Quote:
Originally Posted by I-25
The I-168 Under Lt Commander Tanabe
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Midway was such a lopsided victory as it was. One wonders how much easier the Guadalcanal campaign would have been for the USN with an addition carrier had Yorktown survived. However, she would have had to see a lot of time in a dockyard first.
One benefit of Yorktown's slow motion demise was that the vast majority of her trained crew got away. Specifically, the mechanics and remaining aircrew. In addition to the loss of the carriers, that's what made Midway so devastating for Japan. In a small industrial country the loss of so many highly trained aviation mechanics at one time, in those burning carrier hulls was exceedingly difficult to make up.