The Americans soon turned out a sophisticated B-24 heavy bomber of some 100,000 parts every sixty-three minutes

From Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson. Page 340.

On the Battle of Midway.

In strictly military terms the number of dead at Midway was not large—fewer than 4,000 in the two fleets. The losses were a mere fraction of what the Romans suffered at Cannae, or the Persians at Gaugamela, and much less costly than the bloodbaths of the great sea battles of Salamis, Lepanto, Trafalgar, and Jutland—or the Japanese slaughter to come at Leyte Gulf. But the sinking of the carriers represented an irreplaceable investment of millions of days of precious skilled labor, and even scarcer capital—and the only capability of the Japanese to destroy both the American fleet and Pacific bases. More than one hundred of the best carrier pilots perished in one day, equal to the entire graduating class of naval aviators that Japan could turn out in a single year. Never had the Japanese military lost so dramatically when technology, matériel, experience, and manpower were so decidedly in its favor. Back in Washington, D.C., Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of all U.S. naval operations, concluded of the action of June 4 that the battle of Midway had been the first decisive defeat of the Japanese navy in 350 years and had restored the balance of naval power in the Pacific.

Again, the carriers themselves were irreplaceable. During the entire course of World War II the Japanese launched only seven more of such enormous ships; the Americans in contrast would commission more than one hundred fleet, light, and escort carriers by war’s end. The Americans would also build or repair twenty-four battleships—despite losing nearly the entire fleet of the latter at Pearl Harbor—and a countless number of heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and support ships. During the four years of the war the Americans constructed sixteen major warships for every one the Japanese built.

Worse still for the Japanese, the highest monthly production of all models of Japanese navy and army aircraft rarely exceeded 1,000 planes, and by summer 1945 the sum was scarcely half that due to American bombing, the need for factory dispersal, and matériel and manpower shortages. In contrast, the Americans soon turned out a sophisticated B-24 heavy bomber of some 100,000 parts every sixty-three minutes; American aircraft workers, who vastly outnumbered the Japanese, were also four times more productive than their individual enemy counterparts. By August 1945, in less than four years after the war had begun, the United States had produced nearly 300,000 aircraft and 87,620 warships. Even as early as mid-1944, American industry was building entire new fleets every six months, replete with naval aircraft comparable in size to the entire American force at Midway. After 1943, both American ships and airplanes—sixteen new Essex-class carriers outfitted with Helldiver dive-bombers, Corsair and Hellcat fighters, and Avenger torpedo bombers— were qualitatively and quantitatively superior to anything in the Japanese military. The modern Iowa-class battleships that appeared in the latter half of the war were better in speed, armament, range, and defensive protection than anything commissioned in the Japanese navy and were far more effective warships than even the monstrous Yamato and Mushasi. Within a few months after Midway, not only had the United States naval and air armies made up all the losses from Midway, but its entire armed forces were growing at geometric rates, while the Japanese navy actually began to shrink as outmoded and often bombed-out factories could not even replace obsolete ships and planes lost to American guns, let alone manufacture additional ones. This was the Arsenal of Venice and Cannae’s aftermath all over again.