Industrial capability has three levels: operating a plant, building one under supervision, and independently designing and constructing new plants. Moving through them requires practical experience as well as theoretical knowledge. Japan could import specialists, equipment, and accumulated know-how to train its own engineers, or develop an indigenous capability through costly trial and error. The first route became difficult once war restricted access to German personnel and technology. The second became harder to justify when failed experiments consumed resources urgently needed for wartime production, which made an early start essential.
Notable Point · 19:00-20:58
Technical capacity cannot be improvised in wartime
Operating, building, and designing chemical plants required years of practical learning that Japan's late start could not compress.