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
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