Battle of the Coral Sea Part 3

 

Another cold morning here let’s continue with some more about the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Almost immediately after the first attack against Admiral Crace and second one took place, this time with more accurate patterned bombing from high altitude. Such bombing caused giant columns of water which threatened to sink the Australia thankfully the ships although soaked with sea water managed to evade the bombs.

As often happens there may have been some friendly fire incidents, however, a less excusable incident happened when three planes flew over just missing the Farragut and Perkins. They were US Army Air Force B17 bombers.

The Japanese thought they had sunk one battleship and damaged a few more, when in fact Crace’ squadron was mostly undamaged and at nightfall cruised away to await further events and orders. Due to radio silence, he really had no idea what was happening with the Allied flotilla.

Back in the main area of battle allied pilots were returning to the Yorktown but they were joined by 18 Japanese bombers who mistakenly thought the Yorktown was their own ship. It was when an American pilot noticed and opened fire on them that realising their boo boo flew off as they had no bombs, they were unable to attack the carrier.

It was at the end of the battle during fierce fighting that Lieutenant J.J. Powers an American pilot inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese carrier Shokaku by waiting till the last minute to drop his bomb on the flight deck. He was of course killed and received the Congressional Medal of Honour posthumous. During the blaze on the Shokaku 150 men were killed or wounded.  

During all the fighting the USS Lexington suffered several direct hits causing it to be ablaze from stem to stern and resulting in it being abandoned. It was sunk by the USS Phelps to prevent the Japanese from trying to salvage it.

By the end of this round of fighting neither side could say they had a victory with scores of losses on both sides, however the Japanese objective of taking Port Moresby had taken a beating and this was a moral boost to the Allies.

I will finish this next week.