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The Battle of Leyte Gulf is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of World War II and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history. It was fought in waters near the Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar, and Luzon, from October 23-26, 1944, between combined American and Australian forces and the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 20 October, United States troops invaded the island of Leyte as part of a strategy aimed at isolating Japan from the countries it had occupied in Southeast Asia, and in particular depriving Japanese forces and industry of vital oil supplies. The Imperial Japanese Navy mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion but was repulsed by the U.S. Navy's Third and Seventh Fleets. They failed to achieve its objective, suffered heavy losses, and never sailed to battle incomparable force thereafter. The majority of its surviving heavy ships, deprived of fuel, remained in their bases for the rest of the Pacific War and suffered under heavy sustained aerial attack. The importance of this battle was that this was the largest naval battle ever fought and it ended the Imperial Japanese Navy.

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The Battle of Tarawa was a battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that was fought on November 20-23 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, and was part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. invasion of the Gilberts. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio, in the extreme southwest of Tarawa Atoll. was the first American offensive in the critical central Pacific region. It was also the first time in the Pacific War that the United States faced serious Japanese opposition to an amphibious landing. Previous landings met little or no initial resistance, but on Tarawa, the 4,500 Japanese defenders were well-supplied and well-prepared, and they fought almost to the last man, exacting a heavy toll on the United States Marine Corps. The importance was that it showed that the U.S. had to get all the help they could in order to not suffer a loss like this again.

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The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II which occurred between June 4 to June 7, 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." The importance was that the United States Navy defeated the Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific Theater.

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The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from May 4-8, 1942, was a major naval battle between the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and naval and air forces from the United States and Australia, taking place in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War. The battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, as well as the first in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. The U.S. learned of the Japanese plan through signals intelligence and sent two United States Navy carrier task forces and a joint Australian-U.S. cruiser force to oppose the offensive. These were under the overall command of U.S. Admiral Frank J. Fletcher. It was important because it was the first pure carrier-versus-carrier battle in history as neither surface fleet sighted the other. Though a draw, it was an important turning point in the war in the Pacific because, for the first time, the Allies had stopped the Japanese advance.

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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions that were planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. This resulted in 2008 sailors being killed, and 710 others wounded; 218 soldiers and airmen (who were part of the Army until the independent U.S. Air Force was formed in 1947) were killed and 364 wounded; 109 marines were killed and 69 wounded, and 68 civilians were killed and 35 wounded. In total, 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded. The importance was that this was the attack that directly led the United States to join in on the war.