During World War II Japan failed to match the USA in building aircraft carriers because of multiple challenges.

Building Carriers Was Hard and Expensive

The four Japanese aircraft carriers employed at Midway required a significant financial investment. Initially Akagi and Kaga existed as battleships until their conversion into carriers needed additional time and funding. The construction of aircraft carriers required advanced features beyond those needed for battleships. Special facilities such as plane space, fuel storage, ship repair stations, and speed elevators made carrier development more time-consuming and expensive than designing battleships.

Resource Shortages and Bombing Raids

Intense attacks on Japanese shipping lanes and shipbuilding facilities made producing carriers extremely challenging. Under these challenging conditions Japan constructed 19 ships during wartime which showed their remarkable achievement.

The U.S. Had a Massive Production Advantage

America operated shipyards in coastal and Gulf Port areas because they remained secure from enemy bombardments. Their multiple shipyards produced 24 fleet carriers, nine light carriers, and seventy-eight escort carriers. Japan constructed just 13 fleet carriers alongside 7 light carriers and 5 escort carriers.

Lack of Skilled Pilots

Building ships remained a challenge but Japan faced an even greater problem by not having enough trained pilots. Rather than returning experienced pilots back to train others Japan kept its top pilots fighting until they met their end. Their fighting force of experienced pilots decreased rapidly.

Limited Maintenance Crews

The United States launched its military campaign with a large pool of qualified mechanics due to its effective industrial operations. Japan did not have sufficient qualified mechanics available to support their expanding naval fleet.

Poor Long-Term Planning

Japan’s leaders thought winning the war depended on making a decisive battle against the United States. The Japanese planners miscalculated the speed at which America could produce new warplanes and reorganize its forces.

Despite trying Japan failed to produce aircraft carriers on par with the United States because they ran out of materials and experienced mechanics with bad planning. They would not achieve success with additional carrier fleet even if production increased.

Who was the last German soldier to surrender after WWII whereas the last Japanese soldier surrendered in 1974?

I’d have to give ‘last German holdouts’ prize to the 11 men in the weather forecast unit under the command of lieutenant Wilhelm Dege stranded at a weather station.

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Because they couldn’t.

You can’t imagine the wealth, materials and effort it takes to create aircraft carriers. The four major carriers at the Battle of Midway, the Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū, represent enormous investments in capital. The investment is so enormous that The Akagi and Kaga were originally laid down as battleships and they converted them to carriers, then had to be modified again to accommodate a single deck. The Sōryū and Hiryū were heavily modified to become modern carriers. They did this because the cost of building new carriers from scratch was prohibitive.

Kaga’s second life after being converted from a battleship, with 3 decks. They had to modify this design further to lay down a single deck. An island was added as well.

Aircraft carriers require far greater abilities than battleships. They require internal space to put aircraft, fuel depots to store propellant, repair facilities to work on aircraft, elevators fast enough to deliver aircraft to the flight deck, and experienced personnel to fix, build and fly aircraft. Add on to this you need engines sufficient to move a carrier 30 to 35 knots and you have a highly specialized vessel which requires enormous time and effort to create.

Japan during the entirety of World War II built a total of 19 carriers of all types for a total of 25 carriers operated or sunk. This was due to several reasons.

First, the raw materials to create aircraft carriers out of thin air is enormous and requires material from all over the world. Japan had to deal with embargos, bombings and sinkings of their supply ships bringing the raw materials to the shipyards. Second, the shipyards are under constant attack by the end of 1942. The fact they were able to build 19 during World War II could be considered remarkable.

Japan had no hope matching the United States in the building of carriers. From the East Coast, The West Coast, and the Gulf Coast, vast building facilities free from attack punched out Liberty Ships, Battleships, Cruisers, PT Boats, Submarines, Escort Vessels, and Carriers like Pez dispensers. Japan during WWII had 13 Fleet Carriers, the top of the line carrier that sent fear through the Pacific until June of 1942. The United States however had 24 Fleet Carriers.

But this does not tell the whole story. There are also Light Carriers and Escort Carriers which provided planes for escort service to convoys and for shore bombardment. While Japan had 7 Light Carriers, the United States had 9. Finally to Escort Carriers, Japan built 5, while the United States built an astonishing 78, outbuilding them in Escort Carriers by a factor of 15 to 1.

Simply put, Japan had no chance.

Edit: thank you all for the spirited conversations about the whole idea about how to build an aircraft carrier. There are great books explaining this, one of my favorite is “Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway” by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.

The book gives great detail about life on Japanese aircraft carriers, the political dynamics of the Japanese military, and strong reasons why the Japanese lost the carrier battle. It was pointed out below that their greatest difficulty was their way of using up pilots and that is totally true.

The United States had a rotation system where pilots would be brought back to the states to train others. The Japanese flew their best pilots until they were killed, losing that valuable experience unable to be passed to the next generation of pilots, and the result is the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. And yes, when new aircraft carriers were produced, there were no pilots to man them.

Another thing to point out was the loss of experienced maintenance personnel. Shattered Sword pointed this out and further stated that the loss of these were very grievous because Japan didn’t have a civilization heavily machined like the United States, where everyone at the time had some rudimentary connection with using machinery.

I totally agree with the contention that in the end, it didn’t matter whether they had enough aircraft carriers to offset the United States because they didn’t have the personnel to man the carriers. And this comes down to the Japanese mindset, the Bushido code, that drove their soldiers off of cliffs instead of protecting them when possible because of their value to their country. But that’s the topic of another conversation.

Edit: WOW! 250K looks and over 1,700 likes! Thanks for all the great conversation.

All the comments were great and I think we have a consensus on several answers to this question.

1. The Japanese had no chance to equal the United States in production.
2. The Japanese had carriers but no pilots.
3. The Japanese had insufficient resources to match the United States.

I’d like to also discuss one other idea about this, the fact that carriers as a weapon was constantly evolving over 30 years because carrier planes were evolving over the same time. The first functional carrier was developed by the British during World War I, the HMS Argus. It was built on the top of a converted ocean liner that was under construction.

It was first ship with an unobstructed flight deck for the primary purpose of launching planes. Because of its initial nature, however, it was top-heavy and required modification in the 1920s. Incredibly it served in both WWI and WWII as an aircraft delivery system to Murmansk, Iceland, Takoradi and provided air cover for Operation Torch.

The first commissioned ship built as a carrier from the ground up is the Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō. It was designed to carry 32 aircraft, limited by its length of 552 feet.

Edit: Wow! Over 400k views and over 2,100 likes! Thanks!

Thanks for all the great discussion and points that I missed. You covered all the extra points that need to be answered.

I’m going to note one more observation on this subject. After Japan bombed the United States and defeated the British in Singapore, they suffered from the same issue that the Nazis did after taking over Europe: where next?

There are many great books that discuss this subject on both sides, but it’s obvious that the Nazis and Imperial Japan didn’t think enough on the entire subject. They made have had the same mission, world domination.

What does world domination mean? Control of the entire world? Control of their region? For Germany, they were driven by the single vision of Hitler while the citizens and soldiers were either along for the ride or driven by there own personal reasons. The Japanese were driven to throw out the Europeans and Americans and remove them from their place of influence.

Thus started a battle in the hallways between Hitler and his generals and the Army and Navy of Imperial Japan. Their resultant plans did nothing to follow up their initial successes and promote their domination in their spheres of influence.

Thus you had the Germans incredibly falling into a second front with the Soviet Union and the Japanese planning to take Midway and Alaska, which had no strategic value whatsoever as a way of drawing the U.S. carriers into a fight to sink them and destroy America’s ability to wage war.

In doing this however, Japan had the most important assets in an ocean war that encompasses nearly half the planet put in harm’s way. They threw away the value of having the carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku for the Battle of Midway by wasting them in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Then they made it worse by failing to restaff the Zuikaku to have it ready for Midway when one more carrier might have made the difference in the battle.

None of this answers the question of why didn’t Japan build more carriers. It instead brings an understanding of Japan’s failure in the overall scheme of things. Japan’s myopic vision in contemplating their future was coupled with a failure of understanding their enemy.

They thought the Americans could be beaten in a single battle by wiping out their carrier fleet and felt the only way to do that was to threaten the Americans with the loss of Midway and force them into a fight. They didn’t realize they were fighting an enemy that would keep coming on until Japan’s war-making ability was utterly destroyed.