The Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the World War II carrier clash fought north of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific in August 1942, was the third carrier battle in history, and almost nobody remembers it. Dale and Christophe follow Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s Saratoga and Enterprise against Nagumo’s Shokaku and Zuikaku. Commander Harry Felt sinks the light carrier Ryujo, three bombs tear into the Big E, and Chief Machinist William Smith saves her jammed rudder in a 170-degree compartment. Then a B-17 finally hits a ship. It’s the battle that kept Henderson Field American and started the Tokyo Express.

Is the aircraft carrier the next battleship? Dale tests the 2026 drone swarm threat against the battleship's fall, from Billy Mitchell and Prince of Wales to the kamikazes off Okinawa. Black Sea drone boats, the Red Sea, the 2026 Iran war, and China's anti-carrier swarm plan all get red-teamed. The verdict: drones won't sink a carrier, but in the Western Pacific she stands at the battleship's edge.

Operation Desecrate One, the March 1944 World War II carrier raid on Palau in the western Pacific, drove Japan’s Combined Fleet from its last great forward anchorage. Dale and Christophe follow Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s eleven carriers of Task Force 58, the first carrier-laid minefield of the Pacific War, and USS Tunny’s torpedo hit on the superbattleship Musashi. Then the chain reaction: Admiral Mineichi Koga vanishes in a storm, and Japan’s Z Plan washes up off Cebu. Through it all, one survivor of USS Tullibee watches from a Japanese prison tree. The raid nobody remembers, and why it mattered.