty of enemy reconnaissance.

The third step is to launch the artillery fleet forward. By using 3 battleships, 9 heavy cruisers and more than 30 destroyers as the main formation, luring the enemy aircraft carrier formation to take the lead in attacking, and taking the opportunity to deduce the approximate range and distance of the enemy fleet - the artillery fleet will take great risks, but due to the arrangement of land-based zero fighter fleet cover, the risk has been reduced to the minimum level.

At this moment, if the foreigner uses satellites to look down, he will find that the US TF16\17, the Japanese mobile fleet, the artillery fleet, outline a roughly equal triangle. TF16\17 is 290 nautical miles away from the mobile fleet and 240 nautical miles away from the artillery fleet. The artillery fleet is 260 nautical miles away from the mobile fleet. However, except that the positions and distances between the Japanese artillery fleet and the mobile fleet are clear, the other distances and relative positions are unclear.

tf16\17 At this moment, the course has turned to the southeast and slowly moved forward. The fleet has a good vision, with cumulus clouds at a low altitude of only 300-450 meters. The South Dakota escorted not far from the starboard side behind the Enterprise, but Kincaid was in a very bad mood: on the one hand, because the attack aircraft group had not arrived at the scene, the tf64 formation was in trouble first - he wanted to blame Major General Li for knowing that the enemy had three battleships and they were still foolishly hitting (Major General Li cried: I am wronged, how did I know that I would encounter such perverts as Nagamon and Yamato. I can't afford to win other Japanese battleships); on the other hand, the tf64 formation reconnaissance aircraft sent, and the enemy landing fleet was found 50 nautical miles west of Guadalam.

Kinkaid's thinking has always been troubled by the false information that Japan would choose to launch a counterattack, so after receiving the telegram, he took it for granted that this was the fleet that the Japanese army used to bombard Guadalam last night to cover the landing of the army. As for why the course was from east to west, he believed that the landing had been completed and was on his way back - he did not expect that it was the Japanese retreating force. The situation reported before the demise of TF64 made his judgment even more chaotic: the enemy battleship fleet received aircraft support - this further strengthened the idea that the enemy aircraft carrier fleet was just after the battleship formation, which was nothing more than a temporary lack of finding.

After thinking for a long time, he hesitated to issue a third order. He asked the Enterprise SBD formation, which was currently attacking the Japanese battleship units, to distribute 12 aircraft to search in depth. He will not participate in the attack on the battleships for the time being - he can only go back and continue to attack the enemy battleship units unless the enemy aircraft carrier is not found. In this way, the formation of 61 aircraft of the Enterprise, which originally attacked the artillery fleet, became a formation of 49 aircraft. Due to the difference in speeds of TBF and SBD, these 49 formations were also divided into two attack echelons in the front and rear.

Then he issued the fourth order. Since the SBD search troops that took off in the early morning have not found anything so far, they asked them to attack the Japanese landing fleet according to the results reported by the TF64 formation No. 4 reconnaissance aircraft. Then he sent a telegram to Halsey in the rear - asking him to send a land-based B-17 bomber to deal with the landing fleet and the Japanese troops on Guadao. The carrier-based aircraft really couldn't make any moves.

According to later military observers, based on actual combat conditions, every order issued by Kincaid from the morning was wrong - every mistake was not big, but it was enough to be fatal.

The first mistake is that he only dispatched the Enterprise formation to attack the Japanese artillery fleet rather than all aircraft to attack - if he made up his mind to launch a full-deck attack at the first time. A large formation of more than 130 aircraft (tf16\17 has a total of 165 carrier-based aircraft available, leaving the necessary cover to deploy more than 130 aircraft) is likely to severely damage the Japanese artillery fleet, and three powerful battleships can kill at least 1;

The second mistake was to dispatch 16 SBDs of the Hornet to seek enemy forces in other directions. Since it is believed that the Japanese aircraft carrier formation is in battleship formation, the invested enemy forces should at least work in that direction. If they cannot find the target, they can return and cooperate with the Enterprise formation to attack the Japanese battleship formation. In this way, the first wave of attacking the artillery fleet will not be 61 aircraft, but 61+16, with a total of 77 aircraft;

The third error is that tf64 reported that the enemy battleship formation was covered by aircraft and divided 12 aircraft to carry out the mission of re-enlisting the enemy. Since the enemy fleet was covered by fighter aircraft, it should not weaken the offensive power of the Enterprise. Originally, there were only 61 offensive powers, and after implementing this order, only 49 short-term offensive forces remained;

The fourth mistake was to abandon the reconnaissance mission of the 16 SBDs of the Hornet to deal with the "landing fleet" - since reconnaissance aircraft have been sent in other directions, we should stick to the end. After analysis, later generations found that the aircraft that was most dependent on the northwest fan surface of these 16 SBDs could be contacted with the Japanese mobile fleet only after another 20 minutes of flight. Whether it could be discovered is the same thing, but at least it retains the possibility of discovery, rather than attacking the so-called "landing fleet" on the backwards of the cart.

These four orders were combined and finally completely destroyed the hope of the tf16\17 formation to discover the Japanese mobile fleet first, but no one can see the consequences of these situations. Everyone has only seen Major General Lee's mistakes at present - but he finally used his heroic act of self-sacrifice to dilute the impression of everyone (he was later awarded the Medal of Honor of Congress), and no one can blame him too much. Of course, some military analysts also complained about Jin Kaide, believing that this analysis was based on the judgment of the mobile fleet in later knowing that the mobile fleet was not behind the shelling fleet and then making another judgment elsewhere, which was not fair to the parties involved - when the battlefield was covered with black fog, Jin Kaide's strategy was not very problematic!

At 5:41, under the unified command of Nobutake Kondo, the huge artillery fleet formed a circular air defense array, and each cruiser and destroyer lined up in three circles, surrounding the three battleships tightly in the center. At the same time, the 36 Zero fighters who had been hovering over the fleet threw away their sub-fuel tanks and prepared to try their best to intercept the US aircraft group.

"Fire on the air three-type air ball!" With the order from Kondo Nobutake, the main guns of the three giant ships of Nagato, Muro and Yamato were raised high and shot the famous three-type air balls to the fleet flying from the Enterprise. Before the anti-aircraft gun near-explosion fuze was invented, this ammunition was considered a threatening shell.

"Boom Boom" huge shells kept exploding in the air. Although they did not hit any enemy planes, they at least successfully drove the US aircraft group away. At this time, the zero-fighters rushed to intercept. The f4fs who served as cover fought with zero battles while using all their strength to sbds. The tbfs opened the attack channel. Thanks to their efforts, at least 8 sbds and 8 tbfs broke through the interception circle and entered the air above the artillery fleet.

Compared with other warships, the Yamato, which looks the most powerful and also has a flagship flag, is undoubtedly the most attractive target. The SBD and TBF rushed towards the Yamato, located in the center of the entire fleet like moths to a flame. Two SBDs rushed down from a height of 4,000 meters side by side. Although the air defense artillery lined up around them desperately blocked, they did not interfere with their attacks. They had participated in the Corals.

Under the operation of the old American pilots in the two battles in the sea and Midway, two 250-pound bombs were accurately dropped on the back deck of the Yamato, breaking down four 127mm anti-aircraft guns and killing more than 20 sailors. However, the good luck of these two SBDs also ended here. Just as they tried to pull up and disengage, they were torn into pieces by a group of 25mm anti-aircraft guns on both sides of the left and right due to their slow speed, and fell into the sea on the spot.

Taking advantage of the sbd's successful bombing and a chaotic moment, the other four TBFs also dropped torpedoes on the left and right sides. Captain Yamato Captain Takayama Yi flexibly controlled the command warship to avoid the first three, and the last one could not escape. Everyone in the commander's tower heard a "boom" sound, and felt the hull sway slightly, and then there was no other feeling. Of course, the torpedo still successfully exploded, but Yamato's defense was thick enough, and this little damage could still withstand it, which neither affected the speed nor destroyed the defense, and only made the team members suffer more trouble.
Chapter completed!