Posted on 05/04/2023 4:18:23 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Battle of the Coral Sea, (May 4–8, 1942) World War II naval and air engagement in which a U.S. fleet turned back a Japanese invasion force that had been heading for strategic Port Moresby in New Guinea.
By the end of April 1942 the Japanese were ready to seize control of the Coral Sea (between Australia and New Caledonia) by establishing air bases at Port Moresby in southeastern New Guinea and at Tulagi in the southern Solomons. But Allied intelligence learned of the Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby and alerted all available sea and air power.
When the Japanese landed at Tulagi on May 3, carrier-based U.S. planes from a task force commanded by Rear Adm. Frank J. Fletcher struck the landing group, sinking one destroyer and some minesweepers and landing barges. Most of the naval units covering the main Japanese invasion force that left Rabaul, New Britain, for Port Moresby on May 4 took a circuitous route to the east, which invited a clash with Fletcher’s forces.
(Excerpt) Read more at britannica.com ...
Nimitz was one bad-ass!
I remember a Brit or Aussie on Quora criticized me because he said I didn’t give the Commonwealth their “fair share” of the Too American centric he said.
So I looked up the number of commonwealth ships in the battle and it was 2, only one of which was significant, a light cruiser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OkobvFECwA&ab_channel=UnauthorizedHistoryofthePacificWarPodcast
Perhaps a bit more history than britannica.com offers. For those interested.
Brought to you by The Greatest Generation !!!
If we only had half of that leadership these days...
My father was an MM striker in one of USS Yorktown’s engine rooms during the Coral Sea battle. If it had not been for a change in his GQ station the day before the battle starterd, he would have been killed when the ship was hit the second day of the battle.
“Scratch one flattop!” - Robert E. Dixon
Thanks to battle damage and pilot losses, two Jap fleet carriers missed next month’s Battle of Midway.
“Tales of the South Pacific”. James Michener had a nice story on the battle. That and ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’.
Prior to the December 7th attacks, there wasn't sentiment for US entry into the second world war. Immediately after, American men were circling the cities looking for induction centers. The boneheaded idiocy of the Japanese attacking the US led to the destruction of the Axis Powers.
In the Battle of the Coral Sea the US lost the carrier Lexington (on the 8th), but remarkably enough (it sez here) "Of her crew, 216 were lost and 2,735 rescued."
In an interview excerpt, from recent decades, one of the carrier Yorktown's surviving crew said they were lucky -- during one evasive maneuver, no fewer than four Japanese torpedoes barely missed them, either forward or astern, in a matter of a few minutes. The Japanese lost the use of two carriers that had been intended for the next large battle in June.
The Yorktown steamed to Pearl for repairs to be ready for Midway -- and it actually survived that battle, making contributions to US victory, but was evac'd due to damage, then sunk by a Japanese sub attack during the tow back to Pearl.
As we all know, the four best Japanese carriers did not survive Midway.
The rather small US sub fleet was sent after Japanese shipping, which prevented the iron ore, coal, and oil from getting from Japanese-occupied Borneo to the J home islands. The US figure for merchant tonnage sunk was determined by verification of the sinking (to assure crews didn't get credit for unverified sinkings) is 8 million tons. The Japanese figure is 11 million tons. Losses of both warships and merchant marine vessels couldn't be replaced as a consequence.
From the low-dozens of US subs in 1941, the US ended the war with circa 250 subs. By the beginning of 1944 sinking shipping was much more difficult, because of the earlier successes -- there were few Japanese merchant marine vessels, making them harder to encounter.
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. :^)
I have two friends whose fathers both survived the sinking of the Lady Lex.
He was a gambler, and a lucky one at that. We were lucky to have him, but it could have gone differently. You could say the same of Macarthur too I guess.
Now that was a close call for each of your friends, as well as their fathers.
Great, informative post!
The Battle Of Midway 1942: Told From The Japanese Perspective
You had a couple of carrier battles during the Guadalcanal campaign the Battle of the Eastern Solomons and the Battle of Santa Cruz and then for the most part the Japanese carriers were targets and in a defensive mode and offered little to no offensive punch at the Battle of the Philippine Sea aka the Marianna’s Turkey Shoot, better radar operations and fighter direction and control with the F6 Hellcat destroyed any offensive punch there. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf Japanese carriers were nothing more than bait.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
