Japan's Eight-Eight fleet sought quality over numbers

The projected Eight-Eight force combined four Amagi battlecruisers with eight fast battleships of various types and four further heavily armed, high-speed battleships whose classification remained debatable. Its sixteen ships were planned against expectations of roughly twenty to twenty-five British and American capital ships apiece. Japan therefore sought qualitative advantages that could help a smaller fleet inflict enough damage to make its defeat costly. Speed would help concentrate fire against part of a larger enemy force, whose greater total of ships and guns prevented Japan from relying on aggregate firepower or protection alone. Even the completed programme would leave Japan facing powers with substantially larger industrial resources.