The Battle of the Coral Sea

8th May 1942: US and Japanese carrier borne planes land hits in the first naval engagement in which the opposing ships never sighted or fired at each other

Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho is torpedoed, during attacks by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft in the late morning of 7 May 1942.

After many months of apparently unstoppable Japanese advances a joint American-Australian naval force finally hit back decisively. In the first naval engagement in which the two sides never saw each others ships, the carrier based aircraft from USS Lexington and USS Yorktown engaged the Japanese invasion force heading for Port Moresby on New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Fighters over the USS Yorktown, 1942.

On the 7th May both sides’ planes found opposing ships but not their carriers. On the 8th the carriers from both sides faced determined attacks from bombers and torpedo aircraft.

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5) operating in the Pacific in February 1942, photographed from a Douglas TBD-1 torpedo plane that has just taken off from her deck.

The USS Lexington in 1942 before her 8 inch guns were replaced with AA batteries.

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) during the Battle of the Coral Sea, seen from USS Yorktown (CV-5), 8 May 1942. Large number of planes on deck and low sun indicate that the photo was taken early in the morning, prior to launching the strike against the Japanese carrier force. Yorktown has several Douglas SBD Dauntless and Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat on deck with engines running, apparently preparing to take off. Lexington, whose silhouette has been altered by the earlier removal of her 8-inch gun mounts, has planes parked fore and aft, and may be respotting her deck in preparation for launching aircraft.

Stanley Johnson¹ was on the USS Lexington. In the late morning he watched Japanese planes make an attack over one of the escorting cruisers and then turn towards them:

11.16 am "Here they come,” sing the look-outs. “Enemy torpedo planes off the port beam.” The skipper with a calm glance in that direction speaks quietly to the helmsman: “Hard a starboard." The manoeuvre is intended to swing the Lex so that she will present only her comparatively narrow stem and beam to the torpodo craft.