Why Japanese aviation technology should not be dismissed

Why is Japan's ability to produce powerful 14- and 18-cylinder radial aircraft engines often forgotten?

Because popular accounts flatten Japanese capabilities; Japan was a technological peer at the war's start, with real strengths in engines and radar research even though institutional choices limited some applications.

Japanese 14- and 18-cylinder air-cooled radial engines could produce more than 2,000 horsepower. Japan entered the Pacific War as a technological peer whose strengths and weaknesses differed from those of the United States. Early radar-navigation research moved between service branches, with army work abandoned and then revived. Separate navy development is mentioned more tentatively, so the account does not establish a simple, unified development program. Treating Japanese forces as uniformly incapable also understates the difficulty and losses involved in defeating them.