WI: Yamato class never built?

You also might have had an Indian ocean or Australian attack at the same time as Midway if they decided to split the carrier groups up. You could have ran another raid on Darwin or attacking the Ganges delta to support the attack from Burma. Another attack on Ceylon would be in the offing also.

All of these do little but produce a few headlines, None of them do anything to help Japan achieve its long term aims.
You have to remember that in 1942/3, all carriers could do was raid or attack fleets. It wouldnt be till 1944 that carrier task forces could slug it out with a land base of any size (and even then it worked mainly due to the isolation of the Japanese bases).

Japan can raid all she wants, without the logistics and manpower to do something with the local siperiority gained, its useless. And any sort of landing on a significant land mass just falls into the open trap of attrittion....
 
Wasnt the first naval expansion signed by Roosevelt in 1938, not 1940 (iirc that was the one after Congress had a panic attack after the fall of france)
And the IJN building extra carriers in 36 would certainly allow the US to start in 38 - given the faster build times they'd be ready in 41, a carrier is a lot faster to build than a BB (about 3 years from start, then 6 months to work up an airgroup if one isnt ready)
 
Wasnt the first naval expansion signed by Roosevelt in 1938, not 1940 (iirc that was the one after Congress had a panic attack after the fall of france)
And the IJN building extra carriers in 36 would certainly allow the US to start in 38 - given the faster build times they'd be ready in 41, a carrier is a lot faster to build than a BB (about 3 years from start, then 6 months to work up an airgroup if one isnt ready)


Partly the USA already did so,in ordering USS Wasp and USS Hornet to complete treaty allowed tonage and one additional carrier as stobgab, since the newer design of USS Essex was not fully developped yet. More Yorktowns were unlikely, given the lack of yardcapacity in the pre 1940 period, since most yards still had to expand heavily, before rolling out new additional ships. So the vast influw of large numbers of new warships would still be after 1943 at its earliest, given the time needed to expand the productionfacitlities and building the ships (and aircraft) besides training the crews and aiviators.
 
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