In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
75 Years.. Battle of Coral Sea
select-fire
Member Posts: 69,535 ✭✭✭✭
Marked the first battle Naval guns did not shoot at enemy ships. Start of a turning point for the Japs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea
Comments
Marked the first battle Naval guns did not shoot at enemy ships. Start of a turning point for the Japs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea
A event most folks forget about, I suppose "Midway" gets much of the press. You touched on an interesting aspect of Coral Sea and there's a little known irony attached to that battle.
In 1925 the "Morrow Board" was established by President Coolidge. One of its tasks, forced on it by Colonel Mitchell and his at the time radical assertion that airplanes could sink battleships, was to either affirm or disprove that proposition. Suffice to say the Navy wasn't enthusiastic about their "big guns" (and budget and influence) being susceptible to such fledgling and unimpressive technology. One member of the Morrow Board was Admiral Frank F. Fletcher, who like other members was no fan of Colonel Mitchell. The admiral and like-minded co-members ensured the board's report asserted air power was no threat to to large naval vessels such as battleships which were, at the time, the backbone of the US fleet.
So it's ironic that some 17 years later his similarly named nephew would be the Task Force commander of US naval forces that not only inflicted but suffered ship losses due to aircraft attack only. That those aircraft were launched from carriers, as Mitchell had suggested but the Navy hesitated to move forward on in deference to battleships, is an interesting punctuation to the history.