Q-Ball
Posts: 7336
Joined: 6/25/2002 From: Chicago, Illinois Status: offline
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It's fun to speculate what Japan could do with certain tonnage, etc. etc. Not building the Yamatos doesn't necessarily mean 140,000 tons of new CVs could have been built instead. CVs were extremely expensive ships once you figured in the airgroups, and all the complex ships systems (aviation fuel, magazines, aircraft parts and shops, etc). In fact, I wonder if the Shokakus unit for unit were more than the Yamato, if you include the airgroups. I guess in defense of the Katoris, the IJN had a serious shortage of Officers, because they belatedly realized they were going to need more to man all the ships they were building. Like everything else the IJN did, it had a cadre of really elite naval officers, but no effective reserve program, and too selective training program. I suppose the Katoris were part of an effort to address that.
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