The Japanese Navy did suffer for the fact that the Army ran the Government. The Army kinda forgot that once you take an area with resources that you have to bring the resources back home. Therefore,convoys and convoy escorts were a real low priority pre-war. Later in the war they did mass produce a few rather nasty classes of escorts.
And you had the Navy mentality that Torpedoes were the "sexy" weapons for DDs and went all out to make the best torps...and overlooked the Depth Charges. But again,they used their own subs as a guide to how deep they could go,how fast they could go underwater and how manueverable subs were. They were wrong on all 3 counts.
As for later in the war,it wasn't unusual to have Tanker convoys with just 4 Tankers and anywhere from 6-10 escorts. By that time it didn't make any difference. The US subs would use radar to out manuever the escorts and kill the Tankers right under the escorts noses.
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