Who won the Battle of the Coral Sea?
The Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942, was the first carrier-versus-carrier battle in history, fought entirely by aircraft while the fleets stayed out of sight of each other. Japan sank more tonnage, including the US carrier Lexington, so the battle was a tactical draw or slight Japanese edge. But the battle stopped Japan's seaborne advance on Port Moresby and knocked two of its carriers out of the coming Battle of Midway, making it a strategic Allied victory.3
In May 1942 two fleets hunted each other across the Coral Sea their carriers striking with aircraft at enemies scores of miles away. It was history's first carrier battle, and warfare at sea was changed forever.4
Part of The greatest battles of the Pacific War · Before: The Doolittle Raid · Next: The Battle of Midway
Japan reaches south
After months of victories, Japan moved to seize Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would threaten Australia. Allied codebreakers gave warning, and an American carrier force under Frank J. Fletcher, with Australian ships, moved to intercept the invasion.5
The plan, code-named Operation MO, was run by Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue and his 4th Fleet, five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor had opened the Pacific war. One small force was to occupy Tulagi in the Solomon Islands as a seaplane base, while a convoy of transports carried the troops for Port Moresby. The light carrier Shoho and four heavy cruisers covered the landings, and a striking force built around the fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku waited to destroy any Allied ships that came to interfere.6
The codebreakers had been reading parts of the Japanese naval signals since early April, so the Pacific Fleet commander, Chester Nimitz, knew the outline of the plan. He could send only two of his four Pacific carriers, Yorktown and Lexington. The other two, Enterprise and Hornet, were coming back from the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and could not reach the Coral Sea in time. A cruiser group under the British Rear Admiral John Crace, with HMAS Australia, HMAS Hobart and USS Chicago, sailed with the carriers to guard the approaches to Port Moresby.7
A battle of carriers
The two sides groped for each other across hundreds of miles of ocean, launching scout planes and strikes without the fleets ever meeting. It was the first time a battle was decided purely by aircraft flying from carriers, the pattern that would define the Pacific war.
The clash
Over several days of confused searching, each side found and struck the other's carriers. The Japanese light carrier Shoho was sunk quickly, and then the fleet carriers traded heavy blows, with the large carrier Shokaku damaged and Zuikaku's air group badly cut up.8
What happened day by day in the Coral Sea?
The battle ran from 4 to 8 May 1942. American carrier planes struck Tulagi on the 4th, the fleets searched for each other without success on the 5th and 6th, the Americans sank the light carrier Shoho on the 7th, and on the 8th the main carrier forces finally found each other and traded full strikes.9
Japanese troops occupied Tulagi on 3 May. The next morning aircraft from Yorktown hit the anchorage, sinking minesweepers and landing barges and wrecking the destroyer Kikuzuki. For the next two days bad weather and poor scouting kept the fleets apart.10
On 7 May both sides first struck the wrong targets. Japanese scouts mistook the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims for a carrier group, and dive bombers sank Sims and crippled Neosho. Aircraft from Lexington and Yorktown, sent after a misidentified force, came upon Shoho instead and sank her within minutes; by the Australian War Memorial's count 638 of her crew died. With its cover gone, the Port Moresby invasion convoy turned back. A late Japanese strike that evening missed the American carriers, and only four to six of its 27 aircraft got back.11
On 8 May each side found the other at almost the same moment. Zuikaku slipped into a rain squall, but American dive bombers hit Shokaku with two or three bombs and wrecked her flight deck. Japanese torpedo planes and dive bombers meanwhile fell on the American carriers: Yorktown dodged the torpedoes but took a bomb that burst deep inside her, and Lexington, larger and slower to turn, was hit by two torpedoes and two bombs.12
The loss of Lexington
The Americans lost the carrier Lexington, hit by torpedoes and bombs, then gutted when a spark ignited gasoline vapor and finally sunk by one of her own destroyers, along with other ships. The historian Jonathan Parshall counts the battle a tactical victory for the Japanese.13
At first the damage looked manageable: counterflooding corrected her list and the fires seemed under control. But the hits had cracked the carrier's aviation fuel tanks, and gasoline vapor spread through the ship until a spark set off the first of several internal explosions in the early afternoon. Later that afternoon the crew was ordered to abandon ship, and that evening the destroyer Phelps sank the burning carrier with torpedoes. She took 216 of her crew and 35 aircraft with her.14
How many ships and men were lost at the Coral Sea?
The United States lost the carrier Lexington, the destroyer Sims and the oiler Neosho, and Yorktown was damaged. Japan lost the light carrier Shoho, a destroyer and several small craft, and Shokaku was badly damaged.15
Neosho stayed afloat until American ships sank her on 11 May. Accounts of the men lost differ, because some count only the dead and others all casualties; Australian reports on the three American wrecks put the dead aboard Lexington, Sims and Neosho at more than 600. For Japan the deeper loss was trained aircrew: according to the historian Jonathan Parshall, Shokaku and Zuikaku set out with 128 aircraft and brought home only 56 that could still fly, which kept both carriers out of action for months.16
Why the Coral Sea mattered
Despite the losses, the Allies had turned back the invasion of Port Moresby, halting Japan's advance toward Australia. And the damage to Shokaku and Zuikaku kept both carriers out of the Battle of Midway a month later, where their absence helped decide the war in the Pacific.17
Was the Coral Sea a turning point in the Pacific War?
Not on its own, but it began the turn. It was the first time in the Pacific War that a major Japanese advance was stopped and turned back, and it cost Japan two fleet carriers for the Battle of Midway a month later. Midway, not the Coral Sea, is usually seen as the decisive turning point.18
The speed of repairs mattered as much as the losses. Yorktown, which the Japanese believed they had sunk, limped back to Pearl Harbor, where she was made ready for battle again within days; she then fought at Midway. Japan did not have Shokaku repaired or Zuikaku's air group rebuilt in time. The battle also bought time for the first Allied counteroffensive: barely three months after the Coral Sea, US Marines landed on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands that Operation MO had begun to seize.19
How is the Battle of the Coral Sea remembered?
In Australia it is often called the battle that saved Australia, because it ended the threat of a seaborne landing at Port Moresby. Its most tangible memorial is the wreck of USS Lexington, found in 2018 about 3,000 meters (some two miles) down and now protected, together with Sims and Neosho, on Australia's National Heritage List.20
The research vessel Petrel, funded by the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, located Lexington on 4 March 2018, about 800 kilometers (roughly 500 miles) off the coast of Queensland. Its cameras showed the carrier's nameplate, her guns and several of her aircraft, among them TBD Devastator torpedo bombers, a type of which, according to the National WWII Museum, no other example survives. In 2025 the Australian government added the Battle of the Coral Sea site, about 1,000 kilometers off the country's northeast coast, to the National Heritage List, giving the three American wrecks, which are also war graves, extra protection.21
.jpg){kind=link}