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 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