After the declaration of war on Japan, the United States fought against japan and the German-Italian fascists in an all-round way.
According to the agreement reached, Roosevelt had the army and navy concentrate on attacking Germany while holding the central Pacific defense line.
Britain is not invaded for the time being, but it may still be devastating, because German submarines using "wolf tactics" are biting off the Atlantic supply line, so Churchill is urgently calling for help from the President of the United States.
Across the Chinese Sea in the Philippines, more than 10,000 other Japanese soldiers of General Honma landed at Ramon Bay, ready to add a strike force behind the southern pincer movement, which is now less than 100 kilometers from Manila. MacArthur declared the Philippine capital an undefended city, but the Japanese ignored it and sent planes to bomb the Martian Building, where the U.S. military headquarters were located. The final steps of the U.S. military retreat to Bataan have been made.
The remaining patrol boats of the U.S. Asian Fleet retreated to the bays on the west coast of Luzon to take shelter, and the submarines had retreated to ports in Borneo and Java. The bombed Krabidi military port of ammunition and supplies, due to the strong Japanese offensive, was difficult to transport to the fortress island of Koregidoor, so it had to be blown up with explosives on the spot.
The only four fighter jets on Luzon flew back to the Continental United States on Christmas Eve with the last American transport plane on which General Brilton was flying. As he bid him farewell, MacArthur pleaded, "I want you to tell the American people of our efforts so that I can defend my reputation as a warrior." ”
A few hours later, General MacArthur himself was the last to board the ship Don Estaban and crossed the strait about 50 kilometers wide to Koregidol Island, a tadpole-shaped island that guards the gateway to Manila Bay.
The Japanese fascist army, despised by the United States and Britain, disrupted all the estimates and speculations of the Allies in the past. The japanese force was so fierce that the needles on the walls of the map rooms in Washington and London were often greatly behind the situation. At a certain point, there was an emergency to send reinforcements, but the besieged commander had not even received the radio notification, and the Japanese had already arrived first.
In the months after Pearl Harbor, the area conquered by Japan resembled an open fan, with a fan handle in Tokyo, with a radius of about 5,000 kilometers, stretching east to the central Pacific Ocean, south to the Coast of Australia, and west to the coast of India. The rapid expansion of its territory is unprecedented.
Therefore, Roosevelt's dilemma was unprecedented in previous U.S. presidents, and it can be said that he could not even dream.
The situation of maritime transport is also very bad. The whole task of delivering munitions to the Soviet Union, as well as the delivery of arms to Britain and the support of combat operations in Africa and the Middle East, was seriously complicated by new developments in the Atlantic war.
In mid-January 1942, Germany launched an offensive against the United States. The only weapon that Germany could apply to this was the submarine, which was now a terrifying and effective weapon; the U.S. Navy was helpless against it. The German submarines went so far as to see the light of Broadway in New York, sinking many ships within a few hundred meters of the east coast. The figures for the losses can be seen in the tables of terrible loss statistics published during this troubled winter. German submarines sank 132 ships in the western Atlantic in two months.
Roosevelt was furious that the Navy did not pay enough attention to the Atlantic War, and for a long time he was troubled by it. But there are not only these nerve-wrenching things, but the chaos caused by the fear of the sun, the fear of war, the incompetence of institutions, etc. are enough to make people worry.
In the days of one disaster after another, unpleasant things, Roosevelt's mental pressure was very heavy. However, he was determined to take on the heavy responsibility of leading the people of the whole country against fascism in victory.
In response to the defeatist sentiments and pessimistic disappointments that prevailed throughout the country at that time, he delivered an important radio speech to the people of the whole country on February 23, Washington's birthday. He was determined to educate the people with patriotism and heroism and to renew the people's fighting spirit.
Roosevelt pointed out that the war we are fighting today is a new type of war, a struggle that depends on the rights and obligations to guarantee freedom and justice everywhere in the world. The purpose of the Nazis and the Japanese, he said, was to divide the United States, Britain, China, and Russia, isolating them from each other in order to encircle them one by one and cut off the sources of supplies and reinforcements. This is the familiar "divide and win" axis policy.
Roosevelt said that if we listen to the isolationists, we will fail and the whole world will be enslaved by fascism. Therefore, it is necessary to resolutely reject the "turtle policy", show heroism, and completely defeat the arrogance of the aggressors. Under Article II, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and active state militias. Two months after the U.S. entered the war, Washington formed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which consisted of General George Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, and General Arnold, commander of the Army Air Corps. This is the military command system in wartime.
The wartime military command system is the main coordinating body of the army, navy and air force, and is directly subordinate to the commander-in-chief. It keeps the Commander-in-Chief informed on military strategic matters, the needs of the armed forces, the production and distribution of military materiel and ammunition and the policy of the coexistence of all three services. It has several important subsidiary bodies: the Joint Deputy Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Secretariat, the Joint Programme of Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Joint Psychological Warfare Committee, and other subsidiary bodies such as field transportation, communications, logistics, meteorology, and munitions distribution.
Difficult problems are generally solved by these subordinate agencies, and experts are often sent to the front as senior staff officers of a commander in a certain theater.
Roosevelt was in charge of the overall situation, focusing on global strategy planning, coordinating relations with allies, and formulating wartime foreign policy and envisioning the postwar world.
The formulation of major campaigns is also in close consultation with Roosevelt, and after he has reviewed the general policies and overall objectives, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will determine the transportation supply, equipment allocation and troop allocation, and the specific combat plans are generally formulated by the local commanders.
In view of the president's own involvement and limited energy, Roosevelt specifically appointed Admiral Willis Lee as the chief of staff of the Commander-in-Chief, that is, Admiral Lee acted as an intermediary between him and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Roosevelt liked to go directly to the most heavily guarded White House map room in the White House to learn more about the latest developments in the course of the war. A group of young officers who had only learned people took turns working here day and night, reflecting the received military telegrams on various maps in a timely manner.
To make it easier for Roosevelt to view in a wheelchair, maps in the map room hung low, and flags and markers of different colors marked the position of the U.S. armed forces around the world and the unpredictable war situation. In the map room, Roosevelt could release orders around the world through the Pentagon Contact Center.
As commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in various theaters, Roosevelt, as commander-in-chief, had the right to directly appoint, dismiss or replace them. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also frequently recommended potential officers and veteran generals of outstanding military merit, such as Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, all of whom were suggested by marshall's Chief of Staff.
As for the arrogant and conceited Douglas MacArthur, a special figure in the history of modern U.S. military development, he has enjoyed a unique position in the military since World War I, a former Philippine military adviser who served as commander of the U.S. Army's Far East Command four and a half months before Pearl Harbor.
Throughout the war, the responsibilities and powers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not clearly defined. General Lee often represented Roosevelt at joint meetings, so he of course presided over meetings, set agendas, and signed major documents and resolutions.
In his memoirs, General Lee pointed out that the lack of clear provisions on the terms of reference of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the organization a great deal of flexibility to change the scope of its activities in accordance with the needs of changing circumstances in the war, which were often related to the thinking of the President, who was resourceful and in fact directly directed the war through this body.
In addition, the unprecedented war offered Roosevelt ample possibility to expand the president's functions as commander-in-chief. For example, he extensively and fully exercised the functions of commander-in-chief, bypassing Congress in exchange for british naval bases for overage warships, allowing U.S. troops to travel to Greenland and Iceland, strengthening and monitoring wartime production as commander-in-chief, issuing executive orders to demarcate "military zones", and forcibly sending more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese American citizens to "concentration camps".
Since Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had urged his military staff to find a way to bomb Tokyo as a small retaliation for the sneak attack.
In early March 1942, crew members gathered at Egreen Airport in Florida to practice taking off on the runway in a modified B-25 twin-engine bomber. The training assignment was given to Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, the first pilot of the Army Air Corps and the world record holder for flight speed that year.
On April 2, the newly commissioned USS Hornet set sail from San Francisco with Doolittle's crew. Sixteen B-25 bombers were modified with fuel tanks and fake tail machine guns, which glided off the flight deck with caution.
In order not to be detected by the Japanese, the Hornet crossed the Storm Zone in the North Pacific and would rendezvous With Vice Admiral Halsey's Enterprise at a designated location between the Aleutian Islands and Midway. The task force, named "Mike," broke waves on the gloomy sea toward a take-off point about 1,000 kilometers west of the coast of Kyushu.
On April 16, the pilot reported to the flight deck for a special ceremony. Colonel Mark Mitchell gave Doolittle the 5 Japanese medals that Japan had awarded to the Americans in the past.
The pilot who received the medal tied them to the bomb and wrote some sarcastic words in chalk: "I'm not going to burn the world." I only burn Tokyo! "Please taste the bombing!" Doolittle was scheduled to take off first, scheduled to fly to Tokyo at noon. "You're going to take off in the next 20 minutes or half an hour, and you're going to take off and use the flames I've exploded as a light," he said. ”
On the afternoon of 17 April, the deck crew on board the Hornet made a final inspection of the B-25 bombers, and they loaded the bombs with the pick-up aircraft. That night, radar spotted the sentry boats on the outermost layer of the Japanese Maritime Cordon. At this time, the "Task Force" was nearly 1200 kilometers away from Japan.
"Let Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle and the brave squadron take off!" Peace along the way, God bless you!" General Halsey signaled to the Hornet.
The electric siren sounded, and Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle squeezed Colonel Mitchell's hand tightly, and then shouted to his crew, "Okay, guys, just like that, let's go together!" The bomber roared and rose into the sky.
Coincidentally, just as the last few bombers were flying away from the Hornet, Tokyo began air defense exercises. The atmosphere of the exercise was relaxed, and even the alarm was not raised. The citizens ignored the notice of the police regiment asking them to hide in the air raid shelter, and some people even called them "mediocre people disturbing themselves." By noon, the exercise was over. Most of the alarm balloons had been collected, and 3 fighter jets were lazily circling over Tokyo. It was a Saturday, the weather was sunny and warm, and as soon as the alarm was lifted, the streets were quickly bustling again, packed with people shopping and out to play.
A few minutes later, Doolittle flew off the coast of Japan, more than 100 kilometers north of the scheduled route. He folded to the left. Wildner, the navigator at the rear of the plane, began to observe the presence or absence of attacking fighters, but found only a few trainer planes churning up and down.
As the plane skimmed over the country field, he found that no one cared about the plane and was still doing his own thing. Flying low as we passed a barracks, we could see a group of officers there, their sabers gleaming in the sunlight.
At noon that day, Hideki Tojo, the head of the Japanese fascists, was returning from a plane to inspect the Mito Aviation School, preparing to cut through the route of the American plane and land at a nearby airport.
At this time, a twin-engine plane came from the right, and Hideki Tojo's secretary, Nishiura Daisa, thought the plane was "quite strange-looking." The plane flew closer, even the pilot's face could be seen, and he suddenly woke up,
Shouted: "American plane! American plane!" Hideki Tojo was stunned and broke out in a cold sweat. At 12:30, Doolittle reached the skies above the target. During the low-flying bombing, Fried Bremen dropped the first bomb with a sight. Plane after plane flew over the city of Tokyo one by one and dropped the bombs. Doolittle had given a clear order not to bomb the palace except for hospitals and schools.
The citizens of Tokyo thought that the US air raid was just the climax of Tokyo's realistic air defense exercises. Children on the school playground and citizens on the downtown street also waved to the overhead plane, and they mistakenly regarded the red, white and blue circular signs on the US plane as the sign of the rising sun. It wasn't until a series of violent explosions came from the factory area north of Tokyo, and thick smoke and dust fog enveloped half the sky, that people realized that the wings of these planes were not the patterns of the rising sun they were accustomed to.
The airstrike, which destroyed 90 buildings, was of little value in terms of material damage, but it caused an indescribable psychological shock to a people who had thought for generations that japan would not be attacked.
Japanese newspapers claimed that the air raid was a "complete failure," but they portrayed Doolittle and others as devils, saying that they were "sneakily carrying out inhumane, murderous bombing" and brutally strafing residents and non-combatants, showing a complete "devilish act." In fact, this is a wonderful irony of Japan's aggressive atrocities.
The "patronage" of Tokyo by American bombers has greatly alarmed the whole country of Japan. The war maniac Hideki Tojo lost his temper with the failure of the Navy and Army to prevent it, which he considered to be "a disgrace to the Imperial Army".
General Yamamoto was so shocked and ashamed of this that he gave the task of pursuing the US ship to the chief of staff, Ugaki, and locked himself in the room and refused to come out. The attendant had never seen him so pale and depressed. General Ugaki wrote in his diary that night: "We must ascertain the type and number of enemy aircraft in order to improve future countermeasures against enemy attacks." In short, today's victory belongs to the enemy. ”
The success of the air raid on Tokyo boosted the morale of the U.S. military, which had been depressed since Pearl Harbor. This action seems to be a guarantee that the United States is about to adopt an offensive posture. The Allies on the battlefields, as well as the captives in each camp, felt a new hope.
The most profound effect of the bombing of Tokyo was a huge psychological shock to the Imperial Japanese General Staff Headquarters. Of these, Japan's defeat at the Battle of Midway was a case in point.
Midway is strategically located in Honolulu, about 1,900 kilometers west of Honolulu, about 1,900 kilometers west of the Pacific Ocean. During World War II, Midway was an important forward base for the U.S. Navy and Air Force. Without the island as a forward observation post, Pearl Harbor in the United States would not have been able to hold on, and the Pacific would have fallen into the hands of the Japanese.
The U.S. airstrike on Tokyo shook the Japanese government and opposition. On May 5, 1942, the Tokyo Imperial General Staff issued a combat order and, in the name of the Emperor, ordered Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, to implement his plan for the Battle of Midway.
The Japanese Marines, under the cover of gunfire from Rear Admiral Kurita's Heavy Cruiser Support Group, launched simultaneous onslaught on Sand Island and East Island and forced a landing. Although the Japanese played tricks and tried to confuse the Americans, the U.S. Naval Command knew everything that the Japanese were secretly doing.
In the Battle of Midway, the U.S. army sank half of Japan's large aircraft carriers, causing the loss of most of its skilled carrier-based pilots. Although the Japanese naval fleet still had the advantage in battleships and cruisers, it was difficult to conduct ocean-going operations away from the cover of shore-based aviation.
In the Battle of Midway, the Japanese army lost the naval and air control it had won in the early stages of the war, and also lost its strategic initiative. In the United States, the Battle of Midway became a household name and was celebrated as a turning point in the Pacific War. General Nimitz declared in the communiqué: "The shame of Pearl Harbor has been partially washed of snow, and the Japanese sea power must be beaten to the point of incapacitated, otherwise it is not a complete revenge." ”
Roosevelt, who since 1943 had been commander of the Allied armies and navies, "increasingly became a central figure in global warfare." Most professional soldiers admired his leadership skills. Stimson believed that there had never been a better commander in the history of the U.S. Army.
Eisenhower wrote: "Some of Mr. Roosevelt's political measures I would never approve of. But he was the commander-in-chief of the wartime country, and I knew him entirely from his identity, and from this identity, I felt that he had fully met the expectations of him. ”
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