Most navies did not fight the Second World War exactly as they expected. Large institutions such as the US Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy, and Royal Navy nevertheless contained several schools of thought at once. Some officers could later point to pre-war ideas that resembled actual operations even though those ideas had never formed the institution's single settled plan. Doctrinal diversity can therefore look like accurate prediction after the event.
Notable Point · 2:11:54-2:12:17
Large navies preserved competing wartime ideas
A brief observation explains why a navy can later claim it anticipated an unexpected kind of war.