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"By the time we got done with this War, the United SDtates will have plunked down $44 billion to secure sea control, which is a sum of money roughly equivelent to the United Kingdom's entire GDP."
--Jon Parshall, World War II historian
Naval forces perhaps more than any other military force was a reflection of a country's industrial might. America even with the Depression was the largest industrial power in the world. It thus had the potential to be the world's largest naval power. No single power, including Britain, could have challenged the United States. A weakened Britain after World War I made the monumental decision not to resist American emergence as the world's primary naval power, but rather to cooperate with America. Japan could not have matched American naval power except for the fact that the United States strictly limited naval building while the Japanese used a substantial share of its growing industrial base to military production, especially naval construction. The Washington Naval Treaties which widely unpopular in Japan, were actually highly advantageous to Japan. While they limited American naval construction, they had little impact on the Imperial Navy. Japan did not have the industrial capacity to build much beyond its treaty capacity, especially in the 1920s. This began to change in the 1930s when Japan withdrew from naval limitation treaties. Pearl Harbor instantly removed any self-imposed American constraints on naval building. This is one reason that naval appropriations wee so imprtant in the 1930s. It oresereved the shipyards and the skills of shipyard workertrs whobcould pass on thosde skills to the unskilled workts that flooded into rtther shipyards especially after Oearl Harbor. The full force of American industry was this thrown into building a naval force and merchant marine, an undertaking Japan could not hope to match or even approach. It would take some time, however, for American industry to overcome years of self imposed limitations. So Japan to win the war it had to be in 1942. And they failed ay Midway (June 1942) only 6 months into the War.
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