There is one major deficiency in the presentation: It wasn’t the construction of ships before WWII that made the rapid expansion of the two-ocean Navy possible; it was the construction of shipyards, on the West Coast, particularly Mare Island at the east end of San Pablo Bay where so many “liberty ships” were built. Concurrent with that was construction of steel mills and aluminum smelting on the West Coast, the latter made possible at all with the Grand Coulee Dam and other WPA edifices along the western scrap of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The was part of a LONG preparation of the infrastructure of war by the Roosevelt Administration, from the aircraft industry in LA to even the location of the World’s Fair in San Francisco with which to build bases at Treasure Island and Alameda.
Without the core skilled labor for each of these industries with which to train those who would join them in WWII, NONE of the rapid growth in production that ensued would have been remotely possible. THIS is where we are deficient now in attempting to re-home our manufacturing capabilities, and the schools aren’t making that any easier.
From the moment Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay, we were on a collision course with Japan.