Admiral Yoji Koda, author of chapter 11 and a former commander of the Japanese fleet, told me that Americans often consider the June 1942 Battle of Midway to be the decisive naval engagement of World War II. Japanese military historians don’t all see it that way, he said. Rather, it was the months of sea battles that followed, many of them without names, during which the US armed forces decisively wore down the Imperial Japanese Navy thanks to superior production of ships, munitions, aircraft, and incremental technologies, such as those that gave the Americans an edge in nighttime combat. This
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