The book is valuable, although its premise that Japan could treat battleships as an obviously obsolete investment before the war is disputed here. Postwar Soviet capital-ship construction would probably have drawn Western battleship responses, showing that the type's defeat was less clear to contemporaries than later histories suggest. Battlecruisers likewise evolved into fast battleships as armor, subdivision, speed, and mission changed. Design families do not always disappear at a neat historical boundary.
Chapter · 2:43:25-2:48:48
Carrier victory did not make battleship choices obvious in advance
A review of Japanese Carriers and Victory in the Pacific challenges the idea that wartime leaders could simply stop building battleships and foresee the carrier's later dominance.