Chapter 545 American-Style Sex Breakup

"Mr. President, Admiral Short, Governor of Hawaii and Commander-in-Chief of the Hawaiian Army, reported that the Japanese landing force entered Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of January 3rd, Hawaii time...

Mr. President, Admiral Nimitz, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, reported that a Japanese Nagato-class battleship was sunk. In addition, the 80,000-ton Japanese battleship was also severely damaged."

White House, Oval Office. US President Roosevelt listened to the reports of Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Navy Chief of Operations Stark with a gloomy face.

The Battle of Hawaii has not yet ended, but the victory or defeat is clear. The United States lost! And lost very ugly!

Not only is the Hawaiian Islands about to fall, but the Pacific Fleet has also suffered the heaviest blow. Ten battleships including Pennsylvania, California, Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and North Carolina were lost one after another, and the aircraft carrier USS Hornet was also lost.

In addition, the loss of the Army and Navy aircraft reached more than 800, and there were more than 45,000 Army and Marine Corps officers and soldiers, as well as more than 90,000 white American civilians trapped on Oahu and other islands in Hawaii.

"This is a complete and utter defeat!" President Roosevelt sighed, "and... this is just the beginning of a series of failures, right?"

Stark and Marshall looked at each other and nodded at the same time. The United States already has a long "failure list". After Hawaii and the Pacific Fleet, there are the Philippines, the Far East Fleet, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island, the Gilbert Islands, the Aleutian Islands, etc.

In addition, the British Malaya, North Borneo, Burma and Singapore Fortress are also on the list of failures.

The Japanese fleet and army have begun to attack the above-mentioned areas, and the resistance of the British and American Allied Forces will sooner or later be crushed with the complete loss of sea control. Except for the Singapore Fortress, the areas will probably be lost before April 1942, and then the Dutch East Indies will change hands. The Singapore fortress will most likely be captured by the Japanese within six months, and then Japan and Germany will meet in the Indian Ocean. At the same time, Japan will march towards Australia and turn itself into a real intercontinental country...

"Besides reinforcing Australia, we can't do anything now, right?" Roosevelt looked at the Chief of Naval Operations Stark and the Army Chief of Staff Marshall.

"President, we can still use submarines and disguised attack ships to deal with the Japanese now." Said Admiral Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations.

"So how much did our submarines achieve in December?" Roosevelt asked.

"It is confirmed that 10 Japanese transport ships and 2 Japanese light warships were sunk... a total of about 20,000 tons of ships."

Seeing Roosevelt's disappointment, Admiral Stark immediately said: "Mr. President, the British have achieved much better results than us. In December, they sank 31 Japanese transport ships and 4 Japanese light warships, and the total tonnage sunk is estimated to be more than 75,000 tons."

What Stark said was actually an exaggerated "confirmed results". According to statistics from the Japanese Army and Navy, the total tonnage of ships sunk or damaged by submarines and disguised attack ships in December was less than 75,000 tons. Among them, only 18 ships were sunk by submarines and disguised attack ships, with a displacement of less than 45,000 tons.

In addition, 26 Japanese ships were damaged, most of which were minor injuries, that is, one or several high-tech torpedoes produced in the United States were inserted into the hull. This torpedo is the MK14 torpedo developed at great expense by the U.S. Navy Ordnance Bureau. It uses the most advanced magnetic fuse in the world. In theory, it does not need to hit the hull. As long as it passes near the target, it can be detonated by the target's magnetic field, thereby blowing up the enemy ship. But the result of actual use was that the Japanese shipyard collected more than 100 such torpedoes from damaged Japanese ships between January and March 1942...

According to later statistical surveys, the 52 American submarines fired a total of 160 MK14 torpedoes in mid-December 1941, and only 2 Japanese freighters (26 of which returned home with torpedoes) and 1 Soviet freighter (hit by mistake, and later paid $1 million in compensation), with a total displacement of less than 7,000 tons.

However, the 22 submarines and 5 disguised attack ships deployed by the United Kingdom east of the Strait of Malacca achieved good results. Now the British Empire is too poor to afford high-tech torpedoes, so it can only use low-tech and backward torpedoes to attack.

And this low-tech white-headed torpedo is an antique developed during World War I. It explodes if it hits, and does not explode if it misses. In less than a month, these low-tech torpedoes sank a total of 9 Japanese freighters and 2 Japanese light warships.

In addition, the five British camouflaged attack ships also sank five Japanese merchant ships, including a passenger ship full of Japanese expatriates evacuating from Hong Kong, causing more than 600 Japanese civilians to drown. This incident also caused tensions between Japan and the East Asian continent - because the attacking British camouflaged attack ship violated international law when it opened fire and hung the flag of a country in the East Asian continent.

"That is, at most 100,000 tons a month..." President Roosevelt was still not satisfied with the exaggerated results, because he understood the navy. He shook his head and said, "Our and British submarines will soon have to be redeployed, and then they will have to spend a lot of time on the road, and their combat efficiency will be greatly reduced."

The United States currently has 103 submarines in the Pacific Theater (of which 52 are active in the Western Pacific), and the British Eastern Fleet has 50 submarines (of which 22 are active in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and East China Sea), for a total of 155 submarines. There are a lot of them, but where these submarines attack directly determines their combat efficiency.

If these submarines are based in Singapore and the Philippines, the time spent on the road will be very short. More than 40% of submarines may be in combat waters for a long time.

But if the submarine base is moved to Australia, then they will have to spend a lot of time sailing thousands of nautical miles in order to travel between the base and the battlefield. Moreover, the redeployment of 155 submarines cannot be done just by talking, because Australia is just a large rural area farming and herding sheep. Although the British have built naval bases and ports there, the British have limited supplies stored there. It is impossible to support the stationing of a large fleet. Even supporting more than a hundred submarine operations is difficult, and a large amount of equipment and ammunition must be supplemented.

In addition, the distance from Australia to the target sea area (Japan’s main shipping route) is too far, and the closest one is more than 3,000 nautical miles. Those small and medium-sized submarines with a displacement of less than 1,000 tons, such as the R-class and S-class, are basically unable to reach Japan's main routes without the support of a submarine mothership.

Therefore, after the current batch of U.S. submarines operating in the Pacific return to new bases in Australia or the United States, the threat from U.S. submarines to Japanese transport ships will be greatly reduced.

Seeing that Roosevelt was a little dissatisfied, Stark quickly said: "Mr. President, we are building large ocean-going submarines of more than 1,500 tons, and they will be in large numbers before the end of this year.

In addition, we can also use part of the light cruisers for breaking engagements, and we can even consider transforming some of the Cleveland-class light cruisers under construction into fast aircraft carriers, and then use them to form a two-ship formation with Cleveland-class light cruisers for breaking engagements. "

"Use an aircraft carrier to break the relationship?" Roosevelt frowned, "The Germans seem to have already tried it, but the effect was not ideal."

"President, the fact that the Germans are not doing well does not mean that we are not doing well. The Germans are too stingy and only take out one aircraft carrier at a time." Stark said, "And we have the most powerful shipbuilding capabilities in the world, so we can take out The Department of Naval Operations hopes to use the hull of the Cleveland-class light cruiser to build 10 light fast aircraft carriers, and at the same time increase the number of Cleveland-class light cruisers to be built from 15 to 20, so that it can form 10 three-ship breakup formations.”

A light aircraft carrier built on the hull of a Cleveland-class light cruiser cannot be compared to an escort aircraft carrier built on the hull of a merchant ship. The light aircraft carrier built with a cruiser hull has the same protection and power system as the Cleveland-class light cruiser. The top speed can still reach more than 31 knots, and it can completely make a fuss deep behind enemy lines.

Moreover, Admiral Stark also asked for 10 ships instead of 1 or 2! If they were built and then penetrated deep into the Western Pacific, Emperor Hirohito would be crushed by them.

"10?" Roosevelt shook his head, "Too few... Since we can't have a decisive battle with the Japanese for the time being, we should first set a small goal of breaking the war and build 20 war-breaking aircraft carriers. The Cleveland class also built 40 ships each. In addition, the construction of Iowa-class and Montana-class battleships and Essex-class aircraft carriers must be accelerated.”

After speaking, Roosevelt looked at General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. The Navy is preparing to fight guerrillas, so how is the U.S. Army preparing to fight Japan?

"Mr. President, have you ever heard of a physicist named Ernest Lawrence?"

"Lawrence?" Roosevelt was stunned by Marshall's question. "I think I've heard of him. He is..."

"The winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics, he is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, engaged in research on transuranic elements. His laboratory discovered a very strange but temporarily unexplainable element between October and December 1940. Physics phenomenon. However, in the second half of last year, Professor Lawrence’s student Dr. Seaborg successfully explained this phenomenon using Einstein’s formula of relativity. Professor Lawrence and Dr. Seaborg called this phenomenon nuclear fission.”