War Stories II (21 page)

By 29 April, the carriers
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
sortied from Truk, and the light carrier
Shoho,
commanded by Vice Admiral Takeo Takagi, arrived on station to provide cover for the invasion of Port Moresby and the attack on Tulagi. But the code-breakers at Station Hypo knew exactly what was happening. In the Pacific Fleet war room, Nimitz could see on a large tabletop map of the Pacific the disposition of the Japanese carriers, transports, and battle cruisers—and even Japanese submarines deployed to provide a security perimeter around their two invasion forces.

Yamamoto, the master of the surprise attack, was certain no one would find them and that his battle plans could not be compromised. But they were. And best of all, thanks to Station Hypo, Nimitz even knew the date set for the invasions: 3 May for Tulagi and 9 May for Port Moresby.

Looking at the charts on his office walls and the little wooden ship symbols on the map board in the Pacific Fleet Command Center, Admiral Nimitz had a terrible choice to make. The
Hornet
's arrival at Pearl Harbor after launching the Doolittle raid had brought the fleet back up to four carriers. But the
Enterprise
and the
Hornet
had taken a beating from the stormy north Pacific. Nimitz had no other capital ships available but the
Yorktown
and the
Lexington
. Furthermore, his two code-breakers, Layton and Rochefort, were telling him that they “suspected” that Yamamoto was also preparing a subsequent operation to seize Midway. Could Nimitz risk two of his four carriers trying to stop the Japanese invasion forces already steaming to take Port Moresby and Tulagi?

 

Admiral Jack Fletcher commanded naval assets in three of the five carrier battles of the Pacific—Midway, Guadalcanal, and Coral Sea.

On 29 April, after talking it over with his staff, Nimitz gave the order for Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch, fresh out of Pearl Harbor with the
Lexington,
to join Vice Admiral Jack Fletcher's
Yorktown
, which had been operating in the South Pacific east of Australia for several weeks. He also directed the cruiser
Chicago
to sortie from New Caledonia and link up with HMAS
Australia
and HMAS
Hobart
, two Australian cruisers under the command of Rear Admiral J. C. Crace of the Royal Navy. Nimitz ordered this somewhat more formidable task force, under the command of Vice Admiral Fletcher, to proceed northwest into the Coral Sea to stop the Japanese invasion forces.

On 1 May, the
Lexington
and the
Yorktown
made contact in the southern Coral Sea, west of Espiritu Santo Island. For a full day and a half, the two
carriers steamed northwest toward New Guinea. On 3 May, using information from Station Hypo, Pacific Fleet HQ informed Fletcher that the Japanese were landing on Tulagi, so Fletcher left the
Lexington
to complete refueling from the fleet oiler
Neosho
and proceeded due north with
Yorktown
to do what he could to disrupt the invasion. At 0700 on 4 May, his aviators launched a series of three attacks against the transports anchored off Tulagi. Though the 12,000-ton carrier
Shoho
was supposed to be protecting the troop and supply ships, the
Yorktown
's pilots sent one transport to the bottom and damaged at least five landing barges. Then, before the Japanese could respond, Fletcher recovered his strike aircraft, turned the
Yorktown
south, and steamed at flank speed to rejoin
Lexington
on the morning of 5 May.

Though the Tulagi attack had done relatively little serious damage, the officers of the Japanese carrier striking force, commanded by Vice Admiral Takeo Takagi, were stunned. In Rabaul, where 4th Fleet commander Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inouye was coordinating the entire dual-invasion operation, there was an immediate effort to find the American carrier or carriers that had hit the Tulagi transports. But when long-range land-based bombers and patrol aircraft launched from Rabaul failed to find any American ships on 5 or 6 May, Inouye ordered the invasion covering force, including the
Shoho
, to break away from the invasion fleet headed for Port Moresby and head quickly south to find them. Meanwhile, Takagi was racing around the southern tip of the Solomons with the carriers
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
, both veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack. By the night of 6 May, it was entirely possible that the
Lexington
and the
Yorktown
, heading straight toward the
Shoho
battle group and pursued from behind by the
Shokaku
and the
Zuikaku
, might be trapped between the two Japanese forces.

But once again Station Hypo provided the intelligence Fletcher needed. Alerted to the
Shoho
battle group, he dispatched scout planes at first light on 7 May. At 0815, one of the patrols reported “two carriers and four heavy cruisers” off the southern tip of New Guinea. Though this “sighting” conflicted with the Station Hypo information—and was soon proven to be incorrect—Fletcher decided to launch the attack groups from both
Yorktown
and
Lexington
.

At 1100, in the first attack ever made by U.S. pilots against an enemy carrier, ninety-three American torpedo and dive-bombers swarmed over the
Shoho
, hitting her with thirteen bombs and seven torpedoes, sending the carrier to the bottom in just minutes. In a radio call back to the
Yorktown
, one of the strike leaders, Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dixon, jubilantly reported, “Scratch one flattop!”

While Fletcher was busy recovering his attack aircraft, the Japanese, infuriated by the first sinking of a major Imperial Navy warship, launched every land- and sea-based aircraft that would fly in an effort to find the Americans. In less than an hour, aircraft launched from the
Shokaku
and the
Zuikaku
found the American fleet oiler
Neosho
and the destroyer
Sims
trailing more than 100 miles behind Fletcher's carriers. Mistakenly identifying the ships as a carrier and her escort, the Japanese pilots attacked with bombs and torpedoes. At 1230, the valiant little destroyer went down with most of her crew. Though the
Neosho
took seven hits, she miraculously managed to stay afloat until her crew could be rescued four days later.

Two hours after the attack, land-based bombers launched from Rabaul spotted Admiral Crace and his little flotilla of Australian and American cruisers, steaming in the van of Fletcher's carriers. Once again the Japanese aviators mistook the cruisers for carriers and dropped their bombs from high altitude to avoid the furious anti-aircraft barrage from Crace's vessels. When the Japanese pilots returned to Rabaul, they reported that they had sunk a battleship and a cruiser—when in fact not one of the Allied ships had been touched.

Late in the afternoon of 7 May, Admiral Tagaki, determined to avenge the loss of the
Shoho
, decided to make one more effort to find the American carriers, which no Japanese aircraft had yet sighted. He ordered Rear Admiral Tadaichi Hara, the commander of the carrier air wings, to choose twenty-seven of his best pilots, all with night-operations experience, and launch them into the darkening sky. Radar operators on the American carriers detected the inbound raid and vectored the combat air patrol to intercept. In the ensuing melee, nine of Hara's veteran pilots were blasted out of
the sky. A tenth Japanese aircraft was shot down by anti-aircraft fire when the pilot mistook the
Yorktown
for his own carrier and attempted to land. Eleven more Japanese pilots perished attempting to land on their own decks. When the ill-fated raid was over, only six of Hara's twenty-seven attackers were alive.

Before dawn on the next day, both Fletcher and Takagi had scouts in the air searching for the opposing carriers. Despite heavy overcast and squalls over the Japanese fleet, they spotted each other almost simultaneously at about 0800. Between 0900 and 0925 both the
Lexington
and the
Yorktown
launched their attack groups of torpedo planes and dive-bombers. But by 1030, when they arrived over the location where the Japanese carriers had been reported, only the
Shokaku
was visible in the squall line. The American aircraft unleashed everything they had on the carrier.

Unlike the success they had enjoyed the day before in attacking
Shoho,
the strike on
Shokaku
was almost a failure. Every American torpedo either missed or was a dud. Only three of the dive-bombers found their marks. But in the end, those three were enough to render the
Shokaku
's flight deck unusable. No longer able to fight, Takagi ordered the ship to return to Truk before it became a target for another raid.

As the
Shokaku
sped away, the planes she and the
Zuikaku
had launched were swarming over the
Lexington
and the
Yorktown
. Anti-aircraft fire and the carriers' combat air patrols succeeded in disrupting the attack on the
Yorktown
, which managed to weather the assault, receiving only a single bomb hit that was insufficient to put her out of action. But the larger and less maneuverable
Lexington
was an easier target. Four bombs and two torpedoes found their mark, but for a while it appeared as though valiant efforts by her damage-control parties might keep her in action.

Then, at about 1245, after the attackers had disappeared over the horizon and she was recovering planes on her flight deck, the
Lexington
was rocked by a terrible explosion as gasoline vapors from a ruptured fuel line ignited deep inside her hull. About two hours later, a second, even larger explosion buckled her flight deck and set a raging inferno that forced Captain Frederick Sherman to order the crew to abandon ship.

The surviving crew members made it over the side to be rescued by destroyers while the
Yorktown
recovered
Lexington
planes still in the air. At 1930 she was still afloat but burning madly. Fletcher gave the order to sink her. A destroyer put five torpedoes into her side, and at 1936 the
Lady Lex
sank beneath the waters of the Coral Sea—becoming the first U.S. carrier lost to enemy action.

Aviation Mechanic Bill Surgi, an eighteen-year-old from Louisiana, watched the battle aboard the USS
Yorktown
. He had a ringside seat for the Japanese attack on his ship—and the aftermath.