The War at Sea

At sea, the aircraft carrier proved a deci­sive weapon. In the Pacific, both sides deployed naval strike forces headed by aircraft carriers flying four main types of combat airplanes: fighters, dive – bombers, high-level bombers, and torpe­do bombers.

The first sea battle to be won by naval aircraft rather than battleships was the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942). At the Battle of Midway (June 1942), dive-bombers from U. S. Navy carriers destroyed four of the Japanese

Navy’s carriers. The biggest naval air battle of the war was Leyte Gulf, yet another U. S. victory in October 1944.

During the island-hopping Pacific battles, U. S. Navy and U. S. Marine Corps pilots flew hundreds of miles across the ocean to attack Japanese ships and island bases, using the speed and power of strike planes such as the P-38 and F6F to great effect. At sea, flying boats such as the Catalina proved effective. As well as attacking enemy ships and sub­marines, they located and picked up Allied pilots shot down in the water and tracked enemy battle fleets. Equally valuable were land-based reconnais­sance and submarine-hunting aircraft, such as the B-24.

The Development of Jets

Until 1944, all combat planes had piston engines driving propellers. The Germans had flown the world’s first jet airplane, the He-178, in 1939. The Me-262, the work of designer Willy Messerschmitt (1898-1978), became the first jet fighter in 1944. Two other German jets, the Heinkel He-162 and the Arado Ar-234 jet bomber, were hurried into service before German’s surrender in May 1945.

No Japanese jet plane fought in the war, although several were under devel­opment when peace came in August 1945. The U. S. Bell Airacomet and Lockheed XP-80 Shooting Star jets did not see combat, but the British Meteor jet flew its first operational missions in the summer of 1944, chasing German V-1 flying bombs.