Ducking and Punching: The Carrier Raids

From his first days as CINCPAC, Nimitz knew he would have to fight a naval guerrilla war against the Japanese until he could gather more strength and give his peacetime Navy some badly needed combat experience. Nevertheless, he also wanted to strike some blows, no matter how trivial, against Japan’s bases in the Pacific Basin. To accomplish these dual tasks, Nimitz turned to his small force of three aircraft carriers: Lexington (CV 2), Yorktown (CV 5 – moved from the Atlantic Fleet after Pearl Harbor), and Enterprise (CV 6). Building a force of fast cruisers and destroyers around each carrier, Nimitz began to dispatch them on raids against Japanese island bases in early 1942. Though results were at first mediocre, the attacks soon began to generate some positive results.

Building a force of fast cruisers and destroyers around each carrier, Nimitz began to dispatch them on raids against Japanese island bases in early 1942. Though results were at first mediocre, the attacks soon began to generate some positive results.

On Feb. 1, Task Force 8, built around Enterprise and commanded by Halsey, raided Japanese bases in the northern Marshall Islands. At the same time, Task Force 17 (with Yorktown) commanded by Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, raided the southern end of the Marshalls chain. Though damage to enemy installations was light, several Japanese ships were sunk and everyone in the force gained a great deal of positive experience. Best of all, the fast-moving forces of Halsey and Fletcher dodged any response from the Japanese, beginning a cycle that would frustrate and eventually motivate the Imperial Navy to some reckless actions that spring. There would soon be more raids to frustrate the Japanese.

Feb. 23, 1942, saw Halsey and his Enterprise group raiding Wake Island, destroying much of what the Japanese had hauled in following their occupation in late December. Then, on Feb. 24, a task force built around Lexington (Rear Adm. Wilson Brown commanding) tried to raid the new Japanese base at Rabaul on the eastern tip of New Guinea. However, the force was detected by long-range patrol aircraft and attacked by land-based bombers of the 25th Air Flotilla. What followed was the first head-to-head air duel between Japanese and U.S. Navy aviators, with the battle becoming a decisive American victory. Most of the twin-engined Japanese G4M1 “Betty” bombers were shot down by F4F-3 Wildcat fighters, including five claimed by Lt. Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Despite not being able to bomb Rabaul, the gallant action of the American fighter pilots protecting the Lexington provided a well-needed morale boost back in the United States.

The last of the single carrier raids was run by Halsey and the Enterprise group on March 4, when they attacked Marcus Island – just less than 1,000 miles from the Japanese mainland and Tokyo. After Marcus, battle groups of two aircraft carriers would begin to nip at the Japanese perimeter. The first of the multi-carrier raids was run using Lexington and Yorktown on March 10, when more than 100 American planes raided the harbor at Lae-Salamaua, New Guinea. This time, the American aviators did significant damage, sinking or damaging nine Japanese ships. The stage was now set for the greatest of the 1942 carrier raids: the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.

Despite not being able to bomb Rabaul, the gallant action of the American fighter pilots protecting the Lexington provided a well-needed morale boost back in the United States.

For several months, planners in Washington had been developing a plan to attack the Japanese home islands. The result was an innovative operation to fly twin-engine Army B-25 medium bombers off of the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier. This would allow the bombers to be launched outside of the range of Japanese search planes, and then fly on to China after bombing their targets in Japan. The bomber force was selected, trained, and led by the legendary pilot and engineer Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, and was ready to go in early April. Flying his force to Naval Air Station (NAS) Alameda, California, Doolittle loaded 16 B-25s aboard the newly commissioned carrier Hornet (CV 8), and headed west across the North Pacific.

On April 13, Enterprise and the rest of what now was called Task Force 16 joined the Hornet and her escorts. The combined force was commanded by Halsey, whose announcement, “This force is bound for Tokyo,” caused wild celebration aboard ship. For five days, the carriers and their escorts headed for Japan, planning to launch late on April 18 for a night raid on Tokyo and several other cities on Honshu. However, when the force ran into a line of Japanese patrol boats 500 miles out early on April 18, Halsey made the decision to launch early and raid Japan in daylight.

 

Despite heavy seas and bad weather, all 16 B-25s were launched successfully and managed to hit various targets. Meanwhile, Task Force 16 turned home for Hawaii at high speed, Halsey’s reputation as America’s most aggressive admiral secure in the minds of people on both sides of the war. All 16 B-25s were either lost or interned in the USSR, though most of Doolittle’s gallant aviators survived to become the stuff of American legend in the postwar years. Doolittle’s planes carried only small loads of bombs, and the actual damage to Japanese installations was minimal. However, the Doolittle Raid had effects far beyond a few bombed factories and military installations. Back home, American morale skyrocketed with the news that Japan itself had been bombed. Concerned over the safety of Doolittle’s flyers still in China, President Franklin D. Roosevelt coyly announced that, “the planes flew from our new base in Shangri La,” referring to the mythical Himalayan kingdom in the book and film Lost Horizon.

Yamamoto took personal responsibility for the American attack, seeing the navy as the protector of Japan and the emperor. Since the start of the war in December, Yamamoto had sought to lure the U.S. Pacific Fleet out to destroy it.

The Doolittle Raid provided Yamamoto the political leverage to initiate a new series of invasions to expand the Japanese defensive perimeter and hopefully draw the Americans into a decisive battle. In particular, operations against the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, the Aleutians, Samoa, and Midway would be run in the coming months of late spring and early summer. While these invasions would ostensibly help expand the Japanese defensive perimeter, their actual intent was to take territory that the U.S. Navy would be unwilling to give up. Decisive battles would be fought, and the small force of American aircraft carriers would be sunk. Following that, negotiations might be initiated with the United States, which would sue for peace, and Japan would retain the conquests of 1941 and ’42. At least that was the way the Japanese had planned things. However, in a dank basement at Pearl Harbor, a small group of naval personnel were about to ruin Yamamoto’s carefully crafted plans.

 

First Blood: The Battle of the Coral Sea

The Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) was a small codebreaking and analysis shop, assigned to Nimitz’s superb intelligence chief Cmdr. Edwin Layton. Run by Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Rochefort, FRUPAC was a self-contained organization that could take raw intercepted Japanese radio signals and crack the message to generate useful information for Nimitz. While FRUPAC attacked and eventually broke a number of Japanese code and cipher systems by the end of World War II, their primary target in early 1942 was the Imperial Navy Flag Officer’s system known as JN-25. JN-25 was a very difficult system to break into, despite the best personnel and technology that FRUPAC could obtain. Nevertheless, by spring 1942, Rochefort was giving Layton and Nimitz some hard data they could use operationally.

The first of these breaks came when FRUPAC managed to break down a list of Japanese warships assigned to amphibious operations against New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the area of the Great Coral Sea, north of Australia. Combined with other information from aerial reconnaissance and local radio intercepts, Nimitz and the ANZUS command in Australia determined that Port Moresby in New Guinea and the southern Solomons were likely targets for invasion in early May. To oppose these twin operations, Nimitz sent the Lexington and Yorktown task forces to join the ANZUS surface force under Rear Adm. J.G. Crace, RN. He also dispatched Halsey with Task Force 16 to the Coral Sea, though they would not arrive in time to affect the outcome of the world’s first carrier-versus-carrier battle.

 

The Allies had successfully discovered the details of Operation MO, which would be supported by a Japanese task force of cruisers and destroyers, along with the light carrier Shoho. MO would also have the services of the 5th Carrier Division, composed of the big carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, along with two heavy cruisers and six destroyers. The planned start date was in early May, with the various Japanese task groups moving into position a few days before. This time, though, a Japanese invasion would run into an ambush.

What became known was the Battle of the Coral Sea began on May 4, when the Yorktown launched an air strike on an invasion force occupying Tulagi and Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons. After sinking several Japanese warships, the Yorktown force rendezvoused with the Lexington group to await developments. What followed was three days of “blind man’s bluff” in the thick May weather north of Australia before events broke open on May 7. That morning, both the Japanese and American carrier forces thought that they had discovered each other, and launched large air strikes. When the Japanese arrived over their targets, they found only the oiler Neosho (AO 23) and destroyer Sims (DD 409). D3A1 dive-bombers promptly left both ships sinking, but with nothing else to show for their effort. The American strike also did not find its primary target, though the planes from Lexington and Yorktown did discover a worthy target: the Japanese MO invasion force headed for Port Moresby.

The little carrier went down shortly after, prompting the famous “Scratch one flattop!” quote from the victorious American airmen.

Within minutes, the two air groups jumped on the light carrier Shoho, hitting it with more than a dozen bombs and torpedoes. The little carrier went down shortly after, prompting the famous “Scratch one flattop!” quote from the victorious American aviators. While the Americans had missed a chance to gain first blood on the large Japanese carriers, their sinking of the Shoho was perhaps more valuable. Having lost the air cover for Operation MO, the invasion force was pulled back to Rabaul and the occupation of Port Moresby postponed. It would never be executed, and a Japanese invasion had been stopped for the first time since the start of hostilities. However, there still were two carrier forces trying to grope their way through the murky weather, and their battle the next day would need to play out before a victor was declared in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Late that afternoon, the Shokaku and Zuikaku tried to launch an air strike against the American carriers, but their planes became so lost in the darkening clouds that at one point several were in the landing patterns of Lexington and Yorktown, attempting to recover aboard. After the surviving Japanese planes returned to their ships, both sides sorted out their reconnaissance chores, getting ready for the big battle the next day. On the morning of May 8, both sides sent off large air strikes against each other’s carrier forces.

 

The American strike found Shokaku in the open, though her sister, Zuikaku, was able to find cover under a nearby rain squall. Shokaku was hit by a number of large bombs and heavily damaged, though she managed to limp home to Japan for repairs. Meanwhile, the Japanese had somewhat better luck, hitting Lexington with a number of bombs and torpedoes, while Yorktown suffered one bomb hit and a near miss alongside. Initially, the exchange of air strikes looked like a draw, until gasoline fumes on Lexington ignited in a massive explosion. This led to uncontrollable fires. The beloved “Lady Lex” was abandoned and sank that evening. With their carrier air groups badly depleted, both sides withdrew to nurse their wounds, and the battle was over.

Today, Coral Sea stands as one of the oddest naval engagements in history. While the Japanese scored a tactical victory, sinking more and larger ships than the Americans, strategically, the United States and its Allies had won, deflecting the invasion of Port Moresby.

While the Japanese scored a tactical victory, sinking more and larger ships than the Americans, strategically, the United States and its Allies had won, deflecting the invasion of Port Moresby. The ANZUS force had also sunk some important ships, especially the carrier Shoho. In hindsight, Coral Sea was an important American victory, the first of World War II.