Japan's Eight-Eight Fleet and the reconnaissance carrier

The planned cycle of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers less than eight years old requires four capital ships under construction in every two-year period. Over the six years to 1920, Japan could therefore build about twelve ships and complete a rolling Eight-Eight force rather than stop permanently at sixteen hulls. A healthier prewar economy, continued access to the British commercial network, and no wartime damage to merchant shipping make that pace more affordable than Japan's later finances suggest. Japanese sea-plane operations against Qingdao historically demonstrated early naval-air interest, while a delayed war would turn that interest toward a peacetime carrier race. Experience locating and concentrating against the Russians at Tsushima makes reconnaissance especially valuable to Japan's deterrent risk fleet even before aircraft become powerful anti-ship weapons. Successive generations would approach the fast battleship gradually, making cost growth more manageable than a sudden jump to a Yamato-scale design. Japan could seek the first carrier, although a British effort to get ahead makes Japanese priority unlikely in this projection.