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Granted, Yamamoto himself had no illusions re: a protracted struggle between Japanese industry, vs. American industry of the '30's/'40's era. Assuming no loss
by caycep 7y ago
Granted, Yamamoto himself had no illusions re: a protracted struggle between Japanese industry, vs. American industry of the '30's/'40's era.
Assuming no loss of political will, I suspect even in a worse case scenario where the US lost all its 3 carriers, it would still have eventually produced enough to win the war. Just maybe it would have taken several years longer...
- jcranmer 7y agoIn 1943, the US was commissioning an Essex-class carrier more or less every month, so the extra time would have been closer to "several months longer" instead.
- DuskStar 7y agoYeah - the US commissioned 17 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers and a whopping 76 escort carriers over the course of the war. Japan? 7, 1 and 4.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoThat's roughly my interpretation too -- there's no way Japan could out-manufacture US industry, and the difference in materiel, ship building and aircraft production wins out, even if Midway had been a catastrophic US loss. I suspect a couple of years longer is much nearer the mark than a few months as the Japanese dug to never surrender, but second guessing history is a no cost game... Who knows what other dominoes would have fallen, and where, in the extra time.
- reddog 7y agoYeah, the US GDP was 4x Japans at the start of the war and 7x bigger at the end. Japans fate was sealed on Dec 7th, 1941. But would a Midway disaster have extended the war 2 years? The US would become the worlds only nuclear power in 1945 and start cranking out atomic bombs no matter what happened at Midway.
- flukus 7y agoI think you're ignoring the Soviet Unions contribution to the war. Even if America lost all 3 carriers you'd still have Manchuria and Korea failing to the soviets and the imminent threat of an invasion to the home islands, which even in our time line forced the surrender of Japan. Japan might have had more resources and industry to combat this but they'd still at least lose at roughly the same time on continental Asia.
- yborg 7y agohttps://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M https://youtu.be/l9ag2x3CS9M One of the best visualizations I've come across of just how dominant the US industrial base was in the 1940s under full mobilization.