I don’t know why this Tweet tickled my fancy but it did, probably because although it’s snark it’s also a pretty good summation of the key fact about the USA in WWII.

Unfortunately that’s no longer the case, as the invaluable naval commentator CDR Salamander often discusses on his Substack site and specifically here with How do You Pull a Merchant Fleet Out of a Hat. Or shipyards and ammunition plants for that matter:

Whereas we once had sixteen shipyards (as the Chinese do now), we now have nine—only five of which can perform original design and construction of naval ships…Of the fifteen ammunition plants which operated during the peak of the Cold War, only five remain—all in need of updating but still working hard to meet the unexpected needs in Ukraine and Israel. And while fourteen companies once competed to design, manufacture, and sustain high-performance military aircraft, just three remain today.

Blast furnaces may also be an issue, because guess who’s got the most of them in the world?

People tend to forget history, right Barnes & Nobel? No, that’s not someone being funny. That’s a real book caught via screenshot before someone smarter caught the error and corrected it. Mr Clark must have been apoplectic with rage when he saw this.