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On Japanese naval strategy in World War II

Japanese naval aircraft played a large role in the attack on Pearl Harbor?

This is natural and history has proven it.

Didn't Japan realize the role of carriers in naval warfare?

Big ship and big gun doctrine was the mainstream of the time, with the technology of the 1930s, when the navy was at the peak of its combat readiness, carrier-borne aircraft were unable to sink battleships, which was the most favorable support for the big ship and big gun doctrine, even if there was a visionary militarist such as Yamamoto Isoroku who was bound to be in the minority, even though he persuaded the Ministry of the Navy to increase the investment in the carriers and carrier-borne aircraft, but also could not shake the development of the established within the navy. The "8-8 fleet" strategy.

By the early 1940s, air-dropped torpedo technology was developing rapidly, and in November 1940 the British Mediterranean fleet used carriers to raid the Italian port of Taranto, using air-dropped torpedoes to sink three Italian battleships in one fell swoop, which laid down the proof of the new tactics, and after that, air-sea tactics could be formally called into question by the mainstream of the big ships and huge guns. At that time has been in the Pacific War on the verge of war, and the warship building program often takes several years to implement, at that time, Yamato has been commissioned, Musashi has been launched, and Japan's industrial capacity is limited in the big ships and huge guns on the huge amount of resources spent on the Japanese, has not been able to afford to large-scale construction of the carrier fleet, but of course, later on or very serious, such as the Yamato-class No. 3 Shinano has been improved to aircraft carriers.