| I think it largely comes down to staff quality: - US flew quite a number of sorties that weren’t directly effective, at high casualties, to delay and “stuff up” the Japanese fleet - US use of kamikaze attack rattled the Japanese command - Miles Browning wrote a paper about exactly the tactic used at Midway against the Japanese [1] You can (and the US did) shuffle commanders as needed — but you can’t suddenly create enlisted to do the dirty work or experts with the right ideas. Those require existing culture. Similarly, with a robust industrial base, you can pivot your manufacturing efforts (eg, battleships to carriers) — but you can’t build entirely new factories of skilled workers very quickly (eg, US struggles to build shells for Ukraine). Perhaps this is a simplistic view, but I don’t think you can have the right military at the start of a conflict; you can only develop a robust, rapidly adaptable military base. That is, you can only make the military anti-fragile. My advice would be to ignore the admirals (since you can always get new ones), and instead focus on quality NCOs, junior officers, and economics: they’re the backbone/framework of any future victory. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Browning |