"Who knows, Henry," Andrick shook his head and replied, "but I think those dwarfs don't have the guts to declare war on us. We are not the Tsarist Russia of the past, and should His Majesty give the order, I would be the first to land on the Island Nation, to let those damned Islanders understand just how wide the gap is between our strengths."
Henry smiled and nodded, having no shadow of a doubt about Andrick's words.
They were radar operators and also belonged to the Military, serving as technical personnel and non-combatant military branches.
But even these technical personnel, upon Arthur's command, would still be willing to pick up their rifles and join the Military's charge.
Under Arthur's continual influence, the Military's loyalty to the royal family and to Arthur himself was very high. Even these ordinary navy soldiers were filled with fervor and trust for Arthur.
"Damn! What is that?" While the two were chatting and mocking the Islander, a sudden appearance of numerous bright spots on the radar immediately caught their attention.
"Damn, could these be airplanes?" Henry asked Andrick, surprised and incredulous.
"Damn, I'm afraid so, Henry. Quickly contact the fleet headquarters, a large number of unidentified objects are rapidly approaching Hawaii," Andrick urgently said.
This message was soon detected by other radars as well and reported to the navy's headquarters.
Before the Pacific Squadron could react, the enemy's attack had already arrived.
Of course, the attack did not come from the sky, but from beneath the sea.
Boom!
A torpedo hit a medium-sized destroyer docked in the harbor, blasting a huge hole through the destroyer.
Because it was already late at night, besides a few navy soldiers on watch, most navy soldiers were at the naval base on the harbor.
While this avoided a greater number of soldiers facing life-and-death peril, it also delayed the navy's response to the attack.
"Damn, all combat personnel return to your warships immediately, all carrier-based fighter aircraft take off at once, prepare for a possible aerial attack from the enemy," commanded Jon Odell, Vice Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Australasian Pacific Squadron.
Although it was unclear which power or country had launched the surprise attack on the Hawaii Naval Base, it was very likely the Islanders.
After all, in the Pacific Ocean, only the Island Nation as a powerful nation had both the strength to launch a surprise attack on the Australasian Navy and the motive to do so.
While General Jon had been cautious of the Islanders, he had not anticipated that they would traverse thousands of kilometers to launch a direct surprise attack on the base of the Australasian Pacific Squadron.
After all, the distance from the Island Nation's Native Land to the Hawaii Naval Base was much farther than the distance from the Island Nation's Native Land to New Guinea.
The Pacific Squadron's preparation against the Islanders was mainly to prevent a possible surprise attack on critical areas such as New Guinea.
But unexpectedly, the Islanders were so audacious as to cross half the Pacific Ocean just to launch a surprise attack on the small Hawaii.
Boom!
While Admiral Jon was giving orders, another torpedo struck a cruiser.
Mid-sized and smaller warships, if hit by torpedoes, would basically end up sinking.
Only the tens-of-thousands-of-tons main battleships could withstand torpedoes, but if unlucky and hit at a more vulnerable spot, they too could risk sinking.
As navy soldiers were quickly returning to their warships, a continuous buzzing sound could be heard in the skies.
Upon hearing it, Admiral Jon understood that these were the Islanders' airplanes.
Listening carefully to the buzzing noise in the sky, nearly deafening, it was evident that the Islanders had deployed a significant number of airplanes.
"Good, since they have the audacity to launch a surprise attack on us, then they should prepare to sink forever in this sea area," General Jon sneered coldly, issuing the most anticipated order since he became Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Squadron: "All main battleships, first round of antiair missile volley fire!"
The launching of missiles required some time, which coincidentally allowed the Islanders' airplanes to approach even closer to the Australasian naval base.
The night concealed the tracks of these Islanders' planes, but the increasingly distinct buzzing sound proved that the Islanders' planes were getting closer.
About ten seconds later, as the leading Islanders' planes started spitting out tongues of flame, missiles from the Pacific Squadron's main battleships were also firing into the sky.
Crack! Boom!
With two distinctly different sounds, a multitude of unidentified objects, blazing with brilliant flames, swiftly flew toward the direction of the buzzing noise.
"What is this?" Many Islander pilots, seeing the approaching flames and vaguely making out the outlines of some supplies illuminated by the fire, widened their eyes deep in thought.
As the objects drew closer, many Islander pilots finally realized the situation and attempted to maneuver their planes to evade.
But they quickly found something wrong. It was clear that those objects trailing fire, only visible as elongated shapes, were moving faster than their airplanes.
Boom! Boom, boom!
Although the process seemed lengthy, it had in fact lasted less than a minute.
A barrage of missiles swiftly flew into the midst of the Islanders' plane formation, with quite a few missiles hitting their targets.
As the Admiral Jon watched the explosions in the sky, he nodded in satisfaction, finally showing a smile: "While the enemy has not reacted yet, all carrier-based planes take off immediately; we cannot let a single enemy plane escape."
The fleet released sonar to detect submarines underwater, "I don't want any more warships to be attacked and sunk by the enemy."
As the sonar was released, Australasian warships also began firing torpedoes to attack the enemy submarines underwater.
Submarines of the Pacific Squadron also began to dive one after another, searching for enemy submarines.
A large number of Australasian aircraft took off; they had only one target, and that was to pursue those already confused Islander aircraft.
Clearly, high-tech products like missiles were completely alien to the Islanders.
Although the hit rate of missiles was not high, the first salvo fired at least 200 missiles, with fewer than 30 hitting Island nation aircraft.
But to have nearly 30 aircraft destroyed without even coming face to face with them was enough to shock or even panic these Islander pilots.
Actually, if it hadn't been for the pitch-black night masking the movements of these Islander aircraft, the missile hit rate could have been further improved.
But that didn't matter anymore. The missiles had successfully bought the Australasian navy over a minute of precious time, allowing many warships and aircraft to respond and avoid being ambushed by the enemy again.
The Pacific Squadron currently had a total of 4+5+3, 12 main warships in all, including 5 aircraft carriers.
If it had been the complete Pacific Squadron, they wouldn't have feared this attack from the Island Nation at all.
But the problem was, to guard against a possible attack from the Islanders and to carry out patrolling missions, 2 battleships, 2 aircraft carriers, and 1 battlecruiser had been dispatched to carry out tasks.
This meant that, in reality, the Hawaii Naval Base had only 2 battleships, 3 aircraft carriers, and 2 battlecruisers.
Because Hawaii is a lone island in the central Pacific, with no other country's islands within hundreds of kilometers.
Therefore, there was no Air Force base on Hawaii. The number of aircraft Hawaii had depended entirely on the aircraft aboard the Pacific Squadron's aircraft carriers stationed in Hawaii.
Because there were only 3 aircraft carriers at present, this greatly reduced the number of aircraft Hawaii had.
On the Islanders' side, with 6 aircraft carriers and other various makeshift warships, they carried over 400 aircraft in total.
And, the total number of aircraft carried by Australasia's 3 aircraft carriers was just over 200, only half the number of Islander aircraft.
Although they had destroyed 30 Islander aircraft at the outset, the enemy's aircraft still far outnumbered Australasia's.
Moreover, once the air forces of both parties began to engage in battle, the Australasian missiles were of no use.
Current missiles could not accurately lock onto the enemy; in this dark night sky, if a missile accidentally hit one's own aircraft, that would be a big trouble.
The good news was that, in terms of aircraft performance, Australasia was still far ahead of the Island Nation. Although the Australasian Air Force was basically fighting two against one, with the powerful combat capabilities of the aircraft, fighting two against one was not a difficult task.
However, because the skies above the naval base were filled with nearly 600 aircraft, it was difficult for Australasian planes to take advantage of their speed and defeat the Island Nation quickly.
At 3:17 a.m., a torpedo fired by an Island Nation submarine struck one of Australasia's battleships.
The good news was that the battleship had excellent armor protection, and although the torpedo caused the battleship's armor to fall off and the hull to deform, it did not affect the battleship's combat capabilities and was only a minor injury.
After the submarine was detected, the counterattack of the Australasian fleet directly destroyed the submarine.
How do you determine whether you have sunk an enemy submarine underwater?
The principle is quite simple. Although the submarine is underwater, if it is sunk, the various living supplies inside the submarine will float on the surface of the water, and the fuel used by the submarine will also float on the sea due to the nature of oil floating on water.
Seeing that their sneaky planes were tied down by Australasian aircraft, the Islanders got a bit restless.
Many bombers hidden in the rear began to move out, taking advantage of the entire deployment of Australasian aircraft to intercept the Islander fighter aircraft and began attacking Australasian warships and the naval base in the harbor.
But what the Islanders did not expect was that Australasia had installed a large number of anti-aircraft weapons on warships and in the harbors, including heavy hitters like small-caliber machine guns and anti-air missiles.
An initial attack by bombers did not cause too many casualties for Australasia; instead, it resulted in at least 20 losses to the Islander bomber formation.
It should be noted that the number of bombers carried by the Islanders on this mission was only one-sixth of the total number of aircraft, or around 70.
Such an attack resulted in the Islanders losing almost half of their bombers, where was the reasoning in that?
With no hope of a quick victory in a direct confrontation with the air forces, and their flank sneak attacks easily repelled by the enemy, the Islanders found themselves in a dilemma for a while.
Where was their hope? The Islanders could only pin their hopes on the fleet that was rapidly approaching.
After all, according to the Islanders' intelligence, Australasia's Pacific Squadron was not at full strength at this time. The fleet meticulously prepared by the Islanders was perfectly capable of arm-wrestling with the current Pacific Squadron.
If they could gain superiority in the sky, the final outcome of this inglorious naval battle would still be a victory for the Islanders.
That was the ultimate result the Islanders had in mind. After all, there was a two-fold gap in the number of aircraft between the two parties.
In the eyes of the Islanders, maintaining a two-fold difference in the number of aircraft was the result of the Island Nation's all-out efforts.
If a two-fold difference in aircraft could not secure an advantage, then there was nothing more the Islanders could do, as they could not compete with Australasia in terms of aircraft production and reserves.