Battle of the Coral Sea

4–8 May 1942, Coral Sea, between Australia and the Solomon Islands

Japanese tactical victory; Allied strategic victory

The first battle between aircraft carriers, and the first naval battle in which the ships never saw each other. Japan sent an invasion force to take Port Moresby in New Guinea, covered by the light carrier Shōhō and by Shōkaku and Zuikaku. Warned by codebreakers, Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher brought Lexington and Yorktown into the Coral Sea. On 4 May Yorktown's aircraft raided the new Japanese base at Tulagi. On 7 May each side struck the wrong target: Japanese aircraft sank the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims, taking them for a carrier group, while American aircraft found and sank Shōhō. Rear Admiral John Crace's cruisers, sent ahead to block the invasion route, beat off a heavy air attack untouched. On 8 May the two carrier forces found each other at last. Three bombs wrecked Shōkaku's flight deck; two torpedoes and two bombs hit Lexington and one bomb hit Yorktown. Hours later fumes from Lexington's cracked petrol tanks blew up, and she was abandoned and scuttled. Japan had sunk the bigger ship, but the Port Moresby invasion was turned back, and Shōkaku and Zuikaku, one damaged and the other short of aircrew, missed the Battle of Midway a month later.