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
Kantai Kessen form of the Fast Carrier Task Force, the product of US industrial capacity coupled with her innovation. The task force was overwhelmingly powerful, and would end up crushing the Imperial Japanese Navy. Unlike the carrier raids of the first two years of the war, the Fast Carrier Task Force could approach any objective, isolate it and overwhelm it before the Japanese navy could intervene. This imbalance pointed up the two major weaknesses of Japanese naval intent. First, the Japanese did not have the means to establish an effective defensive perimeter which would allow them to respond to threats by concentrating