Japanese gun standardization could only narrow the gap

Which Japanese dual-purpose caliber offered the best fleet-wide balance of rate of fire, explosive effect, and production efficiency?

No caliber solved every tradeoff, but standardizing a workable system would help industry without overcoming Japan's fundamental resource and infrastructure weakness.

The comment compares the similar delivered effect of Japanese 12 cm and 12.7 cm guns and questions whether the high-velocity 10 cm weapon was truly superior. Pilots were unlikely to distinguish the exact shell caliber when nearby bursts disrupted an attack. Standardizing one system could make more efficient use of a fragmented and resource-poor industrial base. Even so, the gain would be incremental because Japan's infrastructure and resource position remained too weak to reverse the wider outcome of the war.