Even the Kamikaze losses, painful as they were, only amounted to 47 ships lost and only 3 or 4 escort carriers included. By the end of the war the USN alone was operating almost 7,000 ships of which 28 were fleet carriers, 71 escort CVs, 23 BBs, 72 cruisers, over 200 submarines, almost 400 DDs, and thousands of amphib and support ships. The Brits as well ended up sending almost 20 carriers of different types to the Pacific by the end of the war.
Ive always wondered what a 3rd wave at PH would have accomplished in the long run. Again strange that fuel, support, and submarine targets were placed so Low on the list of priorities with a Navy supposedly at the cutting edge of modern tactics. Midway, perhaps Hawaii itself, would have been put at great risk. Time and again the IJN was pulled by opposing forces and overall they simply were never aggressive or imaginative enough.
I think there were only very few submarines at PH at the time, 3 or 4. Werent most forward deployed to the Phillipines and Australia?
