70 years ago this week

May 4 - 8 1942
The Battle of the Coral Sea was fought between primarily the USN and the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The Japanese made their last attempt at expanding their sphere of influence by setting forth to attack Port Moresby in southern New Guniea. Their hope was to take Port Moresby and then use it as a base to attack Australia in the future.
For the next 3 days the two opposing sides will slug it out in what was the first naval battle ever fought where the beligerent forces never actually saw one another. It was all fought via air power.
The Allies (US and Australia) will lose the big carrier Lexington and the big carrier Yorktown will be heavily damaged. The Japanese will lose the small carrier Shoho and the big carrier Shokaku will be heavily damaged.
Other ships on both sides will be lost or damaged too.
Gererally it is said that the Japanese won this important battle on a tactical level as we lost more men and shipping.
But strategically it was a win for the Allies as it permanently stopped the southern expansion of the Japanese.
Japan has reached the zenith of their expansion.
For the next 3 years they will be steadily pushed back to the their Home Islands and suffer the complete destruction of their Military forces.


Read about it

My uncle's brother in law was killed there. He was on the Utah in Pearl Harbor, survived, and since the ship was due to be scraped, they put him on a tanker. One of two of the first casualties from Springfield Mass. Another sailor from there was killed that day too, on another ship. I have the newspaper... someplace.

My mother and my wife's mother were both hired at a defense war plant making 20mm ammo in 1942.
You had to put in for ration stamps. Tires, sugar and gasoline were rationed. Had no problem getting tires most were recaps. They were also given more ration coupons for gas and tires since they worked at a defense plant. People came from everywhere to work there. They had 3 shifts and everyone had to swing. My mom liked wearing those slacks. My wife said her mother liked them too. They also had an explosion there and some were killed. We were on a farm and had no problem getting gas. I was 9 years old then. Hal

I"ve always had a fascination for WWII, having been born near the end of it, 1944, and being old enough during Korea to remember listening to the radio reports of our good and bad days. 1942 always strikes me as a dismal year for us and US. Lots of catching up to do in terms of readiness, and victories were slow in coming. Finally, in 1943, there was some optimism.

The Yorktown survived, made it back to Pearl and was patched back together in time to make it to the Battle of Midway where it was sunk.

They had another new carrier ready to launch and they renamed it the Lexington. The Yaps were really demoralized when they realized we could replace ships so fast and they could not.

Industrial might won WWII.

Sadly we dont have the same industries today.


Gene

Too bad the Lexington or Saratoga did not survive the war to become museum ships. Same with the Pennsylvania (head of class and sister ship to Arizona). The other side of the coin is a ship like the Texas (New York class) while having survived is fighting a losing battle in terms of keeping the ship in good repair. Till I read an online article about the Texas I had no idea how expensive it is to do the upkeep so the the ship does not extensively rust from the salt water and related humidity. I hate to say it but over the next generation these surviving ships could be scrapped due to no funds. Most funding comes from volunteerism now.

Well said 986. Though I do think that the Enterprise is the one that should have been saved.
She was the fightingest, most decorated ship of the entire war with more battle stars and battle scars than any other.
After the loss of Hornet at the battle of Santa Cruz she was the last carrier we had in the Pacific but still took on the entire Japanese fleet alone.

USS Saratoga (CV-3) survived the war, but was used in the Bikini A-Bomb tests. She survived the first A-Bomb on July 1, 1946 with minor damage, but was sunk by the second A-Bomb exploded just a few hundred yards away, on July 25.
C. L.

In one of the books I read about the Air Corps in the ETO the narrative was they captured a German pilot and held him at a US Air Base for interrogation. They find out he had been part of the raid on that very air base 3 days earlier. He was bragging about all the Aircraft he personally destroyed and how we couldn't win the war without airplanes. The officer interrogating him took him to another room and opened the window blinds showing the German that every aircraft he destroyed that week had been bulldozed off the field and replaced with a shiny new ones flown over from supply depots in Northern England, and further explained to the prisoner that their were thousands of new aircraft setting in the logistics chain ready to replace anything we lost. In his biography Robin Olds describes flying new p-38s and older model P-51's to depots in England for destruction. He said on one of the P-38s he could smell the perfume of the WAFS pilot that delivered it.

Yes, I should have clarified that ships such as the Saratoga and the Pennsylvania survived but were in such poor condition that they were never going to be a part of a peace time fleet. They were considered expendable for the purposes of new weapons testing and that was where I was going with my previous statement. Ships in relatively better condition were allowed to survive by either being a part of the active fleet, reserve, or allowed to be purchased for the purpose of preservation.

I have some of those ration stamps.

I was aboard the Texas in January for one of the hard hat tours, and was told the same thing by one of the volunteers. He said that if something major is not done very soon, that the Texas won"t last many more years. They are battling to keep her up, as well as open more spaces for visitors and do restoration work, but from what was said, the future doesn"t look good. Sad.