At 3 pm on May 1st, the Japanese Combined Fleet was organizing warships to rescue people and supplies.

In a short period of 4 hours, the combined fleet sank 12 warships, of which 4 were large warships that could be used as the absolute main force in a second-tier naval nation. The losses were not insignificant.

During the entire battle, the Japanese did not cause substantial damage to the USS Java battleship formation, which had only one battleship, including Lightning Strike Team 5.

This made the Japanese extremely demoralized, especially when they were rescuing those who fell into the water, they would see many wounded people and floating broken limbs, and the sharks that smelled the smell of blood were feasting on them.

Seeing the miserable fate of their companions, many students who had not yet graduated from the Naval Academy were even frightened.

While the Japanese were salvaging the remaining supplies, they did not notice that at the edge of the distant skyline, the Java Island, which had completed its sea supply, was back.

The Japanese Navy did not make any stupid mistakes this time. The thick-skinned battleship rushed up immediately and pressed against the Java Island.

The Japanese intention was to force away the battleship Java which could launch an attack out of range, or to carry the bombardment of Java into their own range.

As long as it enters the range of the Japanese Navy, the Japanese Navy's combined fleet can still defeat the Java Island by virtue of its numerical advantage in battleships.

Of course, the Japanese do not hold out hope. After all, no one is so stupid as to wait for the enemy to attack without taking full advantage of their own.

The fact is also the same. Seeing several Japanese battleships pressing up, Xu Sunming chose to fight for a few rounds and then ran away.

Due to the hasty action, only one shell hit the side of the Ise, killing only a few sailors, and then retreated.

After that, Xu Sunming beat the enemy into pieces and rushed up to fire a few shots from time to time. He did not leave until the Japanese navy battleship approached.

The Japanese only have destroyers that can keep up with the USS Java battleship, but ordinary destroyers simply cannot survive under the medium-caliber gun group of the USS Java battleship battle formation.

Therefore, the Japanese could only take the trouble to send out a battle fleet, force the Java Island away, then withdraw it, and keep going back and forth.

"Damn it! If this continues, we will fail sooner or later..." Yamamoto 7x8 looked sadly at the many warships of the combined fleet.

"Yes, the fuel we carry is not much, and it is not enough to support frequent battles." Kato looked sad and angry.

He thought about dying in battle, but he never thought about defeat by running out of fuel.

Although the Japanese Combined Fleet is extremely short of fuel, there is still 1 point of coal burning due to local mining. In addition to the supplies squeezed out by the temple, it is theoretically enough to carry out this mission to the north.

However, this refers to the case of only a short battle, and is calculated based on the consumption of the oil-coal mixed-fired boiler.

However, in actual implementation, the coal consumption will increase by one order of magnitude when the fuel is exhausted.

Because in an oil-coal mixed-fired boiler, the biggest role of fuel is not to provide heat, but to quickly ignite coal. In fact, the main power source is still coal, which only improves the utilization rate of coal.

Due to lack of fuel, the battleship needed to consume more coal in order to obtain the same power. In order to force the Java Island away in time, the battleship had to maintain boiler pressure for a long time. The Japanese army's coal consumption greatly exceeded expectations.

As mentioned before, the difference in power required to maintain economic speed and maintain combat cruising speed is huge, and the relationship between warship speed and power is increasing.

After exceeding the economic speed, the required power will increase by 10% for every 1 knot of speed increase.

For example, when the battleship Ise is fully loaded with 5,000 tons of fuel (coal and fuel oil), it has a range of 8,000 nautical miles at 14 knots, but its speed is only 14 knots.

When maintaining a speed of more than 20 knots, the cruising range will be shortened by more than half, and because the fuel is about to be exhausted, the speed cannot be maintained to the maximum speed of 22.5 knots.

After a day of fighting, the Japanese combined fleet has already experienced fuel problems. Many warships that have not been fully replenished have entered the 50% warning line.

It can be said that this operation of the Java Island has caused this huge fleet to lose the opportunity to complete its mission.

"The Commander has already sent a report to Sasebo. Unfortunately, the fire in Tokyo destroyed the equipment of the Military Command. Otherwise, we could directly contact the Military Command and replenish fuel at the northern port." Kato was still concerned about the mission.

The entire Japanese naval combined fleet really regarded moving north to open up communication lines as its biggest task to complete, including the fleet commander.

Otherwise, the combined fleet would not have made such a large circle just to make a feint to avoid the Chinese Navy.

Unfortunately, things went against expectations. Swimming in the sea was never as fast as flying in the sky. The weather was good these two days, the airship had a good view, and the Japanese navy was monitored the whole time.

"The local situation is not optimistic. Due to the lack of materials, the mining of many mines has to be delayed, and the amount of coal burned is getting smaller and smaller. The Prime Minister can squeeze out a batch of coal, which is beyond my expectations." Yamamoto 7

Cheng 8 shook his head, indicating that this matter might not be decided.

Indeed, Japan is now squeezing out tens of thousands of tons of coal, but the first batch of coal is definitely not concentrated, but squeezed out from various factories and mines. Transportation is very troublesome and slow.

The second is that the last batch of 10,000 tons was a supply to replenish the combined fleet that already had a certain amount of fuel. Now let alone the fuel has been loaded on the ship, even if it has not been loaded, they are not sailing towards Sasebo.

.

Tens of thousands of tons can only fill the coal bunkers of two battleships. Even if it is loaded on destroyers, one destroyer can load several hundred tons of coal, which is enough for more than ten or twenty destroyers.

For a large fleet of 670 warships, 10,000 tons of coal cannot even make a splash.

And more coal? Even if the fuel from other industries is moved first, there will not be enough time to transport it to the northern ports, and the northern ports will not have enough loading capacity.

If they had just waited and waited for the coal to be loaded, the Chinese Navy would have reacted long ago and surrounded them.

I don’t know how many times this kind of thing will happen today. Anyway, the Chinese only need to delay, not fight.

At night, because it was early in the month, there was no moonlight, and the sea was completely dark. The Japanese fleet implemented a light blackout, and there were no other lights except dim sign lights.

Under this situation, the Java Island had no choice but to stop and rest with this fleet.

The combined fleet also got a chance to breathe, and each one is repairing the wounds.

Yamamoto 506 stood on the mast of the battleship, blowing the cold wind and looking at the stars in the sky.

There were no clouds, the stars were extraordinarily numerous and beautiful, but his mood was not very beautiful.

Because this weather means that it will be sunny in the next few hours or even days.

"On a sunny day, we can't escape the detection of the airship at all." Yamamoto looked at the northwest direction with 7 by 8, and saw several "stars" flashing one by one.

Yamamoto 7x8 knew that it was not a star at all, but a Chinese reconnaissance airship.

During the day, these airships were far away and the Japanese army could see them, but they were out of reach and there was nothing they could do against them.

At night, when the lights are on, the fleet cannot speed up and escape the airship's huge field of vision.

If this continues, failure seems to be doomed.

"I heard that Europe has used aircraft carrying machine guns to deal with airships, and they have succeeded many times. Unfortunately, the empire's planes cannot fly as high as the airships, and the seaplanes of the United Fleet do not even have machine guns, so they cannot threaten the airships."

"If this continues, we will be eaten alive by the Chinese. I thought about failure and death in battle, but I never thought about dying like this. It is such a useless way to die."

Yamamoto 7x8 muttered to himself.

"These despicable Chinese..." Kato was talking.

Boom!

Outside the fleet, a group of fire appeared along with a huge noise. With the good view from the mast, Yamamoto 7x8 saw a water column rising.

"Torpedo attack! It's a torpedo attack! Submarine! Kato, inform the captain that the Chinese submarine is approaching! You must disperse immediately!" Yamamoto 7x8 immediately guessed what weapon was attacking them.

"Hai! The despicable Chinese people don't dare to fight with us..." Kato cursed as he ran.

Yamamoto 7x8 didn't listen to what he was saying, he just looked at the formation of the combined fleet.

The combined fleet set up four queues, arranged in a standard night marching formation.

"It's too close, it's really too close..." Yamamoto 7x8 muttered to himself.

Because when advancing, the warships did not open the anti-torpedo net. In order to avoid falling behind when advancing at night, the warships were arranged relatively densely, and the distance between them was no more than two or three chains.

A chain is an English unit, one-tenth of a nautical mile, or 185.2 meters, and is often used to measure the distance between warships.

Because Britain's powerful navy has occupied sea power for hundreds of years, the system and standards of the British navy have spread to the world, and the chain is one of them.

Japan has once again demonstrated its characteristic of not correcting its mistakes even after being beaten.

Although he has suffered losses from submarines, he still does not care about the power of submarines, thinking that they are a defensive weapon.

The Japanese Navy, which learned from the British, emphasized offense and carried forward Nelson's spirit of fighting every enemy.

This spirit combined with the traditional Japanese Bushido spirit created an incredible chemical reaction.

The specific manifestation is that the Japanese Navy is very stubborn.

Whether it is tactics or strategy, we have to go all the way to the end. If we can't go any further, we will go from one extreme to the other.

Just like in World War II, when the role of aircraft carriers was not realized, battleships were emphasized all the time, and limited resources were given to battleships.

After realizing this, he emphasized the aircraft carrier again and would not hesitate to change half of the battleships or even more that had already been built.

However, the strategic U-turn did not pay attention to the pilot's factor, resulting in a decrease in combat effectiveness instead of an increase in the U-turn.

It is the same now. After the Japanese fleet encountered a submarine attack, it was completely at a loss because they were not familiar with submarines and did not know how to counterattack.

Pass!

The searchlight was turned on, searching the sea.

"No! Turn off the lights!" Yamamoto looked at the bright searchlights, then at the densely packed Team 5, and shouted miserably.

Unfortunately, it was already too late, and he was just an intern and had no rights.
Chapter completed!