Mitchell claimed that a thousand bombers could be built for the cost of one battleship. The objection includes ammunition, fuel, and the years needed to train pilots and other aircrew. Comparing bare construction prices does not establish the cost of an operational force. Prices from the 1940s also cannot be substituted directly for those of the 1920s. A viewer supplies a roughly six-million-dollar figure for Nevada, while a ten-million-dollar postwar allowance is only an improvised estimate, leaving the numerical comparison unresolved.
Notable Point · 1:28:50-1:34:04
What a thousand-bomber cost comparison leaves out
Aircraft procurement prices omit operating and training costs, while figures from different decades distort Mitchell's comparison with a battleship.