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 were caught time and again by American aircraft with a light screen of cruisers and destroyers, contributing to the loss of six Japanese carriers in the four battles. When the new American fast battleships began to arrive in the Pacific in the summer of 1942, they were allocated to the carrier task forces where their heavy anti-aircraft batteries could defend the vulnerable carriers, rather than being formed into separate battle squadrons. By 1943, as growing numbers of new carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers began to reach the Pacific, the Americans developed a fleet of fast carrier task forces that swept