"Your Highness, how many casualties did we inflict on the Germans?" Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu asked. The Combined Fleet's losses were undoubtedly staggering. But if the losses they had inflicted on the German Navy were even greater than their own, then this naval battle could not really be considered a defeat.
"We sank two German aircraft carriers and heavily damaged two more. We also sank two of their Capital Ships and heavily damaged another two," Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai said.
Clearly, the German Navy's losses were not greater than those of the Combined Fleet; indeed, they were much smaller.
"If we include the several hundred aircraft we destroyed at the German airfields in the Mariana Islands, then our losses were not much greater than the Germans'," Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu said, his eyes shifting.
Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai froze for a moment, then nodded, as though he found Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu's words entirely reasonable.
After all, if the Island Nation Navy had truly been defeated so utterly that not even a suit of armor remained, they would have had no way to answer to the Island Nation's Cabinet and the Island Nation's Army. For more than twenty years, the entire Island Nation had tightened its belt to support the development of the Island Nation Navy. The Army's budget had even been cut back, leaving the Island Nation's Army's equipment, on the whole, behind the world's first-rate standards.
There was only one reason the Island Nation had supported the Navy's development so strongly: it hoped that the Island Nation Navy could win future naval battles. As an island nation, without a powerful navy, it simply could not expand outward. One could say that the Island Nation Navy bore the hopes of the entire Island Nation. Yet now, the Island Nation Navy had failed to win.