"Mr. President, General Short, the Governor of Hawaii and Commander-in-Chief of the Hawaiian Army, reported that the Japanese landing forces invaded Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of January 3, Hawaii time...

Mr. President, General Nimitz, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, reported that he had confirmed the sank of a Japanese Nagato-class battleship. In addition, the 80,000-ton Japanese battleship also suffered a heavy blow."

White House, Oval Office. US President Roosevelt was gloomy and listening to reports from Army Chief of Staff Marshall and Naval Secretary of Operations Stark.

The Battle of Hawaii is not over yet, but the outcome is clear. The United States lost! And it lost very ugly!

Not only was the Hawaiian Islands about to fall, but the Pacific Fleet also suffered the most severe blow. It lost 10 battleships including the Pennsylvania, California, Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and North Carolina, and the USS Hornet aircraft carrier.

In addition, more than 800 Army and Navy aircraft were lost, more than 45,000 Army and Marine officers and soldiers, as well as more than 90,000 white-skinned American civilians were trapped in other islands on Oahu and Hawaii.

"This is a total defeat!" President Roosevelt sighed, "And... it's just the beginning of a series of failures, right?"

Stark and Marshall looked at each other and nodded at the same time. The United States' "failure list" has already come in a long string. After the Hawaii and Pacific Fleets, there are the Philippines, the Far East Fleet, Guam, Wake Island, Midway, Gilbert Island, Aleutian Islands, etc.

In addition, the British fortresses in Malaya, North Borneo, Myanmar and Singapore are also on the list of failures.

The Japanese fleet and army have begun to attack the above areas, and the resistance of the British and American allies will sooner or later be shattered with the complete loss of sea control. Areas other than Singapore Fortresses may be lost before April 1942, and then the Dutch East India will change hands. Singapore Fortresses will most likely be captured by the Japanese army within 6 months. Then Japan and Germany will meet in the Indian Ocean, and Japan will also march towards Australia and turn itself into a real intercontinental country...

"And, we can't do anything now except reinforcements from Australia, right?" Roosevelt looked at Naval Operations Secretary Stark and Army Chief of Staff Marshall.

"President, we can now use submarines and camouflage attack ships to deal with the Japanese," said Admiral Stark, Minister of Navy Operations.

"So how many results did our submarines achieve in December?" Roosevelt asked.

"It is confirmed that 10 Japanese transport ships and 2 Japanese light warships have been sunk... a total of about 20,000 tons of ships with a displacement of about 20,000 tons."

Seeing Roosevelt's disappointment, Admiral Stark immediately said: "Mr. President, the British have achieved much better results than ours. In December, they sank 31 Japanese transport ships and 4 Japanese light warships, and the total tonnage of the sinking was estimated to exceed 75,000 tons."

What Stark said was actually an exaggerated "confirm results". According to statistics from the Japanese Army and Navy, the total tonnage of ships sunk or injured by submarines and camouflage attack ships in December was less than 75,000 tons. Among them, only 18 ships sunk by submarines and camouflage attack ships, with a displacement of less than 45,000 tons.

In addition, 26 Japanese ships were injured, most of which were slightly injured. One or several high-tech torpedoes produced in the United States were inserted into the hull. This torpedo was a mk14 torpedo developed by the U.S. Naval Ordnance Bureau for huge sums of money. It used the most advanced magnetic fuse in the world. In theory, it did not have to hit the hull. As long as you pass by the target, you could be detonated by the target's magnetic field, thereby blowing up the enemy ship. However, the actual result was that the Japanese ship repair yard collected more than 100 such torpedoes from injured Japanese ships between January and March 1942 alone...

According to later statistical surveys, 52 American submarines launched a total of 160 mk14 torpedoes in mid-December 1941, and the results of the sinking were only 2 Japanese cargo ships (and 26 were brought home with torpedoes) and 1 Soviet cargo ship (accidentally attacked, and later paid $1 million). The displacement was less than 7,000 tons.

However, the 22 submarines and 5 camouflage attack ships deployed by the UK to the east of the Strait of Malacca have achieved good results. The British Empire is too poor now and cannot afford high-tech torpedoes, so it can only use low-tech backward torpedoes to attack.

This low-tech white-headed torpedo was an antique developed during World War I. It exploded if it hits, and if it doesn't hit it, it won't explode. In less than a month, these low-tech torpedoes sank a total of 9 Japanese cargo ships and 2 Japanese light warships.

In addition, five British camouflage attack ships sank five Japanese merchant ships, including a passenger ship full of Japanese expatriates retreating from Hong Kong, causing more than 600 Japanese civilians to drown. The incident also caused tensions between Japan and the East Asian continent because the attacking British camouflage attack ship was wearing the blue sky and white sun flag when it opened fire.

"That is, it's up to 100,000 tons a month..." President Roosevelt was still unsatisfied with the exaggerated results because he understood the navy. He shook his head and said, "We and the British submarines will soon have to be redeployed. At that time, they will have to spend a lot of time rushing, and combat efficiency will be greatly reduced."

The United States now has 103 submarines on the Pacific battlefield (52 of which are active in the Western Pacific), and the British Eastern Fleet has 50 submarines (22 of which are active in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and East China Sea), with a total of 155 submarines. The number is very large, but where these submarines attack directly determine their combat efficiency.

If these submarines are based in Singapore and the Philippines, the time spent on the road will be very short. More than 40% of the submarines may be in combat waters for a long time.

But if the base of submarines is transferred to Australia, they will have to spend a lot of time sailing thousands of nautical miles to travel between the bases and battlefields. Moreover, it is not enough to redeploy 155 submarines, because Australia is just a large countryside for farming and sheeping. Although the British built naval bases and ports there, the British stored supplies there, and it is impossible to support a large fleet to station. Even if they support more than 100 submarines in combat, it is difficult to supplement a large number of equipment and ammunition.

In addition, the distance from Australia to the target sea area (the main route of Japan) is too far, and the relatively close ones are more than 3,000 nautical miles. Those small and medium-sized submarines with displacement of less than 1,000 tons, such as the R-class and S-class, will basically not reach Japan's main routes without the support of the submarine carrier.

So when the group of American submarines currently operating in the Pacific return to their new bases located in Australia or the United States, the threat of American submarines to Japanese transport ships will be greatly reduced.

Stark saw that Roosevelt was a little dissatisfied and hurriedly said: "Mr. President, we are building large ocean submarines with a total of more than 1,500 tons, which will be put into service in large quantities before the end of this year.

In addition, we can also use some light cruisers for combat operations, and we can even consider transforming some of the Cleveland-class light cruisers under construction into fast aircraft carriers, and then forming a dual-ship formation with the Cleveland-class light cruisers for combat operations."

"Break the trade with an aircraft carrier?" Roosevelt frowned. "It seems that the Germans have tried it, and the results are not ideal."

"President, it doesn't mean we can't do it well. The Germans are too stingy and only take out one aircraft carrier at a time." Stark said, "and we have the most powerful shipbuilding capabilities in the world, so we can take out 10 broken-passing aircraft carriers. The Naval Operations Department hopes to use the hull of the Cleveland-class light cruiser to build 10 light fast aircraft carriers, and at the same time increase the construction number of Cleveland-class light cruisers from 15 to 20, so that 10 3-ship broken-passing formations can be formed."

A light aircraft carrier built on the hull of the Cleveland-class light cruiser is not comparable to an escort aircraft carrier built on the hull of the merchant ship. A light aircraft carrier built on the hull of the cruiser has the same protection and power system as a Cleveland-class light cruiser, and its maximum speed can still reach more than 31 knots, which can completely go deep behind enemy lines to make a fuss.

Moreover, General Stark also opened his mouth wide, either one or two ships, or 10 ships! If they were built and then penetrated into the Western Pacific, Emperor Hirohito would have to be destroyed by them.

"Are you 10?" Roosevelt shook his head, "It's too few... Since we can't fight the Japanese for the time being, we'll set a small goal to break the battle first, build 20 broken vehicle aircraft carriers, and also build 40 Cleveland. In addition, the construction of Iowa-class, Montana-class battleships and Essex-class aircraft carriers must be accelerated."

After saying that, Roosevelt looked at the US Army Chief of Staff General Marshall. The Navy is preparing to fight guerrillas, so how is the US Army preparing to fight against Japan?

"Mr. President, have you ever heard of a physicist named Ernest Lawrence?"

"Lawrence?" Roosevelt was stunned by Marshall's question. "It seems that he has heard that he is..."

"The winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics, he is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is engaged in the research of transuranium elements. His laboratory discovered a very strange but unexplained physics phenomenon between October and December 1940. However, in the second half of last year, Professor Lawrence's student Dr. Siborg successfully explained this phenomenon using Einstein's theory of relativity. Professor Lawrence and Dr. Siborg called this phenomenon nuclear fission." (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!