> I recently read about how “the US went into [WWII] with fewer carriers than the Japanese, it was the US that was almost out of carriers in the Pacific in late

> I recently read about how “the US went into [WWII] with fewer carriers than the Japanese, it was the US that was almost out of carriers in the Pacific in late 1942, and the US that had suffered the larger percentage of carrier losses—not the Japanese” I don't dispute your overall point, but I don't think this is right. I couldn't read your source without a signup, so I went looking around. According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/1353080/wwii-japan-us-aircraft-carrier-strength-and-losses/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1353080/wwii-japan-us-ai... the Japanese lost 14 carriers in the war, and ended with 18 in service, so they lost 14 out of 32. The US lost 5 and ended with 34 in service, so it lost 5 out of 39. That's really hard to turn into "the US suffered the larger percentage of carrier losses". As I said, I don't disagree with your overall point. As to the torpedo story: IIRC, there were two problems. The torpedoes themselves had an issue. I don't recall exactly, but it may have been that they didn't run at the depth they were supposed to. The second problem was the detonators. They didn't trigger if they hit square on, but only if they hit at an angle. So the better the shot on a ship, the less likely the torpedo was to actually explode. They didn't get consistently working torpedoes until September 1943.