Be that as it may, the fact that Japan was a small island nation with limited resouces, it is undeniable that their ability to produce these technologically advanced submarines and super battleships is impressive. One can only speculate how much design and technology was taken and further developed by the allies after the war – something that the victor nations rarely reveal.

Japan was several times behind the U.S. in industry. As an example, they built 20 aircraft carriers (of inferior quality) during the war, and the U.S. built 134. The disparity grew worse and worse over time.

Theoretically if Japan could’ve developed a nuclear bomb first, though, and if they had a reliable delivery system, none of that would’ve mattered. One bomb would be the end of any fleet.

But Japan never was going to develop nuclear weapons first. They didn’t have the talent or industry to do so.

Superior aircraft are nice, but when your enemy can build five times as many planes as you can in the same time and, more importantly, five times as many aircraft _carriers_, having planes that can shoot down 1.2 enemy planes every time they shoot down one of yours just isn’t going to cut it, even with suicide tactics. I mean, yes, jet-based or rocket-based fighters would’ve helped a little, but Germany HAD them and it didn’t change the outcome in Europe. The balloons are a clever approach to a real problem in that they actually managed to get to the US mainland (something Japan consistently had trouble accomplishing throughout the war), but even if they’d somehow managed to burn half the forests in California to the ground we still had, you know, the whole rest of the country. The long-range subs are an interesting footnote, but the ability to *potentially* launch half a dozen planes within striking distance of the enemy is kind of second rate, compared to our repeatedly demonstrated ability to fly unlimited bomber sorties over any part of the Japanese mainland we felt like and drop any kind of bombs we wanted more or less whenever we wanted (weather permitting) on significantly shorter notice than the subs would have required. The Yamato was a waste of resources to even build: the most important military doctrine of the Pacific theatre in WWII was that carrier groups had made dreadnaught-style battleships hopelessly obsolete as fleet-leading capital ships. Battleships were still useful in secondary roles, as _part_ of a carrier group, e.g., as a supplement for the planes to assist with bombardment of shore targets during troop landings; but by the middle of 1942 or so the idea of sending battleships out to fight against carriers had become obviously ludicrous. If the Yamato had _been_ a carrier, it might have delayed things a bit, but it wouldn’t have changed the outcome, because they couldn’t have built enough of them fast enough to keep up. As for the atomic bomb, I have said this before: if Japan had had the bomb, it would not have mattered. Where would they have dropped it, and how would they get it there? The last time Japan flew a plane over US soil (discounting a couple of remote islands) was at Pearl Harbor, before we were officially at war. They never managed it again. By 1944, the Allies had de facto control of pretty much the entire Pacific. The only ships the Axis could get through were submarines, and even that was highly unreliable.

The Japanese navy admirals all knew this beforehand: they estimated that Japan would be able to hold its ground in the Pacific for six months or maybe at most a year, but after that America’s larger economic resources and industrial infrastructure would be an insurmountable problem. They tried to explain it to the army guys and talk them out of engagint the US, but the army wasn’t in a listening mood.