This section is the interception of Yamamoto fifty-six, very long, more than 6,000 words, and it is estimated that it takes 10 minutes to read. Don't be unpredictable.
The Japanese operation of the I was officially started on April 7, and Yamamoto took this action very seriously, and flew from Truk to Rabaul on the 3rd to personally take command. At the end of the 16th operation, the Japanese army claimed to have destroyed 175 Allied fighters and 28 ships, but in fact, the Allies lost only 25 fighters and 3 small warships.
Before the end of the operation, Yamamoto decided to go to the front line to inspect the ------- Navy had been in the southwest Pacific for so long, he had not yet been to the front line, and the naval losses at the Battle of Guadalcanal were huge, and it was necessary to go to the front line to cheer up the soldiers.
Nimitz didn't have to do that, because he won on Guadalcanal. More importantly, in addition to the ESSSex already in service, Yorktown (CV-10), Lexington (CV-16), and Bunker Hill (CV-17) have all been launched at this time, and the Intrepid (CV-11) will be launched in a few days on the 26th.
The aircraft carrier lost by the US military is about to be revived with blood, ready to crush the Japanese Empire with strength, morale this thing, Pearl Harbor incident on the day of the explosion from negative to positive instant.
Yamamoto's inspection site was a Japanese base on Shortland Island in the south of Bougainville Island, and there was no runway on Shortland Island, so his landline was to land on Balalay Island. Balalay Island is the Alcatraz Island mentioned in the previous section.
Of course, the boss inspection must be arranged in advance, on the 13th, Rabaul called the Japanese base and informed yamamoto that the 56th party would take off at 0800 in the morning of the 18th local time, arrive at Balalay Island at 1000, and then take a boat to Shortland Island. The cables are extremely detailed, and outside the take-off arrival time, the landline type, flight route, number of escort fleets, and even which flight squadron personnel on the front line accompany them at noon meals are listed in detail.
I am afraid that the front line will not be well entertained.
The Japanese made a fatal mistake here: they were lazy or overconfident, not handing over Yamamoto's itinerary to the front-line commanders, but by sending out reports. Previously, on April 1, the Japanese army had just changed the password from JN-25C to D, and the Japanese army felt very safe.
But the Allies' ability to decipher far exceeded the Japanese's expectations, the Japanese did not know their most advanced code at this time------- diplomatic code ------ had been deciphered, and the U.S. government was prepared on the eve of Pearl Harbor. At that time, the navy communication was not very much, so it only broke about 10%, and the specific attack location was not known.
After the start of the war, the number of naval telegrams increased, and the more cases there were, the easier it was to find the laws in them, and the difficulty of deciphering was correspondingly reduced. By the time of the Battle of Midway, the U.S. military had been able to decipher Japanese ship instructions in real time.
The digression is that if some people assume that Britain and the Japanese Empire are fighting alone, who can win. I felt that with the strength of the troops at that time, the Japanese would have the upper hand in the early stage, but they would be finished in the later stage. The reason is that the Japanese Empire is far inferior to the British in basic research, such as radar, jet engines, and this cryptography, and the mathematics behind cryptography.
The Japanese Empire could not produce such a god-level figure as Turing. In terms of basic research, it was after the 1960s that Japan had become a Japanese state, not an Empire of Japan.
Come back.
The telegram was sent from Rabaul in the afternoon of the 13th in 1755, and the major general commander in Shortland, Takaji Yoshishima, received the telegram not with joy but with anger. He thought that sending such an important message by telegram was extremely rash and even foolish, so he personally flew to Rabaul to meet Yamamoto, trying to persuade Yamamoto to abandon the trip. Of course it failed.
But City Island was right, and just a few seconds or milliseconds after the Japanese on Shortland received the telegram, the allied intelligence stations at Pearl Harbor, Washington, and Brisbane, Australia, all received the radio signal.
Eighteen hours later, Pearl Harbor was the first to crack the main content of the telegram. Lieutenant Colonel Alva Lasswell, 37, who had trained Japanese in Japan for three years, was incomplete but mostly readable, and he was super relieved to look at the telegram: "I won the jackpot." So he handed the telegram to Layton, who confronted Nimitz.
Subsequently, the intelligence stations in Washington and Brisbane were cracked one after another, confirming the correctness of pearl harbor stations.
Compared with the real-time decipherment of Japanese communications by the U.S. military during the Battle of Midway, these 18 hours are too long, and it is speculated that it should be because of the new code.
Layer by layer, the telegram went into Roosevelt's hands.
In a Chinese version that I saw before, it was mentioned that Roosevelt had consulted the priest about the legitimacy of assassinating Yamamoto before making the decision, but I did not see this statement in the E text. Given the current network problem, this statement is not necessarily correct, but it is not necessarily wrong.
The reason for mentioning this is that a long time ago, when Sherman burned Atlanta, thousands of old people and women refused to leave, and the white-haired old man hugged the thighs of the Northern soldiers and cried bitterly and begged not to burn down their houses, but was kicked away by inhuman soldiers, mercilessly. Come alive and immersive.
But after I learned the E text, I didn't see any E text mentioning this matter for half a day, not to mention the credibility of the E text record, I didn't find such a record at all. It can only be said that at that time, someone recorded this scene with Chinese, huh. When Atlanta was burned, there were actually very few people in the city.
Roosevelt did not make a decision, and let the Secretary of the Navy, Knox, decide, but Knox did not give the order, just let Nimitz watch and do it. After consulting with Halsey, Nimitz believes that sniping Yamamoto has advantages and disadvantages.
Advantageously, the strongest command ability in the Japanese army is Yamamoto, and the potential substitutes are not as good as this person, so Yamamoto can be killed; although the morale of the US army has not risen, but it hurts the morale of the Japanese army, and the morale gap can still be increased.
The disadvantage is that Yamamoto once studied at Harvard and belongs to the pro-American faction, and may enter the cabinet in the future, so it is possible to shorten the time of the war, so it is a pity to kill him; then there is the problem of intelligence sources, the Japanese army may guess that the password has been breached, so the encryption method has been greatly changed.
Weighing the pros and cons, Nimitz ordered Yamamoto to be snipeed.
Digression again.
Later, there were newspapers that said that Lan Fei claimed to have seen the warrant signed by Knox, but I was more skeptical, because the secretary of the Navy was the boss of the Navy, and Lan Fei was just a captain, which was not very credible. As there is the claim that Harold Fudenna, a Japanese-American U.S. military, claimed to have interpreted the cable and advised Ennis Whitehead, the Fifth Air Force deputy in the Southwest Pacific, in fact, it was not credible.
Shooting down Yamamoto, the Japanese army would of course suspect that the code was broken, and it was certainly not cost-effective to expose their ability to decipher for this matter. But Nimitz and Halsey felt that they could find another excuse: the observers on the desert island saw the Japanese planes, so the American fighters on patrol went to intercept them.
This story was made up, and I felt a little self-deceitful: how could there be such a coincidence? Moreover, the radar and observers had never seen this batch of fighters before, so how did they suddenly appear? Daily patrol with a secondary fuel tank?
Because of this problem of deciphering ability, Churchill expressed his objection to Roosevelt, but Roosevelt did not listen. The British intelligence service was also unhappy afterwards for this reason, coupled with the fact that their boss's words did not carry weight, and they were even more annoyed.
Here, it is the British who have not been cut down by Yamamoto, and the pain is not on themselves, so they will oppose. What was the reaction of the British who really cut themselves? Look at how the British hunted down Bismarck after the sinking of the Hood, huh.
People are like this.
The order to snipe Yamamoto was given on the 17th, code-named Operation Vengeance. From a small point of view, it was revenge for the 2403 victims of Pearl Harbor; more importantly, it was for the Americans, because any American could be one of those 2403 people.
Halsey's command of the Solomon Islands Land Aviation was 56-year-old Admiral Marc Mitscher, whose U.S. military had already planned to snipe a few days earlier.
The Allies had observers on the desert island, and the Japanese certainly had them, and the fighters from Guadalcanal were likely to be spotted. The safest course of action would be to take off from Guadalcanal to the south and west, and after a circle southwest of the Solomon Islands, intercept Yamamoto on Bougainville Island.
But it is 1,000 kilometers around such a circle, plus more than 600 kilometers on the return trip is 1,700 kilometers, plus the ten minutes of combat with oil. ... The choice of fighters is very small.
At this time, there are three types of fighters that Guadalcanal can use: F4F Wildcat, F4U Pirate and P-38G Lightning. The shortest feral cat leg can only run 1300 kilometers, directly eliminated; the pirates are quite pishi running the fastest, but the range is barely 1600 kilometers, and the combat radius is only 500 kilometers.
The P-38G is the only option, the transfer range of this thing is as high as 5300 kilometers, (boring amount, can fly from Guadalcanal to the Near Tokyo Bay forced landing, swim 22 kilometers to land), combat range of 2100 kilometers, plus two pairs of fuel tanks, enough.
But to be honest, the 5300 km range is an improvement after that, and the P-38 should not be able to run so far. In mid-1942, the P-38 plus auxiliary fuel tank ran only 4,000 kilometers, still empty. However, with this voyage, the P-38 was the first fighter to reach Europe on its own power after two refueling in the Atlantic.
Scrapped so many words, anyway, I chose the P-38G.
In terms of equipment, the P-38G is a 20mm cannon plus four 12.7mm machine guns. The firepower is medium, with one more cannon than the Wildcat, but the Pirates have a choice of 4 guns or 6 machine guns, which is stronger than this fighter.
The sniper team consisted of 4 knifemen and 14 guards, and in order to prevent accidents, this configuration included two redundant personnel, which proved to be quite wise.
The captain was The Captain of the 339 Squadron of the Army, 29-year-old John William Mitchell. He joined the Army at the age of 20 after graduating from Columbia University and joined the Army at the end of the year after earning another degree from the University of Chicago in 1939.
In early 1942, Michelle came to Fiji in the South Pacific as a coach and moved to Guadalcanal in November. Of course, the coach will be more powerful, shooting down three Japanese planes in a few days, on the merits of the major Michelle promoted to take charge of the 339 squadron, soon the 339 squadron was equipped with P-38G, on this lightning, Michelle shot down 5 more Japanese planes, becoming ace.
Thomas George Lanphier Jr., 28, a Stanford graduate, was transferred from Fiji to the Guadalcanal Front, like Michelle. In terms of record, he only has 4 aces, which is less than Michelle's record, but Lan Fei's 4 are zero battles, so the difference is not much worse.
Rex T. Barber, a 26-year-old graduate from Oregon State University, arrived in Guadalcanal like the previous two, and his record was one bomber and two Zeros.
Ranfer flew the long plane Barber to fly the wingman, which were two knifemen.
The other two knifemen were Jim McLanahan and Joe Moore, who could not find detailed records because they were not famous. Normal speculation, they must have had a record of shooting down on the P-38, but they were not aces, similar to the previous two.
P-38 has not been in Guadalcanal for a long time, so among the 14 people who serve as guards, it should be a novice with a zero record------- P-38 has a zero record. In addition, 10 of these 18 people do not belong to the 339 squadron and are drawn from the other two squadrons, which shows that these 18 men are a temporary choice.
There's a problem I haven't figured out for a long time: An Air Force Magazine 2006 article "Magic and Lightning" said that Guadalcanal had only 18 lightning bolts at that time, which was more consistent with the 139 statement that Guadalcanal had only 76 fighters; but the 339 Squadron should be re-equipped as a whole, and there were more than 20 in this squadron alone. A little tired, students who are interested in this detail continue to look for it.
On the morning of the 18th, time 0710, the sniper squad began to take off from Guadalcanal, at this time, Yamamoto and his party had not yet set off. But the mission went off very badly, with Jim McLanahan having a punctured tire on takeoff and going back; a few minutes later Joe Moore found that the sub-tank was out of gas and had to go back.
Very unfortunately, these two are knifemen.
Michelle gestured to Besby Holmes to act as the wingman of the long plane Raymond Hine in place of the two returnees, in the role of knifemen.
In order to avoid the Japanese radar, the fleet flew at an ultra-low altitude of about 10 meters. The altitude was too low to judge their position according to the terrain, so the whole team flew with captain Michelle, who had stuffed a naval compass into the cabin the day before to determine the inflection point of the planned four-stage voyage according to the orientation/speed.
The radio navigation frequency is not very clear, but I guess that the flight altitude is too low, dodging the radar and also dodging the high-frequency navigation signal, and cannot receive it, so it can only use a compass.
During the more than two-hour voyage, the heat at low latitudes is as uncomfortable as a sauna, but at the same time, the endless waves and waves on the surface of the sea are also sleepy. Douglas Canning's method of refreshing the team is interesting: counting sharks. More than two hours later, he spotted 48 sharks and 1 large whale plus a giant devil ray.
After a time of 0944 and an ultra-low altitude flight of nearly 800 kilometers, the sniper team arrived at Queens Bay 1 minute earlier than scheduled, and the route was directly opposite the coast. According to the scheduled plan, the whole team began to climb to an altitude of 1000 meters, while conducting weapons test firing.
At this moment, presumably the eyes of several sharks, Douglas Canning spotted Yamamoto's fleet, so he broke the radio silence and called out: "The monster appears, in the direction of 11 o'clock."
The cruising altitude of the Yamamoto plane is about 1500 meters, and it is descending, and zero battle is escorted at an altitude of about 2000 meters in the rear.
Michelle led the team to turn right, in a parallel state with Yamamoto's fleet, while he ordered the team to throw away the auxiliary fuel tank and prepare for battle. All the fighters turned and climbed at full force at a 30-degree elevation angle, with the exception of two exceptions: Holmes and Hayne, the back-up knifemen.
Holmes's auxiliary fuel tank had a problem and could not be thrown away, and after repeated attempts, the fuel tank was still not thrown away, and he had no choice but to sacrifice the height to do a big overload maneuver of dive pulling up, and finally threw away the fuel tank. As a wingman, Hayne followed the whole time.
After the P-38 climbed, it was surprised to find that there were two I-type land attacks in the Japanese fleet, not one in the telegram. The order of the two bombers was Yamamoto Fifty-Six in front, and Chief of Staff Ugaki in the back. The Japanese also spotted American warplanes, and Zero Battle began to fight with American troops.
At this time, Captain Michelle and his wingman saw a surprising scene: as the Captain of the Knifemen, Lan fei actually put aside his goal and fought with Zero. You know, the task of the knifeman is to take down Yamamoto "at all costs", that is, even if he hits, he will crash down.
After that, different pilots said their own words, and there were different versions of Yamamoto's landline that was shot down. But What Lanffer said about "dodging cannon fire on the back of Yamamoto's landline" was a hard wound: the back turret was empty in order to keep the luggage. So Lan Fei's statement is ignored, and according to Barber's statement, I think it is more credible.
Ruffel fought zero, but the wingman Barber wasn't so stupid. Yamamoto's landline quickly lowered its altitude, and Barber rolled down sharply, but he did not see the second plane, that is, Ugaki's landline was under him, so Baber almost hit Ugaki, but fortunately the pilot Hirosh Hayashi reacted quickly and turned sharply to avoid.
The pilot survived the subsequent crash, confirming that he had indeed dodged it.
After leveling, Barber settled down and found himself in the left-sided position behind Yamamoto's landline. The distance is so close that it is impossible to hit, and because the P-38 is fast, the distance is still rapidly closing.
Barber didn't think much of it, and the guns swept from the left nose of the Yamamoto landline to the right engine, and then slammed on the left rudder and continued to strafe in a direction almost perpendicular to the Japanese aircraft, and the bullet even passed through the fuselage to hit the engine on the left side. The Japanese aircraft immediately stalled and tilted to the left, falling straight to the ground from an altitude of 300 meters.
This scene was seen by Ugaki Tang, who was thousands of meters away, and in shock, his mind went blank, just grabbing the pilot's shoulder and pointing in Yamamoto's direction: "Look, look."
At this time, Holmes, who had thrown off the auxiliary fuel tank, came.
Ugaki's landplane fled to the sea, and Holmes and Hayne chased after them, but the speed of the two planes was 428 and the other was 666 km / h, and it was impossible for Ugaki to run away. After being hit by Holmes and caught fire, Barber also arrived and completely hit the land attack into the sea.
But Ugaki tangled with the main and auxiliary aircraft teachers and students also.
Yamamoto's landline was unlucky, and all 11 people hung up.
The U.S. loss was a fighter jet and a pilot, and Hayne, who was a wingman, was shot down by Zero.
When all was said and done, the sniper team quickly disengaged and returned to Guadalcanal. It is estimated that it was forced to throw off the auxiliary fuel tank, and there was something wrong with Holmes's fighters on the return voyage, fortunately, although it could not hold out to Guadalcanal, it landed in the Russell Islands near Guadalcanal, which was the territory controlled by the Allies.
Hayne was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, but he was in the Army.
Yamamoto's body was recovered the next day, and after an autopsy, it was determined that the fatal blow was a penetrating wound from his left jaw to his right eye, presumably due to fragments of a cannon or fuselage. It should not be a .50 bullet, if hit by such a close distance by this bullet, the whole head is gone. Of course, being hit again by the energy absorbed by the obstacle, another said.
The body was cremated in Buyin and sent back to Rabaul, and on the 23rd to Truk, where he was returned to the Japanese mainland by his last ship, the Musashi. The funeral was not held until 21 May.
The Americans certainly didn't know anything about it, and it wasn't until after the funeral broadcast that Roosevelt didn't know yamamoto hung up, saying , "Oh my God, it's so pathetic." Well, the second half is added ;). Privately, of course, the generals were excited, and MacArthur was saying that "the bones of Pearl Harbor can finally rest in peace" (to the effect).
But seriously speaking, the Americans really can't confirm Yamamoto's death on the 18th, such as Ugaki's life.
Because there are different accounts for the process of shooting down Yamamoto, the military counts Yamamoto's landline as half of Lamber and Baber' one; Ugaki's landline counts Half of Holmes and Babber.
Barber's life was quite good, and after landing, his fighter plane counted more than 100 bullet holes, which showed the dangerous situation at that time. And it is rare that he is so focused on his goal that he doesn't even feel that there is zero battle hitting him.
Barber's good fortune was also reflected in another battlefield: in 1944, he followed the 449 Squadron to China, shot down three Japanese planes, and was shot down by the Japanese over the Jiujiang River, but he was fine, and after being rescued, he was sent to a safe area, which should be Chongqing.
In the end, although Yamamoto was known for his strict adherence to the plan, he planned to land at Bouin and then fly to Balalay Island. Michel's choice of interception point was also a fluke before Bouin rather than between Bouin and Balalay islands. If he really chose to be in the back, Yamamoto would have lived.
Finally, in the end, people are wrong, and when I saw that there was a relevant E article mentioning Buin, it was an island, but in fact it was a small town on Bougainville Island. After this hard wound, the credibility of the whole text is greatly reduced. So no matter what you do, it is better to see more things cross-corroborate a ha.
Then there is the final digression: cross-validation is really important. A long time ago, when I was learning an application, I looked at the book step by step and did not get the desired result, until I read the second book, I found that one step in that step was wrong. After a mouthful of old blood spurted out, I became wary of books, unless it was a textbook of natural sciences.
So, again, these things are not articles or books, not guaranteed to be true, just try to be fidelity.
Thanks for reading