I think it was the Taffy 3's naval engagagement .. and for what Halsey's(aboard New Jersey/3rd Fleet) earned his maneuver the nickname of '' The Battle of Bull Run '' leading towards the battle off Samar, critically !
The carrier strike at Taranto, it took the Italian fleet out of the war at a critical point. The lesson was not ignored by the Japanese either.
Sorry, fellas, but Midway is by far the most important naval battle of the war. The Japanese has overwhelming superiority, but frittered it away by diverting ships to the Aleutians, and separating the rest of the fleet into three task forces too far apart to support one another. In the event, Japanese losses were severe and unprecedented in WW2 naval battles: FOUR aircraft carriers SUNK. As to Taranto, the Japanese did not need to study that battle, they worked out the very different problems in the Pearl Harbor attack on their own, with a little halp from the Italians. The US Navy should have learned something from Taranto, because a USN offficer was aboard Illustrious during the Tranto attack cruise. I wrote the book: Taranto The Raid, The Observer, The Aftermath.
