Depleted Military Resources
Japan’s mighty fleet lay at the bottom of the Pacific by mid-1945. The devastating Battle of Leyte Gulf had shattered naval power, leaving fewer than 50 major ships operational. Aircraft factories produced planes with no fuel to fly them. Pilots received minimal training—sometimes only 40 hours compared to Allied pilots’ 400. American factories churned out tens of thousands of aircraft while Japan struggled to maintain a thousand operational planes. Raw numbers told a brutal story.
