WWII: Battle of Midway plane capacity of aircraft carriers 1942

The Battle of Midway is considered one of the most important battles of both the Second World War and naval warfare in general. The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 1941) had highlighted the devastating potential of aircraft in naval warfare, while the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942) was the first major naval battle where neither fleet saw or fired upon the other as attacks came only from the air. One month later, the Battle of Midway then cemented the aircraft carrier as the central vessel of the modern navy.

The U.S. went into the battle with three aircraft carriers against four Japanese carriers, however their larger capacity meant that both sides had roughly 230 combat aircraft on board before the fight. The U.S. Navy also had support from its airbase on the Midway Atoll, where around 130 additional aircraft were based. Japanese fighters and bombers may have been able to travel greater distances than American aircraft, however the United States had the advantage of superior intelligence, radar, and organization. The battle resulted in the U.S. Navy sinking all four Japanese aircraft carriers, losing just the USS Yorktown in the process. The outcome of the battle was that the number of American aircraft carriers in the Pacific was now greater than the Japanese number - a fact that the Japanese were never able to recover from due to the American disruption of Japanese shipbuilding, and the significantly larger manufacturing power of the U.S..