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
Naval tactics in the Age of Steam each based around a single carrier. Through a series of raids on Japanese-held islands, the American gradually grew more confident in their handling of aircraft carriers, learning that the right place for the task force commander was aboard a carrier, not one of the escorting cruisers, and developing tactics like having a single fighter direction officer for task forces operating in company. The four great carrier battles of 1942 – Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz – were all fought by aircraft without the ships on either side actually coming in sight of one another. The Japanese carriers