![]() ![]() He deploys Australian and American heavy cruisers HMAS Hobart (I), HMAS Australia (II) and USS Chicago with US destroyers Perkins and Walke, under Australian-born Admiral John Crace, to guard the Jomard Passage, the sea lane to Port Moresby. The battle begins in earnest when Allied Fleet Commander Admiral Fletcher splits his force. Image: Official US Navy photograph collection of the National Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command BD-G-16802. Smoke is rising around the after aircraft elevator from fires burning in the hangar. View on the flight deck of USS Lexington on, during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Over the next two days, carrier aircraft from both sides comb the sea searching for their enemy. Image: Official US Navy photograph collection of the National Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command BD-G-71198. The original photograph was captured on Attu in 1943. This is probably the launch of the second attack wave. Plane in the foreground is a Zero Fighter. Japanese naval aircraft prepare to take off from an aircraft carrier (reportedly Shokaku) to attack Pearl Harbor during the morning of 7 December 1941. On the opening day of the battle, aircraft from the American carrier USS Yorktown bomb and destroy the Japanese seaplane support base on the island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. Image: Official US Navy photograph collection of the National Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command BD-G-78946. Heavy cruiser HMAS Australia (II) in the South Pacific, 1943. In early May two mighty naval fleets assembled in the Coral Sea, Japan’s in the north and the combined US and Australian fleet to the south. Literally ‘fought in the air’, it was also the first naval battle in which opposing ships neither saw nor fired on each other.Īfter their success attacking Pearl Harbour and Darwin, the Japanese plotted to invade Port Moresby in New Guinea and to control supply lines between the USA and Australia in the Coral Sea, but their plans for Operation Mo Sakusen were intercepted by Allied codebreakers stationed in Melbourne. 4-įought between combined United States and Royal Australian naval and air forces and the Imperial Japanese navy, this was the world’s first sea battle between aircraft carriers. Image: Naval History and Heritage Command 88-159-AI, Gift of Abbot Laboratories. Eight ships sunk, 161 aircraft destroyed and 1622 men killed in a battle that should never be forgotten.ĭeath of the Shoho, Robert Benney, 1942. Three navies, four aircraft carriers, 255 aircraft and 76 ships in a four-day battle that changed naval warfare forever. Clash of the Carriers: The Battle of the Coral Sea ![]()
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