"Pearl Harbor ended the era of the dreadnoughts"

Victory At Sea Copyright
(c) 1999 by The Atlantic Monthly Company
David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, dramatically heralded the new age of naval combat. Aircraft launched from half a dozen Japanese carriers, operating thousands of miles from home, made quick work of crippling the eight aging U.S. battleships anchored helplessly below them. Though it would take some time to become apparent, Pearl Harbor ended the era of the dreadnoughts. In a few minutes of a Hawaiian Sunday morning a few hundred Japanese pilots enormously widened the arc of naval war, and transformed its very nature. Future sea battles would be fought over distances once unimaginable, and by sailors who never laid eyes on an enemy ship.