Task Force 17 Task Force 17 Task Force 17 (TF17) was an aircraft carrier task force of the United States Navy during the Pacific Campaign of World War II. TF17 participated in several major carrier battles in the first year of the war. TF17 was initially centered around . With "Yorktown", TF17 engaged Imperial Japanese Navy forces in actions at the Marshalls-Gilberts raids, Invasion of Lae-Salamaua, Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Battle of Midway. "Yorktown" was sunk at Midway. Reformed around and commanded by RADM George Murray, TF17 supported Allied forces during the Guadalcanal Campaign. At the Battle of the Santa
Japanese battleship Haruna to American carrier airstrikes on Japanese island bases. "Haruna" participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, engaging American vessels in the latter. In 1945, "Haruna" was transferred to Kure Naval Base, where she was sunk by aircraft of Task Force 38 on 28 July 1945. "Haruna" was the fourth and last of the Imperial Japanese Navy's "Kongō"-class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. The