141 - Carrier vs. Carrier - The Battle of Coral Sea - WW2 - May 9, 1942

by Panzer
May 9, 1942
The world has never before seen a battle between aircraft carriers; this week it does.
This week comes first major naval battle fought without the main bodies of the opposing forces
having visual contact- the Battle of the Coral Sea.
I'm Indy Neidell; this is World War Two.
Last week Burma fell to the Japanese, but the Allies sent naval forces toward Madagascar
and New Guinea to try and prevent yet more territory from being added to Japan's new
and massive empire.
And the Allies have been reading more and more of the Japanese radio traffic and they
crack more and more of their naval operations code, so they know the details of Admiral
Shigeyoshi Inoue's Port Moresby operation, codenamed MO, which is to happen this week.
"Unknown to the Japanese, their whole plan was laid bare during the first three days of May…
A map of the Coral Sea had been laid out on the makeshift operational plot at CINCPAC
Headquarters in Pearl Harbor.
Overlaid with tracing paper and pinned to a sheet of plywood resting on two sawhorses,
the staff marked in orange pencil lines the progress of the enemy naval forces…
Heading south from Truk were the twin orange lines of Admiral Takagi's two carriers and
Admiral Goto's heavy cruiser squadron.
The predicted course of the Port Moresby invasion force wound out from Rabaul through the Louisiade
Passage to the tip of Papua.
Blue pencil indicated the converging American units.
Heading west from Hawaii but still 2,500 miles away was Admiral Halsey's two carrier task
force… some 250 miles west of the New Hebrides was the track plotted for Admiral Fitch's
Lexington to join up with the Yorktown under Admiral Fletcher to become combined task force 17.
Steaming up from the east were the two cruisers of Admiral Crace's force, to be reinforced
by the heavy cruisers Chicago and Perkins, dispatched from Hawaii.
Admiral Inoue had no advance warning, as Operation MO began, that it had attracted such a great
concentration of Allied firepower, now bearing down on the Coral Sea in an all-out bid to
block Japan's southward advance."
On the 3rd, the Japanese land at Tulagi and Florida Island, but their precise timetable
is already showing strains.
Takagi's carrier force is supposed to give air cover to the invasion force, but bad weather
means they're 800 km to the north.
Fletcher gets the word of the landings, so by the next morning, he's brought Yorktown
like 150 km south of Guadalcanal, and its planes attack the Japanese forces off Tulagi.
They sink a few ships, though they're not really that effective.
Yorktown then heads away south.
Takagi gets word of all this and heads to the area, but finds no enemy.
On the morning of the 5th, the three Allied task forces meet up; on the 6th they merge