Carrier battle group at the Battle of Midway. In contrast, the United States Navy deployed its large carriers in separate formations, with each carrier assigned its own cruiser and destroyer escorts. These single-carrier formations would often be paired or grouped together for certain assignments, most notably the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway. By 1943, however, large numbers of fleet and light carriers became available, which required larger formations of three or four carriers. These groups eventually formed the Fast Carrier Task Force, which became the primary battle unit of the U.S. Fifth and Third Fleets. With the construction of the large
Naval tactics in the Age of Steam that were due to scrap under the treaty into aircraft carriers. By luck as much as planning, the Americans and Japanese both developed large carriers that were capable of handling up to 90 aircraft, based on the hulls of battlecruisers due to be scrapped under the Washington Treaty. Both navies gradually began to develop new tactics for employing aircraft carriers in battle, although these tactics did not come into full fruition until the middle of the Pacific Campaign of WWII. The Magnetic mine was a German development that allowed naval mines to become more deadly than ever; by detecting the