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
Battle of the Philippine Sea returned. Twenty were lost to enemy action in the attack, and 80 were lost when they ran out of fuel returning to their carriers and had to ditch into the sea, or crashed attempting to land at night. Spruance's conservative battle plan for Task Force 58, while sinking just one light carrier, severely weakened the Japanese naval aviation forces by killing most of the remaining trained pilots and destroying their operational reserves of naval aircraft, a blow that effectively shattered the Japanese naval air arm, from which it never recovered. Without the time or resources to build sufficient aircraft and