The United States was inexorably drawn into the Pacific War, and indeed World War II, by Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Well-trained Japanese naval aviators from the carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku attacked in two waves, sending four battleships to the bottom, sinking or damaging many other ships, destroying or damaging more than 300 aircraft and killing some 2,400 American servicemen. The attack demonstrated the combat range of modern aircraft carriers and the vulnerability of traditional surface warships. Within days Britain’s vaunted Royal Navy lost its newest battleship, Prince of Wales, and its consort battlecruiser, Repulse, to Japanese air attacks off the coast of Malaya.
The lessons of such actions were not lost on Rear Adm. Chester Nimitz, whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly promoted to admiral and appointed to command the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Nimitz reorganized the fleet into four task forces centered on the carriers Lexington, Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown. The admiral then planned counteroffensive carrier raids against the Japanese, the most dramatic of which was the April 18, 1942, bomber strike on the Japanese home islands by 16 B-25s launched one-way at extreme long range from Hornet. Hornet’s commander, Capt. Marc. A. “Pete” Mitscher, was a pioneering Navy flier and aggressive fighter who went on to command Task Force 38/58, arguably the most powerful armada in military history.
Despite such proof of aircraft carriers’ effectiveness, senior American naval officers remained generally convinced the battleship was the dominant weapon at sea. Its adherents were known as the “gun club.” The sea power doctrine of naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan dominated 20th century military thinking at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and the Naval War College, in Newport, R.I. The conflict between the “battleship admirals” and the generally younger generation of “aviation admirals” continued for the duration of the war.
Facing the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy initially played a weak hand. Fielding just four serviceable carriers with inferior aircraft, with the battleships damaged in Hawaii months from being serviceable, the Navy had few opportunities to mount an
