USS Enterprise (CV-6)

USS Enterprise, second of the Yorktown-class carriers, had launched the Doolittle raiders toward Japan in April 1942. A month later, as flagship of Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance's Task Force 16, she lay in ambush 350 miles north-east of Midway. On the morning of 4 June 1942 her scouting squadrons tracked a lone Japanese destroyer racing to rejoin its fleet, and her dive bombers followed the wake straight to Nagumo's carriers. In the five minutes that followed, Enterprise aircraft helped set Kaga and Akagi ablaze, and at dusk her SBDs found and mortally wounded Hiryū, the last Japanese carrier still in action. After Midway, Enterprise became one of the few American carriers left afloat in the Pacific, fought through nearly every major battle from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, and emerged as the most decorated US warship of the Second World War — the ship her crews called the Big E. Her air group shared the morning search that missed the Japanese fleet, which makes the destroyer trail her scout bombers followed later all the more decisive.