For half a thousand years, the outcome of any war at sea was decided by an artillery battle - first of sailing ships, then of battleships and, finally, of huge battleships. But during the Second World War, a radical revolution took place in naval affairs, a real revolution, as a result of which armored giants gave way to aircraft-carrying ships. When in April 1945, American planes took only an hour and a half to sink the largest battleship in the world, the pride of the Japanese fleet, Yamato, even skeptics became completely clear that a new era had arrived - from now on, victory in a naval war does not depend on naval fire artillery, and from duels between aircraft carriers. In this book, a leading naval historian provides an in-depth analysis of ALL aircraft carrier battles of World War II, which became the culmination of the war in the Pacific and turned His Majesty the Aircraft Carrier into the Lord of the Seas.