"Send a telegram immediately, I suspect General Benson was deceived by a bait fleet." Old Fletcher said loudly.

"This, I'm afraid the effect will be very bad, because you are like suing General Benson. His transfer tonight was a failure. And you are a subordinate and he is the commander-in-chief. Even if it is sent out, General Benson cannot accept it. And the most important thing is that you cannot explain what the target of General Benson's pursuit is!" The Fleet Chief of Staff said tactfully. He did not directly reject Old Fletcher, but he said a very important question from another aspect. What if Benson doesn't listen!

"Damn it! Well, immediately order the patrol troops to expand their search range. If there is a special situation, immediately release signal flares, all warships, I mean all naval warships, whether they are armored cruisers, destroyers or gunboats! I will count the landing ships and fire support ships for me! Let's concentrate them all!" Old Fletcher ordered loudly.

"General, in fact, I think General Benson might be chasing just a bait fleet. Think about it, if General Benson was chasing the Japanese main fleet, he would not have been chasing for such a long time. The maximum speed of the two sides can be more than 6 knots different. Even if the Japanese only have half of the power, they would have run away." At this time, Colonel Neger, the German officer in charge of contacting Germany, suddenly said.

"But human eyes will not deceive us." A US officer retorted.

"No, the eyes are easily deceived. I have served in the Mediterranean fleet. We can easily simulate the light and outline of a light cruiser or a front dreadnought as a battleship at night, and even during the day, it is okay if we want to add a chimney to the warship, and we can also make the chimney smoke!" said Major Negle.

"You can take a look at these two photos. Actually, these are all ships! The first one is its original type, a light cruiser. Then we added a wooden baffle and painted it to make its dry string look taller. After we covered the 150mm cannon on it, this is a large transport ship." As he said that, Major General Negle took out two photos from his pocket and handed the photos to his American colleagues.

"God!" Old Fletcher skipped a beat and wailed in his heart. Now he was 70% sure that something was wrong with Benson. God knows how the Japanese fooled Benson. That's fine. Although it's too late to expect Benson's fleet to come back and make up for the bribe, some things still have to be done! At this time, the Chief of Staff did not care about the so-called procedures and reasons. He agreed to send a telegram to Benson, asking him to return immediately!

"We can't just send General Benson, we have to send a message to General Penshing to make him ready to deal with it. Also, I believe General Penshing would be better at persuading General Benson to come back." Old Fletcher decided to do everything directly and mobilize all the forces that can be mobilized to pull Benson back... If possible, he even wanted to send a telegram to the White House!

"Okay, then do it like that. Let's prepare it too. Maybe tonight will be our last glory, shining like a meteor, passing through the sky." Old Fletcher had a hint of sadness in his tone, but more of it was full of determination!

"Okay, let's prepare now and order the fleet to prepare for combat at any time. Then, let's see what's in my hands..." When I looked at the list of fleet combat sequences sent by the staff, Old Fletcher suddenly felt a chill in his heart! To be honest, strictly speaking, he didn't even have a battleship in his hands, because in the US Navy combat sequence in this plane, the old armored cruiser is not a battleship, and the first fearless battleship must be considered!

"This battle cannot be fought!" Old Fletcher was really a little desperate. If he rushed forward, he would probably have to be dismantled by the Japanese fleet in at most 20 minutes.

To be honest, the armored cruisers in Fletcher's hands actually have very good performance. There are all San Francisco-class armored cruisers, a total of 5. The Americans' last armored cruisers before World War I were equipped with 6 10-inch l50 guns on the central axis of each battleship. The main armored belt is 8 to 10-inch vertical armored belts, of which the ammunition depot is 10-inch, and the defense is about the same level as the British lion and tiger. Although the speed is not too high because of the use of steam engines, it also has about 23 knots. And the most important thing is the long range, which is why they have one less double 10-inch gun than their female German armored cruisers, because these warships must carry enough fuel and supplies to perform missions in the ocean!

But unfortunately, these armored cruisers are more than two eras behind the enemies they are about to face?! This is really a tragic story, no, it can be seen as a tragedy!

"Actually, if we can, we can think about the problem from a different perspective, so that we may delay it longer," said Colonel Negle.

"What does it mean?" Old Fletcher did not look down on the commander of the German naval cruiser who had fought in the Mediterranean. After all, the Mediterranean battlefield was almost the worst of the three major naval battle fields. Those who could accumulate merits there were some skills.

"We are destined to be unable to protect all transport ships, and the Japanese may have more destroyers than us. Therefore, simple interception is certainly not possible. We can only take a more proactive approach to force the Japanese to focus on us in order to reduce the pressure on the transport fleet." Colonel Negle said.

"So?" Fletcher asked.

"Hide it first, and then attack the weak ships in the Japanese fleet, the King Kong-class battleship!" said Colonel Negle.

"But our primary task is to protect the safety of the transport fleet, not to attack the enemy fleet, and we cannot defeat King Kong," said an officer.

"So, we must attack! The Japanese Warehouse-class battlecruiser only has an 8-inch armor belt. At the night battle distance, it is not a big problem for us to use 10-inch l50 cannons to penetrate the outer armor. If we can cooperate with the torpedo boat, we will have a higher chance of achieving results. Of course, the most important thing is that the Japanese attach great importance to their main battleships, and each loss of one is unbearable for the Japanese Navy. Therefore, once the King Kong-class battlecruiser is attacked strongly, the Fuso-class battleship will definitely support it. Even though our results will be very unoptimistic, at least it will buy time for the transport fleet." Colonel Nagel said.
Chapter completed!