“At the time, only Yamamoto and Halsey understood the extent to which the day of the large capital ships had passed.”
There were other aviation admirals, but essentially you’re right. It’s clear in hindsight that the day of the battleship had passed, but the shape of carrier aviation was built in the interwar years where the weapons payload was insufficient, accurate bomb aiming required new dive bombing tactics, and the range of the aircraft was short. Events during the war stripped off quite a few battleships when there already weren’t enough of them to fill all the tactical needs (read Washington Naval Treaty). Carriers, ready or not, had to fill the gaps.
Early carrier actions like Coral Sea are almost inept on both sides. Well, slightly less inept on the Japanese side. Even Midway had a “come as you are” feel to it.
To me the amazing thing about the carrier story in WWII is the story of carrier numbers.
The Japanese had 10 carriers in 1941. We had 7.
At the end of the war, we had something like 95 (counting some smaller escort “carriers”) or 70 (counting only the larger ones).
Although the Battle of Midway deserves to be called The Day The Japanese Lost the War, and though the Americans who fought and died at Midway deserve all the praise and honor we can heap on them... the fact is, even without Midway, those 95 carriers would have totally destroyed the Japanese Navy.
I have a question that I’ve always wondered about and want to ask here: was the island-hopping really necessary? We DID destroy the Japanese Navy. Couldn’t we have just skipped a bunch of islands (including the Phillipines) and only taken those close enough to Japan to enable our heavy, island-based bomber force to launch bombing runs against Japan?
Just a question I’ve always wondered about, not trying to start an argument.