The rise of the US in WW II

 Washington Free Beacon:

How We Achieved Naval Supremacy—And How We Could Lose It

REVIEW: Paul Kennedy’s ‘Victory at Sea’

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The war forced a remarkable change in world politics: After centuries of global domination, the European colonial empires collapsed under Germany’s and Japan’s combined blows, leaving the United States as the leading global power. As Kennedy argues, this change became manifest in 1943 and was "the natural culmination, though delayed by almost half a century, of the huge shifts in the world’s balances once the American continent industrialized."

Japan is the major power American readers will benefit most from studying. Primarily due to interwar arms control treaties, which restricted fleet tonnage and ship size, Britain had the most well-rounded navy, albeit with a weak aircraft carrier wing, while the United States chose not to build up to its treaty limits. Much like the United States today, Japan’s navy was less numerous than its Pacific rivals’ but it had exquisitely trained naval aviators who flew from grouped aircraft carriers.

Even before the United States entered the war, it was clear that the Americans would be a naval juggernaut. The day the news of France’s surrender reached Washington, Congress doubled the Navy’s budget request, effectively building from scratch a navy as large as Japan’s. In Berlin and Tokyo, timetables shifted accordingly: If they could not lock in their gains quickly, the odds would turn against them.

In the meantime, Britain struggled against the Germans and Italians. Germany’s few but powerful surface combatants threatened to break out into the Atlantic until British bombers demonstrated the folly of venturing into the open sea without air cover. In the Mediterranean, the tables were turned: The Royal Navy made forays from Gibraltar and Alexandria to support Greece and resupply Malta, but at immense cost. At one point, the Admiralty counted on only one quarter of the Malta convoys’ supplies making it through. Britain pulled off a first when its torpedo bombers ambushed the Italian fleet in port at Taranto, which Japan’s strategists studied carefully as they prepared to attack Pearl Harbor.

By mid-1943, the naval war near Europe was effectively over. Germany’s U-boats might have starved Britain into submission in 1942 if Hitler had agreed to build more of them, but allied technological advances in cryptography and radar and better convoy tactics blunted the U-boat threat. Landings in North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy knocked Italy out of the war and allowed the allies relatively free access across the Mediterranean. After the Normandy landings, Britain was able to send a carrier group to the Pacific.
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I grew up watching "Victory at Sea" on black and white TV.  It was realistic enough to occasionally make me seasick.  We have a much smaller Navy now than we did in winning the sea battles of WW II.  Some of the ships we have now are much more formable than their predecessors.  That is particularly true of the aircraft carriers and the submarines.