A wartime joke contrasted American calls for hoses after a kamikaze hit with British calls for sweepers and brooms. It had some grounding in experience, but recovering from a British flight-deck hit was not that simple. The joke expressed sailors' dark humor under attack. Repeating it literally, or as a claim of national superiority, strips away that qualification.
Notable Point · 2:23:22-2:24:25
The carrier damage-control joke was not a literal comparison
The contrast between American hose parties and British brooms was wartime gallows humor with some grounding in experience.