The four-day engagement was a strategic victory for the Allies.
“The battle, which U.S. Adm. Ernest J. King described as the first major engagement in naval history in which surface ships did not exchange a single shot,” foreshadowed the kind of carrier warfare that marked later fighting in the Pacific War.”
And yet there weren’t that many pure carrier-vs-carrier battles in the Pacific War after Midway, probably because the Japanese lost their four best carriers. :^) By August 1945 the US had 21 Essex-class carriers, each of which was more capable than anything the USN had in 1941.
Even though the US had to go to war with the Navy it had in 1941, good commanders and good strategy and tactics — along with the amount of fight in the US fighting men in all branches of the service — were right on time for a war potentially covering half the world’s surface. :^)