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
Japanese battleship Haruna to American carrier airstrikes on Japanese island bases. "Haruna" participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, engaging American vessels in the latter. In 1945, "Haruna" was transferred to Kure Naval Base, where she was sunk by aircraft of Task Force 38 on 28 July 1945. "Haruna" was the fourth and last of the Imperial Japanese Navy's "Kongō"-class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. The