US-2.

This is coolbert:

"make or break: 1. verb To cause either to succeed or to fail; to cause either a positive or negative outcome."

From the Internet web site "War on the Rocks" and the article by DAVID ALMAN.

"A JAPANESE SEAPLANE COULD BE THE DIFFERENCE-MAKER FOR THE U.S. MILITARY"

I recommend highly the War on the Rocks article without reservation or qualification.

Devoted readers to the blog first play attention as to WHY the U.S. Navy gave up on the seaplane dimension to naval warfare.

But that is not the end of the story.

US-2 a tanker aircraft? A seaplane? A tanker?

This is a photoshopped edited image and not real life. Shows F-35 warplanes being refueled mid-air by a modified US-2 with American legacy colors what they are called, pre-WW2. Click on image to see an enlarged view. (image courtesy of Hangar B Productions).

Now for the rest of the story. As extracted from the War on the Rocks article:

"Leaders might even consider converting the US-2 into an air-to-air refueling platform. These tankers could refuel from ships, pre-placed fuel bladders, other aircraft, or from airfields and fuel farms close to the sea. If runways were available, they could land there as well. The ability to stage tankers forward from the ultimate unimproved surface — the ocean — would allow strike aircraft and other forces to project power under contested conditions. Not all these modifications would need to happen immediately. Initially, and in the spirit of a minimum viable product, the US-2 could be equipped only to refuel probe equipped aircraft. Boom integration, while offering numerous benefits, would be a more difficult task."

Any sort of conflict in the western Pacific will require widespread dispersion of assets. And LOTS of tanker aircraft [light carriers in the sea control mode seem to be sans organic tanker aircraft]. US-2 with rather modest [?] modification will have to the capacity to "refuel from ships, pre-placed fuel bladders, other aircraft, or from airfields and fuel farms close to the sea". US-2 almost the ultimate in oceanic dispersal of wartime aviation assets.!

coolbert.