At eleven o'clock in the morning of April 17, 1943, the U.S. Department of the Navy sent a code telegram deciphered from the Department's 224th Room, using the latest captured Japanese Navy codebook, to the desks of Commander Knox and Ginger Operations.
The telegram reads as follows:
"The schedule for the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet to visit Barral, Shortland and Bouyne on 18 April is as follows:
At 8 o'clock, a land attack aircraft escorted by 6 fighters took off from Rabaul;
At 10 o'clock, arrive at Barral and change to a hunting submarine for Shortland;
Arrived at Shortland at 11:30 a.m.;
At 12:30, he left Shortland and returned to Barral in a hunting submarine;
At 13:30, arrived at Barral;
At 14:00, depart barar in a land attack aircraft;
At 14:30, arrive in Bouin for lunch at the First Base Command;
At 16:00, take off from Bouin and return to Rabaul;
At 17:40, return to Rabaul;
In the event of bad weather, the inspection schedule will be postponed by one day. ”
In order to inspect the results of the battle and boost morale, Yamamoto decided to personally go to the front line, that is, the southeastern end of the Solomon Islands, and soon Maj. Gen. Makoto Makoto of the Shortland base received this top-secret information
Makoto Takaji's first reaction to receiving the telegram was: "This is the front line, and it is a bit absurd to use such a detailed telegram to report on the actions of the commander." Makoto's reaction turned out to be entirely correct, because at about the same moment the telegram had appeared on the desk of U.S. intelligence.
Commander-in-Chief nimitz of the U.S. Pacific Fleet saw this as a godsend to get rid of Yamamoto.
Isoroku Yamamoto was the direct mastermind and executor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Americans hated him even more than Hitler. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto also said that he would form an alliance with the United States in the White House, that is, to ask the United States to surrender. This has further aroused the hatred of Americans against him. Nevertheless, there were dissenting opinions as to whether he should be intercepted.
First, assassination is not in line with what the West calls "chivalry."
Second, it is possible to expose the fact that the Japanese code has been deciphered, in case the Japanese army changes the code because of this, it will be more than worth the loss.
The latest codebook of the "JN-25" used by the Japanese Navy was salvaged by the Americans from the sunken Japanese submarine "I-124" at great pains. The Japanese thought that the "I-124" had been beaten into a pile of scrap copper and rotten iron by the Americans and had disappeared into the ocean.
Roosevelt finally decided: "Kill Yamamoto!" But he stressed that in order to keep the deciphering of the Japanese code secret, it is necessary not to leak a single trace of the story, and to create an incident of accidental encounter.
Soon, a combat operation named "Revenge" was decided. Immediately after, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Force, Gen. Arnold, and the experts of the P38 aircraft were brought together. A rough calculation of the distance from the chart shows that as long as the P38 fleet of Guadalcanal is dispatched, it will be enough to capture the Yamamoto landline.
The original plan was to take advantage of Yamamoto's submarine hunting submarine to sail away from Balalay Island and sink him along with the submarine. But the plan was opposed by the fighter commander, Ranvera, who believed that it would not be safe to do so and that the landline should be destroyed by air.
Taking the form of aerial destruction, the greatest uncertainty timing issue. The time must be accurate, the time window for destroying the landline is fleeting, and whether Yamamoto's landline is late or early, the entire plan will be a complete failure.
The only hope of success rests on Yamamoto's character. His meticulous habit of keeping time is well known. Whether he can still abide by this habit during this front-line inspection can only be determined by Providence.
On April 18, the sky was overcast and the air was full of moisture. At 7:25 a.m., eighteen P38 aircraft began taxiing. Two of the attack fleet's aircraft were left behind by a burst of tires and a failure of the fuel system, but departure could not be delayed. At half past seven, the remaining sixteen planes took off, quickly formed their formations, and flew all the way to Bougainville Island. In order to avoid the search of Japanese radar, it flew low on the sea for about two hours.
As agreed, no radio may be used when flying. The pilots overcame all the odds and flew low on the surface of the sea for two hours before finally reaching the designated airspace at 9:33 a.m. – they arrived 50 seconds ahead of Yamamoto's isoroku plane!
In the minutes leading up to the interception, the attack fleet was rapidly pulled to a height of 3,500 meters, and the escort fleet rose to an altitude of 6,000 meters.
As they flew thirty-five miles north of Kahili, they suddenly spotted two twin-engine planes at thirty degrees to the lower left, a land attack aircraft behind the two aircraft, and several Zeros behind the land attack aircraft.
Lieutenant Lang fua adjusted the onboard machine gun and aimed it at Yamamoto's landplane for a long, continuous strafing. The opponent's right engine quickly caught fire, and then its right wing also burst into flames and plunged into the forest.
The aerial ambush, which lasted only 3 minutes, came to an end.
Major General Chell later reported to Commander Halsay that "at 9:30 a.m., the P38 fleet shot down two Land Attack Aircraft escorted by dense formation Zero fighters. Shoot down three Zero fighters at the same time. I failed to return to a P38. April 18 seems to be the day of our victory. ”
However, the battle did not end there. The team members were told to keep their mouths shut, and the others, with the exception of Lieutenant Langvera, were ordered to continue flying aimlessly near Bougainville Island for days. This was to convince the Japanese that the downing of Commander Yamamoto's landplane was purely accidental, and not a planned operation organized by deciphering the code.
Lieutenant Lambert was recalled to the country. As soon as he arrived at the airport, he received an order: "You will be escorted by the gendarmes to the War Department, and no one is allowed to talk on the way." Lieutenant Lambert was then promoted to captain and awarded the Medal. But his exploits were not made public until after the war.
The day after Yamamoto's plane was shot down, a Japanese search and rescue team found the crashed Yamamoto plane. Yamamoto's body, located under a tree outside the wreckage of the plane, still sat in a chair, his hands in white gloves carrying his Japanese sword. Autopsy reports revealed two gunshot wounds on the mountain itself: one bullet penetrated his left shoulder after itself, and the other shot shot in from the left rear of his jaw and pierced above his right eye.