Chapter 1057: Joy and Sorrow

Standing on the carrier’s bridge, General Halsey watched with his hands behind his back as the Marines his ships carried swarmed like ants toward the small island on the distant sea. He was familiar with this kind of battle. The United States had accumulated a great deal of amphibious landing experience in the Solomons. At least when it came to assaulting small islands like this, the US military was well-practiced.

“Send a message to the 1st Marine Division. Tell them not to advance rashly,” Halsey ordered the adjutant behind him. “Launch the attack planes from the carriers, the ones armed with bombs, and hit those two hills on the island again. If it’s a problem a bomb can solve, there’s no need to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers.”

“Yes, sir!” The aide saluted and moved to the rear of the bridge. The carrier’s captain stood beside Halsey. He also stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the distant cruiser fleet organize another shore bombardment, pounding the smoke-shrouded island.

“I hear that over in the Middle East, Mountbatten has been pushed all the way back to the oil fields on the Red Sea coast?” Halsey suddenly turned to ask the carrier captain beside him. The captain, caught off guard by the question, was stunned for a moment before replying stiffly, “Sir! I am not clear on the situation in the Middle East!”

Within the U.S. military, the string of defeats in the Middle East was classified. Although everyone talked about it in private, in any official capacity, it was a closed subject. Halsey was Nimitz’s bulldog, a man who preferred to be direct, and he asked the question simply because he had thought of it.

“I’m not one of those old stiffs… If you’ve heard anything, you can share it. After all, this situation…” Halsey gestured at the distant island, where the Japanese were holed up with no ability to fight back, and joked, “It’s a bit boring, isn’t it? You can speak freely. I’m just listening.”

“I heard… sir, this is just hearsay…” The captain, his hands still behind his back, seemed to have a belly full of words but was unsure what to say. After choosing his words carefully, he replied, “I hear the Germans are much tougher than the Japanese. They have very advanced fighters and tanks, and the quality of their soldiers is much higher. A lot of the men are worried that after we beat the Japanese, we’ll be transferred to the Indian Ocean to fight the Germans for naval supremacy…”

Halsey was a naval admiral. Although he had always commanded the U.S. Navy’s battleship force, recently, because new carriers had entered service and the U.S. battleships had suffered heavy losses in the last Battle of the Solomon Sea, he had been appointed as a carrier fleet commander this time.

When he had taken up his new post, the thing he had heard most about was the “naval miracle” of the German carrier fleet wiping out the British Home Fleet in the North Sea. Lütjens’s several famous battles had been repeatedly mentioned as textbook examples, which made him feel a sense of longing—a longing to cross swords with a real opponent.

The Japanese Navy recently seemed to have no intention of squaring off against the U.S. Navy. After losing their commander, Marshal Yamamoto Isoroku, the Japanese Navy had even lost its flexible and varied tactics. The Combined Fleet was one-sidedly avoiding battle, allowing the U.S. Navy to push all the way to Southeast Asia, as if splitting bamboo. After taking this island, the last wisp of the Japanese threat to Australia would be gone. The United States would be able to deploy supplies and troops in Australia at its leisure and launch a faster counter-attack against Japan.

“Let’s send these runts to hell as soon as possible. Then we can go and see what a real tough enemy looks like,” Halsey muttered coldly. “I hear that in the Atlantic, we can’t even fight back. I’d very much like to go there and have a go at those Krauts.”

In the distant Wilhelmshaven, inside a huge, secret military zone, a newly built oil depot had just been completed. Marshal Raeder looked at this newly built heavy oil reserve base, conversing with Admiral Dönitz at his side with satisfaction, occasionally pointing at the anti-aircraft facilities in the distance.

This naval marshal was clearly very pleased with this high-spec naval fuel reserve. The comprehensive anti-aircraft facilities and the convenient transportation allowed its strategic value to be maximized. Trains carrying fuel could travel all the way from Italian ports to here, delivering refined marine fuel into the hands of the German Navy.

“I hear that in Libya, the third oil field has started production?” Raeder asked Admiral Dönitz, who was beside him. Dönitz nodded and replied to his superior with a smile, “Marshal, what you heard is true. The Führer has promised that within the next month, we will be able to raise our fuel reserves to pre-war levels.”

“The Führer has always been wise, hasn’t he?” Raeder gripped his marshal’s baton, his smile widening. His fleet had always been plagued by a lack of fuel. Now, this problem would no longer exist. For the ever-expanding German Navy, this was good news worth celebrating.

“Yes, Marshal!” Dönitz had just awarded the Knight’s Cross with Swords to 14 of his most successful U-boat captains, and his new U-boats were also entering service in batches, so he was in a very good mood. “I have already approved the expansion of the submarine blockade of Iceland, increasing the number from 24 to 33.”

“Do you know why General Kesselring canceled the 4th large-scale bombing of Iceland?” Marshal Raeder asked, lowering his voice. “I hear his air force has been replenished with a large amount of fuel. He clearly didn’t cancel the bombing mission due to a lack of oil.”

“I’ve heard the Air Force is moving around a lot, but the specifics are still classified,” Dönitz replied. He didn’t know much about Kesselring’s plans. After all, the Air Force wasn’t going to notify the Navy of its unilateral actions. However, because the fuel pressure had been greatly relieved recently, the Air Force had been using its “Butcher” long-range reconnaissance planes more frequently to provide reconnaissance for Dönitz’s U-boat force, which had greatly benefited his wolf packs.

“How is it that I heard you and Lütjens were pushing for this?” Raeder suddenly interjected, giving Dönitz a light rebuke. “We are all soldiers of the Reich. We mustn’t try to grab all the credit for ourselves and ruin the Führer’s grand plan. Understood?”

Dönitz smiled, not hiding anything. “It was I and Admiral Lütjens who felt that the Navy alone was enough to suppress the Allied forces on Iceland. Of course, on the premise that our fuel is replenished in time, I believe the Navy can shoulder the heavy responsibility of blockading Iceland all by itself…”

“You’re right! I feel the same way,” Raeder said, extremely satisfied with his navy. At least his fleet had already crushed the main force of the Royal Navy and had turned the southern part of the British mainland into Reich territory. In terms of merit, he felt his navy had already achieved fame and success. What he was fighting for now was the navy’s future status among the three branches of the German military.

Rommel’s troops were advancing triumphantly in the Middle East and had even begun to encircle the Allied troops who had invaded Turkey from the rear. This had greatly reduced the pressure on Turkey and had made this country, which had been wavering when Italy withdrew from the Axis, now stand firmly on Germany’s side. It had no choice but to be firm, because the country was now practically surrounded by the Third Reich’s armies.

To its northwest was Hoth’s J Army Group; to its northeast was Marshal Manstein’s M Army Group, which had just captured the Baku oil fields; and to its southwest was the ever-advancing German Afrika Korps… If Italy’s decision to leave the Axis was based on having only one German army group on its border, giving it the courage to take a gamble, then for Turkey to make trouble now, in this situation, would be a sign of madness.

So, after Israel was founded in the Middle East, Turkish special envoys had made one trip after another to Germany, working desperately to repair the cracked relationship between the two countries. To win Germany’s forgiveness, Turkey had even gone so far as to permanently lease the strait connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the Third Reich.

“We just have to wait. Wait until we have enough fuel stored up, and our carrier fleet can sortie at will, to fight a real battle with the Allied fleet for control of the Atlantic,” Raeder said with a smile, patting Dönitz’s arm.

While the German naval high command was rejoicing over their fuel replenishment, far away in the Pacific, a Japanese soldier named Takemoto Tarō was struggling to climb a small dirt hill on his island. American fighter planes were circling back and forth in the sky. Ever since a few Japanese planes had crashed into American ships, the American fighter patrols had become even more frequent.

From time to time, these fighters would dive down from high altitude, randomly strafing any place they thought was suspicious. Sometimes, these pilots would actually find a target, turning Japanese supply carts and trucks into piles of parts. The U.S. Naval Air Arm, dominating the sky, showed no mercy, using every weapon in their arsenal to relentlessly pound the resisting Japanese soldiers on the ground.

“Bakayaro! Don’t these American bastards ever go back and rest? Why are they always flying back and forth over our heads?” Takemoto Tarō complained, gritting his teeth as he watched the American planes circle endlessly.

“They’re rotating their patrols. This is probably the second wave,” the officer next to Tarō sighed, looking up. “The sound of gunfire from that defensive line over there is getting heavier. I’m really worried about the situation. Have we managed to hold off the American attack or not…”

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