And the warmongers waste no time

[Anomalocaris]

That's 8 carriers by my count.

CV-1 was the Langley a converted oiler. CV's 2 and 3 were the Lexington and Saratoga which were converted battle cruisers. Lexington was sunk at Coral Sea, (1942) and Sara survived the war.

The Langley was CV-4 which was built from the keel up as a carrier but so small that she was effectively an escort carrier and ferry in the Atlantic.

CV-5 was the Yorktown ( Sunk at Midway, 1942 )

CV-6 was the Enterprise which survived the war.

CV-7 was the Wasp ( Sunk supporting Marine operations on Guadalcanal, 1942)

CV-8 was the Hornet ( Sunk at the Battle of Santa Cruz ( 1942)


If the Japanese had managed to sink the Big E and the Sara in 1942, the fact is that American industrial production would have ensured that by mid 1943 we would have outweighed them in carriers and every other class of screening vessel with ships that were newer, faster and had radar. There was no "decisive battle" in the Pacific. The Japanese were beaten before they ever attacked. And, they knew that going in.

CV-4 was the Ranger.

The point is the USN did not have 3 carriers when the Japanese attacked with 6. There were 6 US fleet carriers to match the 6 fleet carriers available to the Japanese.

The vessels with which the USN would outweigh the Japanese were not exactly conceived in response to war. The USN had always been superior to the Japanese navy and in fact had begun a truly enormous buildup on top of existing superiority 2 years before Pearl Harbor.

By comparison, the Japanese navy, always smaller than the USN, were already taxing the Japanese economy to the limit even before the war. As a result, the build up the Japanese envisioned to prepare themselves for war was only ambitious in comparison to Japanese industrial capability. It was puny compared to the buildup untaken by the US or even Britain.

Rather than harping on the theoretical advantage of always being massively armed and overwhelmingly equipped as if money sprouts from the ground for every round of ammunition fired, one should examine the position of the Japanese who carried a peacetime military burden so overwhelming that it suffocated their industrial development, so that when war came, they managed but one anemic squeek of a build up that made no difference.

BTW, 20 years ago a prediction that Chinese economy would eventually rival the size of American economy in 100 years was considered outlandish. 20 years later China has already overtaken us in manufacturing, in some some key areas by a enormous margin (Chinese steel industry is 7 times ours), and conservative forecast would have them overtake us overall in as little as 5 years.

At this rate, should war come, it would not be the lesson of the danger of being underprepared that would benefit us, rather it would be the lesson of the fatal effects of being overprepared militarily, but rediculously outmatched economically, as was the Japanese, that might serve us best.