The importance of the outcome of the battle was that it saw an immediate end to four of the six aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy that were employed to launch the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sent to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, along with the aircraft, but most importantly, saw the destruction of a large portion of the very well trained ship bound naval crewman and began a trickle down effect of depleted ranks among skilled Japanese air crew. These Japanese crewmen were extremely well qualified and experienced naval aviators before the war. They were much more seasoned than their American counterparts at the time and the Japanese took longer to train more than their American counterparts. Their loss to the Japanese Navy was never fully recovered from and by 1944 their Naval Air Arm was wrecked. Because of the constraints of war that were put upon the already stretched resources of the Empire of Japan, the death of these experienced naval aviators was never replaced to the same caliber of fighting skill. The Battle of Midway was the high water mark of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Second World War. They had tactical victories after this point in history, but they never again enjoyed a strategic victory, again.
