After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States' handful of aircraft carriers bore the brunt of keeping the Imperial Japanese Navy in check in the Pacific Theater during the first full year of the war. The U.S. Navy did a masterful job of keeping those carriers on the move, fighting famous battles with names such as the Doolittle Raid, Midway, Guadalcanal and Santa Cruz, making it seem as though they were everywhere at once.

Those battles were not without a price: By the end of 1942, only CV-6, the Enterprise, was left serviceable before new carriers could join the fleet in the Pacific.

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