ABSTRACT
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the U.S. Navy exchanged one capital ship for another. The battleship-based naval policy, which had dominated U.S. naval strategy for fifty years, was replaced by one centered on the aircraft carrier. War plans required little modification because, as one senior naval officer cogently observed in 1925, the "naval airplane is merely a new sort of projectile, carried by a surface ship." 1 Naval aviation's advantage was its ability to project and concentrate power at a much greater distance than a battleship. Although the aircraft carrier replaced the battleship and the aviation-based naval strategy evolved during the Pacific War, the rest of the navy changed very little. Lesser-valued warships, such as cruisers and destroyers, still acted as the watchdogs of the fleet, constantly patrolling and protecting the navy's capital ships.
