Well yes, that's our turning point I'm suggesting. Japan was behind the curve on battleships too, with two Nagatos and a fleet of 1920's 14-inch ships soon to be outclassed by what will become the KGV, North Carolina, SoDak, Richelieu, Littorio and Bismarck classes. This forced pre-war Japan to throw money, resources and talent to produce a battleship that vastly outclassed them all.
This is a 'what if' but this is twisting history a bit. The 14in ships were WW I unless you are considering them 1920s due the refits/rebuilds, but everybody did that to greater or lesser extent. Also kind of skips over the Tosa and Amagi class ships as Japanese thinking and goals. These were roughly 40,000 ton ships with 10 16in guns and speeds of 26-30kts (the faster ships had thinner armor) and show that the navy wanted ships that could outmatch most other nations. Only the US really had any hope of building ships to match the Japanese. British had bigger ships on paper but no money. France and Italy had no money and no ability to build either 40,000 ton ships or 16in guns in the 1920s or 1930s. Japan was not worried about anybody but the US and Britain in the 1930s.
Meanwhile, Japan's 1930s intel service reports that Pratt & Whitney's R-2800 Double Wasp (soon to run in 1937) and Bristol's Centaurus (first run 1938) will be >2,000 hp capable, able to power large and powerful fighters against Japan.
In 1937 P&W was planning on a 1650hp engine. They had originally planned on a 2600cu in engine but at that time they didn't know about the Wright R-2600. When they found out they enlarged their engine to the 2800cu in displacement. No sense in being 2nd to the market with a 2600 cu in engine.
In 1937-38 a 2000hp fighter engine was something of a pipe dream (Napier was dreaming of it with the Sabre). Part of it was fuel. The US was getting better fuel than anybody else and was bumping their fuel to 91 octane. Everybody knew that 100 octane was coming but they didn't know when and they didn't really know what the exact befits would be. People knew that rich mixture could give a bit more power but nobody knew how much (it varied from engine to engine).
There were reasons why the US B-19 (and a few other experimental planes ) used 2000hp Wright R-3350 engines in 1939-41. You could not get 2000hp out of a 2800 cu in radial using the gasoline of 1939-40 and the bearing materials available. The 2000hp Wright R-3350 engines of 1939-40 used 100 octane (100/100) and ran at 2400rpm and had two speed superchargers. They also weighed 2450lbs.
engines in the B-29s weighed about 200lbs more, in spite of using single speed superchargers (they now used turbos), they ran at 2600rpm, used 100/130 fuel and because of the turbos, used a lower gear ratio on the supercharger that used a bit less power to turn.
Where was Japan going to get the high octane fuel? They were importing just about all of their aviation fuel from the US for the war in China.
How do you make 100 octane fuel from the Dutch East Indies oil? Can you just use lead or do you need extra refining (breaking the oil into aromatic compounds that have to be blended back into gasoline) steps.
Airplanes and ships are different, you can expect a ship to last years and even sometimes, it you are lucky, for a ship to survive several combats. See some of the German Battlecruisers of WW I. Maybe you have really bad luck and run the ship aground but battleships are pretty durable and long lasting.
Fighters are rather different, they are expendable and not just in combat damage. While peace time wastage is no where near what war time is, even in peace time, it an air force is training a lot, you are going to break/wreck planes. WW II training wrecks would cause months of congressional hearings today. Can the Japanese afford to build fighters 2-3times the size (weight) of the ones they used and crash 20-30% of them not in combat?
