page_title: History of the United States Navy
section_title: Carrier warfare
hierarchical_section_title: History of the United States Navy / Worldwide expansion / World War II (1941–1945) / Carrier warfare
caption_attribution_description: English: USS Yorktown (CV-5) is hit on the port side, amidships, by a Japanese Type 91 aerial torpedo during the mid-afternoon attack by planes from the carrier Hiryu, in the Battle of Midway, on 4 June, 1942. Yorktown is heeling to port and is seen at a different aspect than in other views taken by USS Pensacola (CA-24), indicating that this is the second of the two torpedo hits she received. Note very heavy anti-aircraft fire.
context_page_description: The history of the United States Navy divides into two major periods: the "Old Navy", a small but respected force of sailing ships that was notable for innovation in the use of ironclads during the American Civil War, and the "New Navy", the result of a modernization effort that began in the 1880s and made it the largest in the world by 1945.
  The United States Navy claims October 13, 1775 as the date of its official establishment, when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution creating the Continental Navy. With the end of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy was disbanded. Under first President George Washington, threats to American merchant shipping by Barbary pirates from four North African Muslim States in the Mediterranean led to the Naval Act of 1794, which created a permanent standing U.S. Navy. The original six frigates were authorized as part of the Act. Over the next 20 years, the Navy fought the French Republic Navy in the Quasi-War, Barbary states in the First and Second Barbary Wars, and the British in the War of 1812. After the War of 1812, the U.S.
context_section_description: On December 7, 1941, Japan's carriers launched the Attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking or disabling the entire battleship fleet. The stupendous defeat forced Admiral King to develop a new strategy based on carriers. Although the sunken battleships were raised, and many new ones were built, battleships played a secondary role in the war, limited chiefly to bombardment of islands scheduled for amphibious landings. The "Big Gun" club that had dominated the Navy since the Civil War lost its clout.
  The U.S. was helpless in the next six months as the Japanese swept through the Western Pacific and into the Indian Ocean, rolling up the Philippines as well as the main British base at Singapore. After reeling from these defeats the Navy stabilized its lines in summer 1942.
  At the start of the war, the United States and Japan were well matched in aircraft carriers, in terms of numbers and quality, but the Mitsubishi A6M Zero carrier fighter plane was superior in terms of range and maneuverability to its American counterpart, the F4F Wildcat. By reverse engineering a captured Zero, the American engineers identified its weaknesses, such as inadequate protection for the pilot and the fuel tanks, and built the Hellcat as a superior weapon system. In late 1943 the Grumman F6F Hellcats entered combat. Powered by the same 2,000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney 18-cylinder radial engine as used by the F4U Corsair already in service with the Marine Corps and the UK's allied Fleet Air Arm, the F6Fs were faster (at 400 mph) than the Zeros, quicker to climb (at 3,000 feet per minute), more nimble at high altitudes, better at diving, had more armor, more firepower (6 machine guns fired 120 bullets per second) than the Zero's two machine guns and pair of 20 mm autocannon, carried more ammunition, and used a gunsight designed for deflection shooting at an angle. Although the Hellcat was heavier and had a shorter range than the Zero, on the whole it proved a far superior weapon. Japan's carrier and pilot losses at Midway crippled its offensive capability, but America's overwhelming offensive capability came from shipyards that increasingly out produced Japan's, from the refineries that produced high-octane gasoline, and from the training fields that produced much better trained pilots. In 1942 Japan commissioned 6 new carriers but lost 6; in 1943 it commissioned 3 and lost 1. The turning point came in 1944 when it added 8 and lost 13. At war's end Japan had 5 carriers tied up in port; all had been damaged, all lacked fuel and all lacked warplanes. Meanwhile, the US launched 13 small carriers in 1942 and one large one; and in 1943 added 15 large and 50 escort carriers, and more arrived in 1944 and 1945. The new American carriers were much better designed, with far more antiaircraft guns, and powerful radar.
  Both sides were overextended in the exhaustive sea, air and land battles for Guadalcanal. The Japanese were better at night combat (because the American destroyers had only trained for attacks on battleships). However, the Japanese could not feed its soldiers so the Americans eventually won because of superior logistics.  The Navy built up its forces in 1942–43, and developed a strategy of "island-hopping, that is to skip over most of the heavily defended Japanese islands and instead go further on and select islands to seize for forward air bases.
  In the Atlantic, the Allies waged a long battle with German submarines which was termed the Battle of the Atlantic. Navy aircraft flew from bases in Greenland and Iceland to hunt submarines, and hundreds of escort carriers and destroyer escorts were built which were specifically designed to protect merchant convoys. In the Pacific, in an ironic twist, the U.S. submarines fought against Japanese shipping in a mirror image of the Atlantic, with U.S. submarines hunting Japanese merchant ships. At the end of the war the U.S. had 260 submarines in commission. It had lost 52 submarines during the war, 36 in actions in the Pacific. Submarines effectively destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet by January 1945 and choke
caption: USS Yorktown under attack at the Battle of Midway.
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