Naval history of World War II 4–7, 1942, the United States Navy decisively defeated a Japanese naval force that had sought to lure the U.S. carrier fleet into a trap at Midway Atoll. The Japanese fleet lost four aircraft carriers to the U.S. Navy's one American carrier and a destroyer. After Midway, and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas. Military historian John Keegan called the Battle of Midway "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval
Task Force 80 Task Force 80 Task Force 80, abbreviated as TF-80, has been the designation of several U.S. Navy task forces, with its current use associated with the United States Fleet Forces Command headquartered at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. During World War Two, Task Force 80 was the designation for the Western Naval Task Force, under the command of Vice Admiral Henry K. Hewitt, USN, during the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Salerno landings, the first sustained land assault and invasion of the European continent undertaken by the Allied powers. The Western Naval Task Force landed the U.S. Seventh Army under