The Army and Navy established separate carrier-construction efforts even when their small aviation ships addressed overlapping transport and escort needs. A shared design and production program might have yielded a more numerous, repeatable escort-carrier class. Instead, duplication consumed scarce design, yard, and organizational capacity. Inter-service rivalry weakened sound technical ideas even though both services recognized the underlying requirement.
Notable Point · 1:34:17-1:34:44
Army-Navy duplication weakened Japan's escort-carrier effort
The Army and Navy pursued separate auxiliary-carrier construction programs instead of combining similar requirements into a coherent escort-carrier class.