Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "USS Balao - Guide 169" video.

@readhistory2023 from what I've seen, the 3" guns common on early WW2 US submarines were there to discourage surface actions unless the target was genuinely appropriate for such a small gun.
3
@bkjeong4302 I suspect a lot of that has to do with the sheer scale of the Japanese error. The Yamatos displaced twice as much as a treaty battleship and were intended to be able to defeat multiple enemy battleships. This from a nation deliberately preparing to take on a nation with 10 times the economy. The US built 10 fast battleships during the war, which is between 6 and 10 more than could really be justified (you're familiar with my position that some North Carolinas/South Dakotas were justified to counter the Kongos). The difference is that the US could afford to be so extravagant while also building the Essex and Independance swarm; Japan absolutely could not. The British would have been better served using the KGV money reconstructing Hood and Repulse, but even they managed to build quite a few carriers to replace their losses. The Japanese were least able to afford to waste resources on battleships, yet built the three (counting Shinano) biggest such extravegances.
2
@bkjeong4302 not really disagreeing on any of that. Certainly the Japanese were culturally obsessed with aircrew quality rather than quantity, what has been called "the myth of the invincibility of a sufficiently refined technique". I see that the Japanese planned to build 16 Unryu-class carriers starting in 1941-42, but only 3 were completed. Germany absolutely would have been better served by another, what, 150,000 tons of u-boats rather than the Schanhorsts and Bismarks, but the Bismarks were actually a little smaller than Hood. The French and Italian battleship programs were heavily influenced by the focus on the Mediterranean (always in range of land-based aircraft) and each other. The Japanese, on the other hand, have the misfortune, or poor timing, to put the first of two massive battleships into service just after the attack that was intended to obviate the "need" for them. To clarify that last point, the Yamatos were intended to counter multiple "standard" battleships in the decisive fleet engagement. They were begun when the IJN still envisioned starting a war in the Phillipines and fighting the decisive engagement near those islands after attributing the US fleet with aircraft, submarines, and night torpedo attacks from destroyers and cruisers. The Pearl Harbor raid was intended to avoid the need for a decisive battle by presenting the US with a fiat accompli and hope they would accept it because the Phillipines were so far away and it would take so long to rebuild the fleet. Yamato was commissioned just over a week after Pearl Harbor, so what was the point again?
1