Japan did not have a large civil aviation industry, but three major firms-Mitsubishi, Nakajima, and Aichi-developed a high degree of sophistication as they became the primary suppliers for the navy. The Japanese navy had at first tried building aircraft itself, but by the early 1930s it had settled on a better division of labor: Navy engineers would come up with specifications for airplanes and private firms would compete to build them. Their completion by the end of September 1941 made the raid on Pearl Harbor possible, and their subsequent absence at Midway may have tipped the outcome of that critical battle against Japan. These 29,800-ton monsters could carry seventy-two aircraft and steam over eleven thousand miles without refueling-easily enough to get to Hawaii and back-with a top speed of over 34 knots (39 mph). Japan not only had more aircraft carriers than any other navy-ten-but the most modern of them, the Shokaku (Soaring Crane) and Zuikaku (Happy Crane), built after the lifting of treaty limits in 1936, were superior to anything the U.S. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan had the finest naval aircraft, pilots, and aircraft carriers in the world, all overseen by its Naval Aviation Department, created in 1927.
By 1941, they had succeeded-spectacularly so.
While the Japanese were always happy to learn from gaijin, they sought to achieve self-sufficiency as soon as possible. Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War and Air, was confident Britain and Japan would never go to war-“I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime,” he exclaimed in 1924-so what was the harm? British aircraft designers helped Mitsubishi design its initial carrier aircraft. British naval architects helped Japan complete its first aircraft carrier, the Hosho, in 1922. British pilots formed the first faculty of the newly established Japanese naval aviation school at Lake Kasumigaura. A British naval mission arrived in 1920 complete with over one hundred demonstration aircraft in a bid to boost the British aviation industry. To catch up, it turned to its traditional mentors: for the army, the French for the navy, the British. But because Japan did not see much combat in World War I, it had fallen behind the other powers by 1918.
The Imperial Japanese Navy began experimenting with aviation as early as the British and Americans.
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