In a series of engagements of the United States and Australian Navies against the Imperial Japanese Navy from May 4-8, the Japanese experienced their first failure of a major engagement since they began their aggressive push to conquer the entire Western Pacific from Alaska to Australia in World War II.

This battle was notable, not only for that reason, but it also marked other significant events.

This was the first naval engagement that was ever fought without any of the combatant ships ever seeing the other side. It was fought entirely with aircraft from the opposing sides.

This battle stopped the Japanese from taking Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would have been the jumping off point of their forces to invade Australia. Many at the time called it the “battle that saved Australia,” which may have been an exaggeration in view of what is now known of how the Japanese overextended themselves.

The battle took place in the Coral Sea, which has boundaries marked by the Solomon Islands, the eastern tip of New Guinea and the northeastern coast of Australia. The Japanese Port Moresby Invasion Group had a support force that included a small aircraft carrier (Shoho) and several cruisers and a large task force with the larger sister carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku. The Allies had two groups, an Australian Task Force 44 with both a heavy and a light cruiser and a task force with two American aircraft carriers, USS Lexington and USS Yorktown.

The Japanese wanted to take Port Moresby to cut supply lines between the U.S. and Australia to prevent their forces from being challenged when they later invaded Midway Atoll in an attempt to isolate the United States.

One of the key reasons the U.S. was successful in fending off these Japanese efforts and subsequent attempts was that Naval Intelligence had broken several key Japanese communications codes. Paramount among these was the Japanese Navy Code that the U.S. called JN-25. So the Allies knew the invasion was to take place and were in position to try to stop it.

The significant events started when Japanese aircraft sank a U.S. tanker and destroyer on May 7,1942, and aircraft from Yorktown and Lexington found and sank the light carrier Shoho.

On May 8, the planes from both sides found and attacked the other. The outcome was that the Japanese had Shokaku severely damaged, along with one destroyer and three smaller vessels.

The U.S. sustained greater damage when Lexington was sunk and Yorktown damaged, and one oiler and one destroyer sunk.

The outcome was that, tactically, the U.S. sustained greater damage to its force since it only had three carriers in the Pacific at the time, but Japan suffered a strategic loss in that the invasion failed and its forces had to retreat. This was the first time the Japanese had been beaten in an engagement.

Until this time, the Japanese viewed themselves as unbeatable since they had not lost a battle since the turn of the century. The Doolittle Raid was the first strike on Japanese soil ever and, combined with the loss at Coral Sea, shook the Japanese confidence for the first time and marked the start of the reversal of the Japanese juggernaut.

T&D Correspondent Larry P. Jordan can be reached by phone at 803-874-3276.

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