Coral Sea, Battle of the (May 3–8, 1942) 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 Schofield, 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 fleet was under overall command of Admiral 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 commander 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 fleet 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 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 Japanese battlefleet Identification errors and weather played major roles, as Fletcher’s planes mistook the convoy escort for the enemy carrier fleet and attacked The Japanese troopships pulled back out of range to await the outcome of the carrier fight 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 location of their home carriers At dawn on May both sides launched all-out strikes, looking to find and sink the other side’s fleet carriers American planes damaged one Japanese carrier but could not find the other Better trained Japanese pilots flying superior naval aircraft found the U.S carriers They sank USS Lexington with bombs and torpedoes and damaged USS Yorktown with bombs, forcing Fletcher to withdraw his reduced fleet 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 fleet 267