CORAL SEA, BATTLE OF THE MAY 3–8, 1942 This carrier battle in the Coral Sea was provoked by a Japanese plan to land an invasion force at Port Morseby on Papua New Guinea, with a smaller
Trang 1Coral Sea, Battle of the (May 3–8, 1942)
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squadrons into brutal attritional combat in the Mediterranean and on the Eastern
Front
See also anti-submarine warfare; Armed Merchant Cruiser; ASDIC; balloons; Bucket
Brigade; Catapult Aircraft Merchant (CAM); intelligence; radio; Replenishment-at-Sea; troop
ships
Suggested Reading: Arnold Hague, The Allied Convoy System, 1939–1945 (2000);
Bernard Ireland, Battle of the Atlantic (2003); Marc Milner, North Atlantic Run (1985);
B Schofi eld, The Arctic Convoys (1977)
CORAL SEA, BATTLE OF THE (MAY 3–8, 1942) This carrier battle in
the Coral Sea was provoked by a Japanese plan to land an invasion force at Port
Morseby on Papua New Guinea, with a smaller force ordered to set up a seaplane
base at Tulagi in the southern Solomons and another in the Louisiades Islands
(“Operation MO”) The Western Allied fl eet was under overall command of
Admi-ral Chester Nimitz It comprised two carrier task forces and a third strike force of
Australian and U.S cruisers Nimitz knew the Japanese were on their way from key
breakthroughs in ULTRA naval intelligence, which provided the Americans with
an immense—but not decisive—advantage in the engagement The Japanese
com-mander was Vice Admiral Inoue Shigeyoshi His two invasion groups started from
Truk and Rabaul, rendezvousing with escorts at sea The escort was composed of a
light carrier, four cruisers, and a destroyer, while a separate strike force comprising
two fl eet carriers, two heavy cruisers, and six destroyers looked to surprise Nimitz
and his Task Force commander, Admiral Frank Fletcher
In operations preliminary to the main carrier action, a Japanese troop convoy
arrived unopposed at Tulagi on May 3 Its support ships were bombed by U.S
carrier-based aircraft the next day Fletcher steamed for Port Moresby on May 6,
separating his cruiser task force and sending it ahead to catch the other Japanese
troop transports, while his carriers looked to engage their counterparts in the
Japa-nese battlefl eet Identifi cation errors and weather played major roles, as Fletcher’s
planes mistook the convoy escort for the enemy carrier fl eet and attacked The
Japanese troopships pulled back out of range to await the outcome of the carrier
fi ght Meanwhile, Fletcher’s planes found the light carrier IJN Shoˉhoˉ and sank her
Japanese carrier planes were simultaneously making a mistake of their own They
sank two small American escorts but in the process revealed the approximate
loca-tion of their home carriers At dawn on May 8 both sides launched all-out strikes,
looking to fi nd and sink the other side’s fl eet carriers American planes damaged
one Japanese carrier but could not fi nd the other Better trained Japanese pilots fl
y-ing superior naval aircraft found the U.S carriers They sank USS Lexy-ington with
bombs and torpedoes and damaged USS Yorktown with bombs, forcing Fletcher
to withdraw his reduced fl eet under cover of a smoke screen
Although Coral Sea would eventually be assessed as a strategic draw, American
losses were felt to be more grievous at the time The battle was fought inside six
months of the shock of losses at Pearl Harbor, and no one yet foresaw the great
U.S victory at Midway the following month Instead, the loss of an invaluable fl eet