The Japanese really set themselves up for failure with their doctrine on pilot training. Whereas the U.S. had established a policy that cycled out pilots in order to train more pilots, the Japanese tended to run their pilots to destruction. The John S. Thach, for example, was sent to Pearl Harbor after Midway to train other pilots in the Beam Defense Position (Thach Weave).
At the same battle of Midway, most of the pilots who flew against Pearl Harbor will downed and killed. They didn’t rotate them out for training purposes and as a result, the quality of the Japanese pilot diminished. This coupled with their noted deficiency in materials just exasperated the problem.
Yet another reason to love and support FR: the ability to have informed, well reasoned, discussions such as this.
Thank you all.
Check out the link in post 34. According to the author of the aricle the Americans built roughly 140 carriers to about 12, I think for the Japanese during WW-II. Escorts, DDs, DEs, etc were built at about a 10 to 1 ratio in favor of the US.
Granted over 100 of the carriers were CVEs. Oof course 100 CVEs gives you the abilty to put close to 2000 aircraft up!!!
And you comments regards Japanese pilot training/ usage were spot on. The Japanese went for very high quality in training pilots and they were unable to cope with the losses.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
The pre-war IJN also had ridiculously difficult (and brutal!) training and high standards for aviators. This cut the pool of available aviators and made it difficult to replace losses.
Once the war turned against them, the standards were lowered, but the damage was done by then.