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Chapter 237: Battle

After the war, many people believed that the battle of the Hawaiian Islands was not challenging at all. China easily captured the archipelago with its overwhelming military advantage. The US military, which lacked the will to resist, had no choice but to give up the archipelago without hope. [..com]

In fact, the Battle of the Hawaiian Islands is not that simple.

First of all, the change in the combat plan caused great trouble.

Although the change was relatively timely, before the early fire preparations began, Zhou Yusheng decided to land on Maui and abandon the Hawaii Island, which was covered by several meters of volcanic ash, which did not waste any effort on the navy. However, it is obviously not easy to let the Marines change their combat plans within a few days and land on another island. You should know that the force configuration of the Marines landing troops is completely aimed at landing on Hawaii Island. Even if Maui is smaller than Hawaii Island, there will be serious problems in choosing to land on the beach, gathering troops, and fire preparation. Reforming the combat plan seems too hasty in just a few days.

Secondly, early firepower preparation is also a problem.

Hawaii Island is more than 300 kilometers away from Oahu, which is heavily guarded by the US military, and Maui Island is less than 200 kilometers away from Oahu. The largest number of long-range artillery in the US Army and Marine Corps has a maximum range of 200 kilometers. Therefore, when landing on Maui, you have to attack Oahu. In the previous plan, there was no attack on the part of Oahu, but only required the suppression of the US troops on Oahu before the landing operation began.

The most serious thing is the variables outside the plan.

Zhou Yusheng gave up Hawaii Island at the last moment and decided to attack Maui Island. The most important thing is that the volcanoes on Hawaii Island erupted in late August. A few days later, the island was covered with a layer of volcanic ash several meters thick. The heavy rains two days ago turned the island into a mud hell.

The problem is that Zhou Yusheng didn't know that the US military also gave up Hawaii Island and transferred its troops to Maui Island.

In fact, after the Mariana Islands were captured by the Chinese army, the US military began to strengthen the defense deployment of the Hawaiian Islands and gradually sent additional defense forces to the island. In early 2055, before the Chinese army attacked Australia, the defense deployment of the Hawaiian Islands was weakened, but then it was strengthened again. From the end of February to the end of August, the US military transported a total of 800,000 ground troops to the Hawaiian Islands. Unlike previous increases, the US military did not mobilize troops on a large scale, but instead increased troops to the island in sporadic ways through fleets that transport materials.

The result is that Chinese intelligence agencies know nothing about this.

When the Battle of the Hawaiian Islands was launched, Zhou Yusheng only knew that there were about 600,000 troops on the archipelago, and they were mainly concentrated on Oahu. The actual situation was that before the volcano erupted on the Hawaiian Island, the defenders had reached 1.5 million. Except for the 500,000 on Oahu, the remaining one million troops were mainly distributed on three other large islands, and a small number of troops were distributed on the small islands to the west.

After the volcano erupted, all 400,000 troops on Hawaii Island were temporarily transferred to Maui Island.

According to the US military's plan, 300,000 of them will be sent back to the local west coast area by the end of September, and another 100,000 troops will be deployed on other islands.

The reason is very simple. There were originally 300,000 troops garrisons on Maui, which could not accommodate so many troops.

As a result, before the US military began to transfer, the Chinese army rushed over, and all the 400,000 US troops transferred from Hawaii Island were trapped on Maui Island.

In fact, until this time, Zhou Yusheng didn't know that there were 700,000 American troops on Maui.

Of course, this has a lot to do with the US military building a large number of underground fortifications and hiding the troops underground.

The bloody battle on Guadalcanal made the US military discover that underground fortifications are the most effective way to fight against the Chinese army and the only way to make the Chinese army suffer major casualties in the island landing war. In the view of the US military, if there are enough underground fortifications on each island that the Chinese army must capture, which will cost the Chinese army a large enough price, then China will consider giving up attacking the US mainland, which will at least delay the speed of the Chinese army's advance and allow China to eventually cease the war to cease the US due to excessive war burden.

As a result, the United States has built almost all major islands into maritime fortifications with underground fortifications as its core.

In any case, even if the US military cannot defeat the Chinese army on the frontal battlefield, the US industry is strong enough to build a complete underground defense formula on several small islands.

It can be said that Maui is very similar to Guadalcanal.

The most similar point is that these two islands are volcanic islands, that is, they are both formed by volcanic eruptions.

In fact, the entire Hawaiian Islands are formed by volcanic eruptions. For millions of years, the volcanic eruption vent located in the center of the Pacific plate has created the Hawaiian Islands like pearl necklaces. In the next few million years, as the plate moves eastward, several large islands will be created on the east side of the Hawaiian Islands. Now, Hawaii Island is the crater of this undersea volcano.

Although the defense deployment on Maui is not perfect compared to Oahu, Maui has a larger area and a more steep terrain.

According to the information disclosed after the war, before the Chinese army landed on Maui, the US military had built twenty-four underground barracks on the island with a burial depth of more than 100 meters, which could accommodate a total of 300,000 troops, as well as forty-eight underground ammunition depots, twelve underground warehouses, eight underground hospitals, six underground controllable fusion nuclear power plants, twelve underground freshwater plants, and the US military even built libraries, including cinemas,

Underground entertainment and service facilities including convenience stores, shopping malls, and stadiums. The underground facilities are seven different buried levels and reinforcement levels, with a total length of 18,000 kilometers. The largest tunnel can provide two ground combat systems side by side, the smallest can only pass by a single person, while the deepest burial reaches 150 meters, and the shallowest is only five meters. Some cover tens of meters thick reinforced concrete, while others are only covered with rocks.

It can be said that this is an underground city that can accommodate up to 500,000 people.

Unfortunately, this underground city only existed on the drawings in the end and was completely destroyed by the Chinese army during the war.

From this we can see that attacking Maui is definitely not an easy task. Not to mention having 700,000 defenders, even if there are only 300,000 defenders, it can cause great trouble to the Chinese Marine Corps.

Another variable outside the plan is related to the attack on Oahu.

As mentioned earlier, Mu Haoyang did not think about attacking Oahu at the beginning, because all the information showed that the defense strength of Oahu exceeded Guadalcanal. If Oahu was attacked, the Marines would have to prepare for the sacrifice of 100,000 officers and soldiers.

You know, on Guadalcanal, the Marine Corps suffered 80,000 casualties.

It can be said that as long as there is room for choice, Mu Haoyang will not sacrifice 100,000 Marine officers and soldiers for a goal that is only symbolic.

The problem is that after the decision to attack Maui, attacking Oahu was not just a symbolic meaning.

The reason is simple. Based on aerial photos, the Air Force came up with a very hasty decision, that is, Maui cannot accommodate a fleet of aircraft that carry out strategic bombing of the United States.

More importantly, Mu Haoyang had decided to bomb the US mainland immediately after capturing the Hawaiian Islands.

What made Mu Haoyang make this decision was the intelligence provided by the Military Intelligence Agency, that is, the United States is stepping up the development of super bombers with suborbital flight capabilities, and this bomber can carry 100 tons of ammunition to take off from the United States and bomb any location in China.

The result is that the Marines must consider attacking Oahu.

At that time, the Air Force had formulated a more detailed bombing plan. After occupying the Hawaiian Islands, it would deploy the Air Force bombers on the Hawaiian Islands, and the Navy was responsible for moving forward to the west coast of the United States, first destroying the US air base west of the Rocky Mountains with the support of the Air Force, then using carrier-based aviation to strike the US West Coast, and dispatching carrier-based fighters to cover the bombers for strategic bombing in the central region of the United States. If bombing the US East Coast region is needed, the Marine Corps must land on the US mainland.

Although this bombing plan has not been approved by the Ministry of War, it is almost the same.

In this way, it is imperative to attack Oahu.

Obviously, this greatly enhances the difficulty of the Marine Corps.

You should know that there are 500,000 US troops on Oahu, and they are mainly elite troops of the US Marine Corps. More importantly, Oahu's defense strength is far greater than that of Maui.

According to information disclosed after the war, on this island much smaller than Maui, the US military used 600 million tons of cement and 60 million tons of steel to build an underground defense base that was much larger than that on Maui, which could accommodate 500,000 officers and soldiers, and hoarded combat supplies for two years.

Later, the underground defense base on Oahu was not seriously damaged and became a tourist destination after the war.

Anyone who has been to Oahu has to sigh that in the war, the power of a country is unimaginable, because no one expected that the US military completed a huge project with a total volume of 1.5 billion cubic meters on this island in just two years, which exceeded the sum of the seven miracles in human history. In terms of engineering volume alone, it exceeded the sum of the Great Wall built by Chinese dynasties. Compared with the First World War more than a hundred years ago, the US military's engineering volume on Oahu was equivalent to the sum of the Western Front Defense Project at that time.

There is no doubt that this is a huge force of industry and a huge force of modern technology.

You should know that the underground fortifications built by the US military on Oahu, Maui, and the previous Guadalcanal Island were carried out on volcanic rocks, not in soil, and the engineering difficulty was far greater than any architectural miracle in human history.

In this way, it is not without suspense to capture Hawaii Island.

Chapter 237: Battle
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