Comments by "Dave Sisson" (@Dave_Sisson) on "The Impact of Mahan on Naval History - Decisively more than just battles" video.

@stamasd8500 But Bismark and Tirpitz were just the equal of British and American battleships, not really superior to them. And of course both those countries had dozens of battleships while the Germans only had two. At least the two Japanese megaships were superior to any thing else in the world and they were backed up by other conventionally sized battleships in the IJN.
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@Warmaker01 I more or less agree with that. When the war started in 1939 either the Americans or the British could have beaten the Japanese navy in a few years. They both had carriers and a lot of old battleships and a few new ones as well. Likewise either ally could have beaten the combined German and Italian fleets (and the Italians did have good battleships). The way it turned out it was an overwhelmingly British force that beat the German and Italian navies and when the Americans entered the war, they were mostly responsible for taking on the Japanese (except in the Indian Ocean) until the European theatre was won when the British sent a lot of ships over to help out in the Pacific.
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