Word: corale
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What the outnumbered Americans had accomplished at the Coral Sea and Midway was even greater than they at first realized. Describing "this memorable American victory," Churchill wrote, "At one stroke, the dominant position of Japan in the Pacific was reversed . . . The annals of war at sea present no more intense, heart-shaking shock than these two battles, in which the $ qualities of the United States Navy and Air Force and of the American race shone forth in splendor...
...knew that the Japanese planned to seize the eastern approaches to Australia by attacking Port Moresby, on the tail of New Guinea, in the first week in May. Nimitz stripped bare Pearl Harbor's defenses to mount an all-out attack on the Japanese invaders as they entered the Coral...
Both sides claimed victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. had lost the Lexington plus a destroyer and a tanker; the Japanese had lost the carrier Shoho, plus a tanker and a destroyer, more aircraft (77 vs. 66) and more men (1,074 vs. 543). But in strategic terms, the key fact was that the Japanese troop transports bound for Port Moresby had to turn back...
Against Yamamoto's overwhelming force, Nimitz could send only a pitiable remnant -- 76 ships in all, no battleships to Japan's 11, three carriers to Japan's eight (and one was the Yorktown, barely patched together at Pearl Harbor after its mauling in the Coral Sea). And his most redoubtable skipper, Admiral Bull Halsey, whose combative spirit was worth several warships, suddenly had to repair to the hospital with a skin disease...
Japan seems invincible -- until the Coral Sea and Midway...