Eastern Fleet forced to retreat as far as Kilindini on the African coast. Despite these successes, many Japanese admirals still failed to grasp the tactical implications of the dominance of the aircraft carrier. Instead of using its battleships to escort the carriers, the Japanese Navy continued to husband its battleships for the decisive fleet action, which never came. The Japanese success in sinking or damaging almost all the US Pacific Fleet's battleships at Pearl Harbor forced the Americans to base their tactics on the aircraft carrier (though they would possibly have developed such tactics anyway). The Americans quickly assembled a group of task forces, each based around a single carrier. Through a series of raids on Japanese-held islands, the American gradually grew more confident in their handling of aircraft carriers, learning that the right place for the task force commander was aboard a carrier, not one of the escorting cruisers, and developing tactics like having a single fighter direction officer for task forces operating in company. The four great carrier battles of 1942 – Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz – were all fought by aircraft without the ships on either side actually coming in sight of one another. The Japanese carriers were caught time and again by American aircraft with a light screen of cruisers and destroyers, contributing to the loss of six Japanese carriers in the four battles. When the new American fast battleships began to arrive in the Pacific in the summer of 1942, they were allocated to the carrier task forces where their heavy anti-aircraft batteries could defend the vulnerable carriers, rather than being formed into separate battle squadrons. By 1943, as growing numbers of new carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers began to reach the Pacific, the Americans developed a fleet of fast carrier task forces that swept across the Pacific over the next two years, isolating, overwhelming and then destroying the Japanese island bases. Sources & references Bacon, Admiral Sir Reginald. The Jutland Scandal (London 1925). Conway's History of the Ship. Steam, Steel and Shellfire: The steam warship 1815–1905. Evans, David C & Peattie, Mark R. Kaigun: strategy, tactics, and technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887 & 1941 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press 1997) Macintyre, Donald. The Battle of the Atlantic (London 1961). Rohwer, Dr. Jürgen. The Critical Convoy Battles of March 1943 (London: Ian Allan 1977). Specific Further reading Tactics, steam Age