That after the battle of the Santa Cruz islands in late October 1942... from then until late January 1943, the USS Enterprise, was the only operational American Fleet Aircraft carrier left in the entire Pacific war- and she was heavily damaged, but repair crews kept her in the South Pacific fight.
The only other Pacific carrier, USS Saratoga was in dry dock from Aug 42 until Jan 43 being repaired from torpedo strikes.
And from late January1943 until May of 1943- those 2 were the only American carriers left in the Pacific war.
America started the war with 8 carriers. Langley, Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, Hornet, Saratoga, Enterprise, and Ranger, Ranger was based in the Atlantic. the other 5 were all sunk in the first 10 months of the war.
I knew we had lost a lot of carriers, but didn’t know that for basically 10 months from Oct 42 until Aug 1943 the US only had 1 occasionally 2 fleet carriers to defend the entire Pacific (we also had the HMS Victorious on loan from Britain from March 43 to July 43).
It wasn’t until Essex and new Yorktown entered the fight in Aug 1943 that first Enterprise and then Saratoga got relief from being the only American carrier in the Pacific.
Yet- just 2 years from then, we ended the war in Aug of 1945 with more than 25 fleet carriers in the Pacific