The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place June 4, 1942 through June 7, 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The United States Navy under Admiral Chester Nimitz, defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power, thereby establishing Japanese dominance in the Pacific. Military historians have called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare."