It was in some sense a bloody tactical failure for the US Pacific Fleet as Enterprise becomes the lone OPERATIONAL carrier in the entire Pacific however Japanese naval air supremacy was severely damaged because of the fighters and anti-air guns of the US fleet in the Battle of Santa Cruz. This was a strategic victory for the Americans as the Japanese could never recover the lost machines and skilled veteran pilots.
Also, unlike America, Japan doesn't have both the industrial capacity and manpower to replace the losses.
I'd say they still had the raw manpower, but the skill level was lacking. The extreme majority of their experienced pilots died being brave examples on the front lines and left none to train new ones.
So, Shoukaku and Zuikaku carried 72 aircraft each, that's 144 aircraft total ... holy s***! Yeah, losing 130 is a big problem.
Specially when you consider the fact that the Japanese didn't had the habit of sending veterans back to the home front to train new pilots, and to makes things worse, they started to cut corners to increase the numbers of replacements: at the beggining of the war, a Japanese conscript needed 700 hours of flight time to become a pilot, and by the war's end it was reduced to only 90 hours.
As Zero ace Saburo Sakai puts it:
“We couldn’t watch for individual errors and take the long hours necessary to weed the faults out of a trainee [...]”
“Hardly a day passed when fire engines and ambulances did not race down the runways, sirens shrieking, to dig one or more pilots out of the plane they had wrecked on a clumsy takeoff or landing.”
“We were told to rush men through, to forget the fine points, just teach them how to fly and shoot.”
I'd say they still had the raw manpower, but the skill level was lacking. The extreme majority of their experienced pilots died being brave examples on the front lines and left none to train new ones.
Except manpower is meaningless in a naval/aerial conflict. It doesn't matter if you have 100 sailors/pilots or 100,000 sailors/pilots, if you only have the capacity to field 10 ships/planes, 90 to 999,990 of those sailors/pilots are useless.
Except manpower is meaningless in a naval/aerial conflict. It doesn't matter if you have 100 sailors/pilots or 100,000 sailors/pilots, if you only have the capacity to field 10 ships/planes, 90 to 999,990 of those sailors/pilots are useless.
And I wasn't contending the raw manpower part, I was contending the skill level part. Whether they're multi-year veterans or rushed through boot camp rookies, its meaningless if you don't have the ships/aircraft to use.
By extension, their skill level is similarly rendered meaningless due to lack of numbers. It doesn't matter if you have a squadron of the greatest pilots who ever lived, if you send that one squadron alone against an entire fleet, that one squadron is going to get shot down simply due to the overwhelming barrage of AA fire.
Once your numbers significantly drop below your opponent's, the conflict becomes meaningless. Skill level doesn't mean anything when your opponent can simply wear you down.
Shoukaku-nee, we've succeeded in sinking U.S.S. Hornet! A victory! Tenno Banzai!I've been forgotten!AboveRetreatU.S.S. NorthamptonU.S.S. South DakotaFailedTowingRepairingUnwilling to give up, Type 97 Torpedo Bomber attempted a kamikaze. Those Jap assholes are surely crazy!The only one remaining on the Pacific Ocean is the U.S.S. Enterprise.Shot down 32 planesU.S.S. SaratogaWhat?Later then, Japan had lost too many pilots and were unable to muster enough of a force to attack... it was majorly damaging to both sides!Shot down 11 planesI don't wanna die...We've lost 130 pilots (fairies?)! We can't make a comeback!!You jerk! I won't allow you to crash on me!Was discovered by Type 97 Torpedo Bombers and hit in the keel, and later scuttled by Makigumo.
