How the Japanese Carriers were so effective 

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Being a World of Warships player, I can say that as far as I know, the Langley is not a premium ship. Getting her this way is a great way for newcomers to shortcut the effort, though; good on WOWS for doing this.

I am trying to learn German, so can you please go back to the war against Germany? Thanks :p

Just an FYI for people who got burned by World of Tanks. Funnily enough, Wargaming seems to have managed to avoid the intensely terrible economy and grind of World of Tanks here. World of Warships is actually a pretty damn good game, give it a shot! :)

@SUNchaster nothing there, if you mean the fb page, because I don't take messages on my private account.

They also exploited the naval doomstack mechanic

@@TanksExplosionsAnime afaik "The Great Creator" nerfed doomstacks and introduced fuel into the world of men.

@Jimmy De'Souza I am fairly sure the British thought so too of United Kingdom way back when "coal" was the name of the game

" Smart Paradox player +100%"

US submaeine force: hold my beer

With the same limitations: Not enough of their best weap[on systems.

More like the British fleet

@@ousamadearu5960 uhm no

The Kampfgruppe was more of a combined arms affair. The Panzer Division is a better comparison.

​@@zulubeatz1 Planes, big ships and small ships sounds like combined arms to me

Well, their battleships no, but their cruisers and destroyers took part on important actions on the Baltic and Black seas, as they mostly dominated those waters. On the Black Sea, for example, they helped on the defensive operations on Odessa, Crimea and the Caucasus (1941-1942), and conducted raids (together with small marine commando units) on the Romanian coast. On the Baltic, they were mostly on the defense, with the battleships of the Baltic Fleet being used as batteries on the siege of Leningrad.

@@podemosurss8316 Clearly you have never played World of Warships. Comrade Star Destroyer did not even need to actually exist to rule the seas with its Stalinium-firing railguns.

Swiss Army Knight You mean the Lenin-class battleship?

Soviet submarine operations were quite effective. So was their naval bombardments in support of ground operations. Riverine aspects of the soviet navy was quite well adapted. Something most other nations lacked.

Are you serious? The Baltic sea was totally blocked from Soviet navy.

Brilliant story, Sir

He graduated as a carrier pilot, while never assigned to a carrier. Initially was enlisted but became a sub-lieutenant.

It was an SBD Dauntless pilot rear gunner that shot him not an avenger

@@mcamp9445 If am correct the avenger was introduced after midway.

@@mcamp9445 In his story "Samurai" Sakai related that he spotted what he thought were F4F Wildcats and he dove on one. He had never seen an SBD before and at a distance I could see where he might make that mistake. At any rate, he dove to bounce the target and only at the last second did he realize this airplane had a rear gunner when the gunner shot up his plane and him.

The US actually used a similar tactic, perhaps by accident, at Midway, when the dive bombers were able to take out the carriers while the defences had their eyes on the torpedo bombers.

@@abatesnz It probably was an accident, but one that the guys in the Dauntlesses were quick to capitalize on, to Vice Admiral Nagumo's detriment.

@@abatesnz well, JP navy they had better ships and planes to start the war, but where they stucked was in their damage control program and training.

Joseph Neubauer their real downside was their inability to produce replacements for any ships they lost compared to the manufacturing monster that is wartime US. No amount of damage control can stop an onslaught of new ships hitting the seas every week. They also had a lot less reserve personnel should their main army fail, so they were pretty much destined to lose since the start of the war

Similarly- Germans watched fast armor training/simulations in Britain in mid-1920s, and went with it in WW2- while the British themselves cut down on most of their (very advanced) tank and tank tactics development due to economic crisis and deep budget cuts.

I think I should add 3 or 4 things here FIrst of All, allied vision of Carriers. While this vision still remained in Japanese navy as well (as exemplified in the video), Allied suffered even more: The psychology of big guns on big ships. There were requests to tinker with the ideea of creating a big carrier force at the center of the operations in naval warfare. However, navy heads would not give up on their battleship ideeas and even falsified some tests to show that carrier planes (or planes in general) were unable to damage a battleships. Thus, carrier planes should be used only to scout for the main battleship fleet and try to cripple enemy ships. Potential of aircraft was totally ignored. Perhaps this over-emphasise on battleships is also what lead to many other US short commings in early war, the biggest being perhaps the lack of torpedo expertise. 2nd A ton of luck. Prior to Midway and at Midway. In one instance, I think it was during the Solom Islands campaign, Japanese carrier planes, sent to sink Yorktown and Lexington had to spend so much time searching for them in nighttime and bad weather conditions that they almost ran out of fuel. They had to ditch their payload in the middle of the ocean to have any chance at returning back at their carriers. However, in perhaps the most dramatic twist of fate in history, the first carrier they tried to land on was a US carrier. With no payload, they had to abort the landing procedures and attempt at returning home. Perhaps, had they pulled a Kamikaze right there and then, the whole course of the War could have been altered, as the next day, the US force sank one of the Japanese carriers which was planned for Midway. In a similar event, a US dive bomber squadron at Midway almost failed to locate the Japanese carriers, but in the last minute, they spotted them. And all their escorting fighters were busy engaging another US squadron on the opposite side of the fleet, so nobody was there to meet those guys. So, yeah, dumb luck 3rd. Sometimes you make your own luck, aka US ships, especially in mid-to-late war, had better compartimentation. Much better. This meant that fires and floodings would spread much slower and would cause less damage to the ships. Japan, well, they had some of the worst compartimentation. Many ships were lost to minimal damage thanks to this. Especially carriers. 4th. Last, but not least: Search and Rescue. Especially for pilots. US put quite a bit an effort to search for their downed pilots. Japan, not really. If someone would die away from the fleet, he was considered dead.

Japan seemed to miss in one crucial area...protection for their ships and pilots. American planes and carriers were *far* more durable than Japanese planes and carriers. The US had substantially better damage control procedures on their carriers than the Japanese did and that really showed at Midway. Japanese planes were faster, more nimble and longer ranged but they lacked armor and self-sealing tanks. Also, the Japanese did not rotate experienced pilots out of combat and back into flight schools to train the next groups of combat pilots so Japanese new recruits never got the practical lessons from veterans that US pilots got. So, attrition was going to doom the Japanese carriers and pilots all along. It was just a matter of time.

@@jeffbergstrom9658 Weren't US carrier aircraft far easier to repair, compared to the Japanese planes?

Except almost all of that is nonsensical myth. There was no "tremendous" advantage, you don't get to claim that and then barely win one out of four battles battle you fight against a peer opponent and only when you bring twice as many ships to that fight. The proof is in the pudding as they say and the Japanese carrier arm was never really able to decisively win a single carrier engagement during the entire period of 1942. If the USN was so bad and the Japanese STILL couldn't decisively win even in battles where it was bringing significantly more carriers into action and was only even able to stay in the game because IJN submarines gave them GAINT and timely assists ahead of and after multiple key battles, really what does that say about the Japanese? Really the pilot issue is another myth there was no real difference in experience, only the USN being smart enough to start expanding it's training program BEFORE the war. This resulted in a 'dilution' of the average flight time of the corps, but tons of reasonably trained pilots win wars, not a handful of aces not that the USN going into the war didn't have pretty much as many of those as the IJN anyway. The cross training mentioned was limited really to familiarization pilots were not being switched between fighters and dive bombers from week to week or something once in service. The "Combat experience" might be the dumbest myth of all. That "experience" consisted of bombing mostly defenseless inland targets, being attacked very sporadically by very outdated and poorly flown fighters, and turkey shooting a handful of ancient and effectively defenseless Chinese ships at the very start of the war. This is really on the same level as trying to say that the "combat experience" of a modern GBC in bombing insurgents and rebels in the middle east would somehow translate to a major tactical advantage in a full blown clash with the PLA in the Taiwan strait. This 'combat' would teach you dick all that was relevant to engaging a peer foe in open ocean with carriers and was really only useful in gaining experience in basic flying and aircraft operations, neither of which couldn't be gotten in exercise. The idea the Japanese were leaps ahead in the other areas you mention is nonsense as well. Japanese had no better understanding of the USN of the realties of maritime strike in any meaningful way. The USAAF was dumb as hell and refused to listen to Navy consul on the matter, but that's something else entirely. I'm not sure where you're getting this shit that USN aircraft weren't just as specifically focused as the Japanese, they fact the two nations chose different factors to emphasize doesn't mean the USN somehow lacked understanding. As it was the USN dive bomber was clearly the better design, there wasn't much to chose from between the TBs if both had a working Torpedo, the Zero was marginally superior to the F4F-3. The longer range of the Japanese aircraft was bought at the EXPENSE of payload and survivability, as it was the advantage of longer range proved more useful for bomber escort from land bases then it ever really did in any of the carrier battles. They had really exactly one notable leg up aircraft wise, which was an aerial torpedo that worked. Although ironically the USN had that too at the start of the war, the first versions of the Mk.13 actually worked when dropped in there designated parameters (see Lexington TBs wrecking Shouhou), but design 'improvements' by the dullards at the USN torpedo factory made sure that was quickly 'fixed'. The only area they were TRULY ahead tactically was in the coordination of a combined strike from several ships and even that only really began to emerge in the direct run up to the war. That tactic before the advent of radar and effective control was also a decidedly double edged sword. It wasn't like the USN hadn't thought about it, but it was always very vary of having a bunch of carriers clustered together to make such strikes. Midway brutally showed exactly why and that such a fear wasn't in anyway unfounded and it's own success in that battle continued to influence it's thinking regarding dispersal vs concentration for most of the rest of the year.

@@nottoday3817 Luck is overrated and usually effects both sides really if you want to play that game how about: -Saratoga isn't blundered upon by a Japanese submarine and taken out of the war for months right at the start of it or even just that the torpedo inflicts slightly less damage, Saratoga missed Midway by literally ONE day if the damage is even slightly less there is a fourth US carrier at the battle -Lexington doesn't accidently blow herself up after the battle is over from totally survivable damage at Coral Sea. -The submarine doesn't find Yorktown after Midway -Wasp isn't blundered upon and sunk by a Submarine -Saratoga isn't torpedoed AGAIN just before Santa Cruz -The last hit on Hornet at Santa Cruz doesn't just happen to be perfectly placed to ruin the repairs that were about to restore propulsion power and allow the ship to escape Those are just bug ones off the top of my head, I can name plenty more. This is how it always is people focus on the 'luck' of the side that wins, but tend to ignore all the unlucky shit that happens to them along the way, or all the lucky breaks the other guys gets.

And that was early in WW1, holy shit

+@@shanedoesyoutube8001 In 1905 at the Battle of Tsushima, against the Russian Czarist Navy a young Japanese ensign on a cruiser was wounded and lost 2 fingers on his left hand when a Russian shell hit his ship. If he had lost 3, his Naval career would have been over. His name Isoroku Yamamoto. The Japanese fleet clobbered the Russian fleet.

@@butchoharechicago6657 as far as I've heard, that's only bcuz the vodka navy was badly brewed (as in incompetent as fuk)

Tbh everybody new that carriers would eventually become more important than battleships. They where just not sure when. Doesn't help you in 1941 when you built only carriers but they are only the superior weapon in 1965. You can adapt a technology too early. Just look at the German V2 rocket or their jet fighter Wunderwaffe

last time i was this late the americans were still cherry picking which side to join

Sir_Godz LOL! You clearly don’t know shit about WW2 history if that’s what you think. Please do yourself and the rest of humanity a favor by doing some ACTUAL RESEARCH on ACTUAL FACTS about the history of WW2 before you go spewing such nonsense out your yap. So you really think they would cherry pick which side while they had been giving the Brits AND Soviets resources, men, aircraft, naval ships, etc. from the start of the war? You must not know anything about warfare, or any sort of military conflict either

ProfessorPottsyTV he’s just joking stop being an up tight asshole

@@dt2419 careful he's a professor

ProfessorPottsyTV he could be talking about WW1 dumbass as that’s even earlier

This also partially explains why in World War 2, the numbers of "kills" the more famous individual German and Japanese air aces each scored by the end of the war (or by the time of their deaths in battle) often exceeded 100, while the total number of kills your average American air ace scored rarely exceeded 50 downed enemy aircraft.

Americans: won a war with better HR.

@@cobracurse There were no American with 50 Kills or more, the best (Bong) had 40. There were 340 Germans with more than 40 kills.

that also applied to germany as well. There were a high number of aces from legion condor but flight instruction was a mess.

I really don't know why Japan wouldn't rotate their aces home. It may have been they were unable to because it was less safe for them to do so.

Very nicely written.

The Lexington suffered from poor damage control at Coral Sea. The conditions at Midway were perfect for maximum destruction. The Shokaku took a few bomb hits in 1942 and survived. The Franklin took one to two bomb hits and was almost destroyed in 1945. Empty carriers don't burn as well all fully loaded ones.

@@19canada67 carriers are floating bombs, chock full of high octane gasoline, bombs and torpedoes. There's only so much you can do.

Typically Japanese. All offence, no Defense. And all servicemen are expendable and expected to die for the Emperor. The callous disregard for subordinates life is really what stands out for me looking at the Japanese in general. Some will excuse it as Bushido spirit. I doubt Bushido sanctions wasting lives. How many pilots would they have saved just with self sealing fuel tanks. The Betty, a good and fast bomber was known as the flying zippo. For the duration of the war.

Is this CVL 27 Langley or the original Langley?

@@MakeMeThinkAgain Original

Does this not have a premium skin?

Caliban Yes, I learned that YEARS ago as an R.O.T.C. Cadet. Glad you pointed that out.

@@RoloC4 Either way its no fun

@Tom. How the IJN could have easily won was use the true advantage they had which was their surface ships. They had 11 total battleships including Yamato. If 5 were used to shell Midway this would have caused additional targets the Us pilots would have had to focus on. Yes correct in that for this Battle of Midway the IJN should have spaced out their carriers better and actually kept them behind and utilize more of their smaller carriers also use them primary for CAP for the surface ships. The IJN had plenty of fighter planes. The IJN didn’t even need 2/3 bombers and 1/3 fighters. They should have went 2/3 fighters and 1/3 bombers. Their faster surface ships should have been pushed out ahead and they would have been real threats to the US Task Forces out there. The IJN had 17 cruisers and 49 destroyers. In comparison the US only had 8 cruisers and 15 destroyers. The total count above doesn’t even factor in the Aleutians Northern Force where they also has 2 mid carriers, 5 cruisers and 15 more destroyers plus and oiler.

One of the quirks with carriers during that battle is that they can't launch their combat air patrol and attack/fighter aircraft and recce at the same time. Each carrier has a certain capacity for rearming and refueling aircraft. The US fleet uses carrier groups as well at the end. They don't amass their attack and fighter craft into big chunky waves, they move to attack as each group assembles. It becomes a constant, chaotic stream of attacks against the japanese fleet where the time-table planning of massed groups starts to fail.

He wrote a good book but he lost his eye and nearly his life at Guadalcanal.

I read his book when I was 12. 54 years ago. The story of how he lost his eye is emblematic of the shifting tides of the Pacific war.

“Destroyer Captain” by Hara ? is another great book from Japanese perspective and quite even-handed. Also has a lot of Solomons background.

The two ships actually fought repeatedly, though neither ever sank the other.

@@bkjeong4302 Enterprise's aircraft were among the planes that sunk Zuikaku.

Jack Washbrook AFAIK that kill is credited to the second Lexington (which is ironic, considering Coral Sea).

@@bkjeong4302 As far as I was aware it was seven torpedo hits from 5 US Carriers that sunk her, Lexington and Enterprise included. I guess Zuikaku can't really be attributed to any one of them.

Well, her name means "Auspicious Crane", so she had luck wrought into her from the moment she was named.

Given how badly carrier game play is integrated into the game I don't think adding a new type of game play would be a good thing

NO GOD PLEASE NO!!!

@@rafaeltait1203 A chinese rip off already did subs in their game and it was fine. BBs and CVs were easy pickings but it also gave DDs and some CLs something more to do than being torp spammers and cannon fodder.

@@madensmith7014 CLs dominate the game already, nothing is stronger than a incester cancering from range

Historically, they were used mostly for convoy raiding and recon. But in a game where CV and BB noobs tend to camp in one spot as they bombard their enemies while cruisers and DDs have a tussle in the front, subs that can sneak through enemy lines and hit campers was a fun sight to behold.

Exactly. If you look at individual engagements that were fairly evenly matched, the U.S. usually came out on top. Look at Jimmy Thach and his three wingmen taking on 20 Zeroes at Midway.

@@shawnc1016 basically they were able to "run wild" because they faced no serious opposition. Like it or not, the battle of the Coral Sea was the first time time this was not true and the results were not the overwhelming victory that, based on the results so far, the IJN should have expected. And, if Halseys staff (Browning) and the Hornet (Mitscher) performed so poorly at Midway, the Yorktown (and the torpedo bombers) might not have been lost and all 4 IJN carriers lost immediately. The IJN admirals (Nagumo and Hara) were outperformed by their American counter parts(Fletcher and Spruance)

The Japanese had 9

For pilots, the training was certainly rigorous. But worse, for the trainees, the washout rate for non-flying "offenses" was completely over the top. Showing up thirty seconds late for morning formation, failure to salute properly, some minor uniform discrepancy--and boom, the trainee was gone, even if he was an excellent pilot. And not before a beating with fists or a cane, and a heaping dose of humiliation and scorn, which could extend back to the trainee's family. More than a few senior Navy and Army officers, in the first quarter of 1943, as the Guadalcanal campaign ate up virtually the last of the pre-war pilot corps, remarked publicly that "it would sure be nice to have a few of those pilots who washed out" available. As stated in the video, the Japanese had no concept of mass training. By the time they really needed it, it was too late. The US, in contrast, dramatically expanded its pilot training programs in the months BEFORE Pearl Harbor, and expanded it again after entering the war.

Very true with AA but japan had ships beside kaga that could manouver and haul insane speed with additional of there good pilot

Saying it as blitzkrieg is a bit far fetched but yes it does translate to mechanized/quick response unit

Kifo Butai I believe is commonly translated as Fast Taskforce.

But you could also argue it means 'first responder' LOL

Nonsense - the American pilots of the Flying Tigers in China had developed some tactics of coping with the Zero before the US entered the war.

Austrian accent. :-) .

What you might have learned is bad history. This is full of errors....

> The American anti-aircraft gunnery was good from the start particularly with our proximity fused shells. > That helped our carriers survive through 1943. the proximity / VT Fuze was introduced later

since it is adequate to give code to an USA carrier in a video about Japanese carriers

I had the same interrogation :). the Langley is the T4 introduction Carrier to the US Tech Tree Langley (T4) >> Ranger (T6) >> Lexington (T8) >> Midway (T10) There are indeed 4 Premium Carriers (all T8) but the Langley isn't one of them

Anyone here miss the old T5, T7, and T9 CVs? I remember when Ranger was a premium CV with 3 fighter wings.

@@shellshockedgerman3947 maybe you are thinking about the Saipan? Ranger was a T7 tech tree ship.

Indeed, in fact the IJNAS fighter pilots operated in a similar hit-and-run fashion to their USN counterparts.

They got careless and we got lucky. Our intel was fantastic but the Japanese intel failed miserably and they never questioned the lack of information.

Me too!

I Wish the History Channel Do a Story of Japanese Marines defense at Tarawa and Manila.

@@maureencora1 but I don't think that it would be something nice to watch, can you imagine that guy of explaining this

They tend to go through dense forests so not really surprising

No. Wrong answer. IJN Marines never went up against a legitimate force. Never.

@@jds6206 so the Blitzkrieg, didn't they?

Which ceased to win in each case because of the vastly superior industrial capacity of the enemy.

@@JRobbySh especially america

thanks, the Sino-Japanese War might get covered on my second channel. I had one video planned, but I might drop it. The whole thing is just massive and usually it gets far less views and since it takes about 2-3 times the time to "research" (read & write the scripts), it is not really suitable unless I achieve enough support on Patreon et al where I don't have to think about views anymore. I did a stream on the Second Sino-Japanese War on this channel with Justin about 2 years ago.

Military History not Visualized

The channel is linked in the about section, regularly mentioned in various videos etc. I am rather sure if you have missed it so far, you would not have found in the description of my videos.

Eh ... The Japanese carrier's were over come with catastrophic damage at Midway and later in the war they had a lot of problems because of new crews but I'm not aware of such as the ships that fought in the Soloman's having bad damage control. The Japanese navy was very well trained at the beginning of WWII but each time they lost something - they couldn't replace it with something that was as good - or better. .

Vis a vis "damage control"; you don't know what you're looking at or what you're talking about.

@@BobSmith-dk8nw the japanese carriers suffered so much damage upon hits at midway because they had planes armed and ready for a counterattack. however, the counterattack was never launched. this is because the US kept launching frequent, small attacks against the carriers. despite doing little damage, they kept the japanese carriers occupied with rearming and launching carrier defense fighters instead of strike fighters. they kept this up until the massive final attack involving (I think) over 70 US planes. the second wave came in unspotted, which allowed it to cause massive damage (I think the japanese lost 3/4 carriers) to the japanese carriers the difference between dedicated damage control crews and everyone knowing damage control is interesting. I wonder if today's USN does the same thing?

@@berengerchristy6256 Yeah. That sounds about right. The Japanese lost Soryu, Akagi and Kaga to the first Carrier Diver Bomber attack. Hiryu's aircraft attacked Yorktown and the next US attack sank Hiryu. I can't speak about WWII - but off Vietnam the US had dedicated damage control crews on it's Carriers. When they had a flight deck conflaguration as they were about to launch a strike - the bombs on the aircraft went off and killed all the dedicated Damage Control people. So, after that - the US began training everyone in damage control. .

ALWAYS? Clearly you’re rather young and therefore don’t remember that for decades Japanese manufacturing was known for producing utter crap. The most notable product from Japan was the Chinese Finger Trap children would get at birthday parties and the like. Then they went high tech with Paddle Ball. But it was an American, W. Edward Deming, who in the mid 1950’s introduced Japanese manufacturers to the concept of “Total Quality Improvement” that brought Japanese discipline together with the science of TQI that made them the manufacturing powerhouse you know today. But it was not ALWAYS so. There’s a gag line in the movie Back to the Future. Marty time travels from 1985 back to 1955 where someone sees his Walkman and says, “Oh look, Made in Japan.” and everyone around laughs. Marty replies, “Yeah, all the best stuff is made in Japan which they scoff at. The gag is, in 1985 Japan made the best stuff but in 1955 they didn’t. How things change.

I was think along the same lines. Need to add the Shoho in the CVL list. Unless they are counting some early 1942 such as the Hiyo and Junyo, which were small fleet CV's (nearly the same compliment as the Ryujo) You could make an argument as those 9 as CV's vs light Carrier. The US seem light in the counting in this comparison Saratoga, Lexington, Yorktown, Enterprise Hornet, Ranger and Wasp (7) all commission prior to entry into war. Langley was a seaplane tender by this point. Overall the relative total air group compliment size off Japanese and US carriers was about even. The 9+1 to 6 comparison seems very misleading. You also have the commonwealth forces which included a couple of CV's in the Indian Ocean at the outbreak in war (although a couple of US carriers were in the Atlantic, all but the Ranger were quickly shifted to the Pacific with the outbreak of war) so that may be moot issue If you subtract the USS Ranger you can get to six but then you should add the British CV's to an "allied" count for relative strengths.

@@davidhanson8728 I don't think you should count Ranger when you're talking about the Pacific War. Ranger provided good service in the Atlantic but was really a CVE.

@@MakeMeThinkAgain the reason she severed in Atlantic was Because she was too Slow

@@fuynnywhaka101 Actually they also couldn't slap enough AA on her to make her defensible.

Ranger was NOT a CVE. CVE's were built on merchant hulls. CVL's were built on Cruiser hulls. Ranger was a CV. It was a smaller, slower CV - but it was a CV. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ranger_(CV-4) The deal with Ranger was that it was the first US ship designed from the start to be a carrier. Langley, Lexington and Saratoga were all conversions of ships originally designed to do something else. So - as the first ship designed to purpose - they made a number of mistakes with it - which were lessons learned for the Yorktown's. .

That's actually too good and so unfortunate for MHV, but I love that the accent helped in this instance.

@Mialisus FLAT IS JUSTICE

Physically most carriers are weak. A carrier that excels as a carrier even with design flaws will still thrash a lesser ship. He explains it quite well: compared to others of the time the shokaku had exceptional speed, and actually possessed relatively strong defense, though weaker damage control. Further it's fighter compliment at the time matched or exceeded anything fielded by other nations whole having better fighters to boot. The issue is that the inj carriers of '45 were the inj carriers of '40 while the us quickly fielded far superior aircraft and more capable carriers.

Shoukaku class actually kind of pretty tough for Aircraft Carrier, Shoukaku was hit quite lots of bombs but can still return with her own power and then get back.

Matt Mischnick lots of good points but we should always wonder why the IJN insisted on carrier vs carrier / plane vs plane battles when in reality they never had the advantage here. Even at Midway one could say the number of carriers were even. Midway Atol acted as an unsinkable carrier also and they also had 127!planes and while despite being obsolete they were a true distraction for the IJN carriers. Plane count was 360 for US and 248 for IJN. It’s easy to see why the IJN lost. Why would the IJN do this again after what happened at the Battle of Coral Sea. Shōhō was sunk. Shokaku damaged and Zuikaku lost many planes and pilots. It’s amazing how they could not figure out that this was not the way to go. The IJN had an 11 vs 0 advantage in battleships and had like a 62 vs 14 advantage in destroyers. 6 IJN battleships could either do 30 knots or 26.5 knots. Using the battleships could have saved many planes and pilots and carriers.

Somewhat interestingly the Japanese actually had worse armor plate for their ships throughout the war, largely as a result of the lower quality steel they had available, this is why Japanese battleships (and warships in general)of the time had thicker armor to achieve similar effectiveness as compared to other nations. They were able to do this by refusing to comply to the Washington naval treaty which gave prewar allied vessels design weaknesses that allowed them to be absolutely paddled at the start of the war as can be seen in the early battles in the java sea area where ABDACOM was shredded or Guadalcanal

Sorry for the long winded response to what I'm sure was meant to be a short joke 😂

Exactly.....many errors in comparison in this video; so many, it's not worth watching....

Its gone down the shitter. Basically wargaming filled out the Russian tech tree line with almost a completely fake fleet and made them way more powerful then any other ships. They continue to ignore the Italians. Everything is a premium now for $90 a pop. And power creep in general is a huge issue. Wargamming can't seem to balance the game anymore. And they delibeately make the russian ships Uber ships to appease thier sense of nationalism and thier russian player base.

Na, it's the nation with more meat for the grinder that wins, which side in WW2 was USSR, India(British), U.S and China on? A single one of those nations had more meat(people) supply than the Axis. All nations make blunders in war but making more doesn't cause a total loss, I'd argue the Union Army made more than double the blunders of the Confederates but one poorly thought out charge lost the war because they lacked meat, for that grinder. The RAF lacked planes not pilots, Norwegian pilots weren't a very big contingent(if any) in Battle of Britain either, the 500 foreign pilots (20% of total) were Polish(141), New Zealanders(127), Czechs(84) and Canadians(112) making up the bulk of foreigners, it was the Luftwaffe that lacked the pilots. As it was a lack of meat(divisions) that triggered the date for Overlord as Hitler could no longer provide enough meat for the defence of France.

@@fredharper4059 for the protracted war it turned into: yes. for the fast war that Yamamoto had hoped for: no.

@Jack the Gestapo yeah it was just a meme

No doubt that the Swordfish pilot who disabled the rudder on the Bismark was a brave and great feat, but this was a one off lucky event as well. The Japanese pilots early in the war were certainly well trained and had huge hours on their machines, higher than any other carrier pilots at the time. The great problem for the Japanese was that when attrition set in, your lose experienced pilots only to be replaced by pilots with less hours, less training. Many of the IJN experienced pilots perished over the Solomons, their replacements were less well trained and had less hours on their aircraft. Disaster was looming for the IJN.

Japan still had more carriers in the Pacific even after Midway. Japan also still made a lot of carriers during the war.

@@turdferguson3803 So, how does this disprove my comment that Japan could not replace losses. How do you define "a lot" and what, to you, qualifies as a "carrier"? You seem to think that Japan had a substantial carrier force right up to the end of the war. If that is really what you think, you're an idiot.

Impressive, I bet that your school nickname was "Knowledge".

@@erictaylor5462 The last of their carrier force was mostly destroyed in 1944. If you think the Japanese were done after Midway you're an idiot, idiot.

@@turdferguson3803 Actually, if you define "Done" as having lost any possibility of winning the war, then they were done after Pearl Harbor. But after Midway they were fighting a defensive war.

The Japanese didn’t need tanks. They were fighting lightly armed ground forces Up until 1944.

@@tedwarden5803 oh i know. when you think about it, there’s a good chance the war with japan couldve ended sooner (or be less costly) if they decided to focus more resources on tank research and production. Even if they had much better tanks, the amount of aircraft america could produce and the manpower pool they had meant those tanks would be drowned through overwhelming air support.

@@9f81rsd00. Read Yamamoto’s prediction on a war with America. ‘ A sleeping giant’. Japan did produce light tanks suitable for the countryside in which they were used and against the forces they were fighting. Why would you produce heavy tanks when you’re fighting the Chinese or in the jungle or island hopping? It would be pointless. I’d be interested how useful the Americans found their armour in the Pacific. But America had the recourses to send much as they liked in the last year or so of the war. The Japanese never had the industrial output.

It's not really a surprise considering that they were really the only power in Asia. Being the world's third largest navy means close to on par with the world's first and second combined not to mention when you don't have the industry to keep up the war machine running against others. It was already expected that the US would win and the true feat was how Japan managed to hold on until the nukes were dropped.

@@madensmith7014 Obviously, the US had the edge in a war of attrition. The only issue with that idea that Japan's defeat was inevitable is that one can't prove that a negotiated peace favorable to Japan was never an option. If Midway had seen the USN losing its carriers, it would have been very different discussions going on in Washington D.C. in late 1942.

@@genericpersonx333 True, I also hold the same stance in that debate. Even if the Americans can out produce the Japanese, just by having what seems to be an unstoppable fleet was more than enough to scare the world's biggest economy. They might be able to out produce them but the people of America might not want to continue throwing lives into a place they've never even heard of before. Midway and the defeat of Germany greatly boosted the morale of the Allies which was one of the major factors in this war. They had a chance to win this war, which is the surprising thing. Cold hard statistics will always favor the US, but the Japanese somehow managed to gather up some odds to their side to even be able to keep up with the Allies is the real shocker.

@@madensmith7014 they kept up only to a point. then they just kept losing battle after battle, unable to replenish men and materiel after each loss. I think that if Japan had tricked the US into starting the war, war weariness would have set in much faster. because pearl harbor was a dirty surprise attack, this made people angry. people wanted Japan to lose, not just for the war to end. just a hypothesis

@@madensmith7014 yeah, and with lend lease it was extremely unlikely that the US would ever have declared war on germany. the only way japan could hope to win was by delivering a crippling blow at pearl harbor. they didn't, and their fate was sealed

Not really, US lost Lexington in battle of Coral sea which eas the 1st carrier to carrier war, while Yorktown severely damaged, while Japanese only lost light carrier, the fleet carrier only suffers damage but can return with their own power

with no replacements on the horizon and an unnecessarily strict entry requirement for new recruit's entry to service. It was a one-shot weapon.