James Holmes
Talk about an acute case of role reversal: the US Navy in 2026 has taken the place of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941.
During the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, Japan fielded the best marine fighting force in the world on a ship-for-ship, plane-for-plane, munition-for-munition basis. After demolishing the US Pacific Fleet battle line at Pearl Harbor, it rampaged across the Indo-Pacific for six months, conquering a vast swath of the earth’s surface. But Japan had meager industrial capacity to manufacture new or repair damaged ships and planes. The differential equation was ruthless: Japan lost shipping—much of it to American submarine warfare—at a far faster rate than its domestic industry could produce replacements.
In other words, the Imperial Japanese Navy was excellent, yet brittle. And when confronted with an antagonist whose factories had started turning out mountains of good-enough armaments, it could not keep up. Quantity had a quality all its own in the Pacific War.
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