Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
Later on the US for example made planes with better performance+ armor and it turned into a turkey shoot. For the same reason Japan struggled to make high performance fighters and high altitude interceptors. Its another reason Japan basically cloned the ME 262 off German blueprints delivered via subs.
Materiel differences are hardly the whole story.
IJN forces were well trained, well equipped, but logistically fragile -- Yamamoto knew when the war started that if the US could not be brought to the negotiating table quickly the Japanese would be ground down despite initial significant superiority in equipment and trained and experienced pilots.
While the introduction of fighters like the Hellcat and Corsair were materially superior to their Japanese equivalents when they were introduced, by the time of their introduction it almost did not matter -- the Japanese training pipeline could not replace the loss of experienced pilots from Coral Sea, Midway, and the Guadalcanal campaigns. By the time of the Central Pacific drives and the Philippine campaign, the Japanese faced an opponent with more equipment, superior equipment, and the IJN had fewer inexperienced pilots to crew what equipment they had. The Marianas Turkey Shoot would have been a thing even had the US still been flying Wildcats, if perhaps slightly less lopsided.
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One can argue the Empire's preference in fighters for quantity over quality is a reasonable choice; it doesn't allow development of highly superior pilots as few of them live long enough, but if you can bury your opponent in materiel it does not matter much (cf: Russia vs Germany, Eastern Front).