Inferno - Max Hastings [154]
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But the battle was done: both fleets turned away. Fletcher’s task groups had lost 543 lives, 60 aircraft and 3 ships, including the Lexington. Inoue lost over 1,000 men and 77 aircraft—the carrier Zuikaku’s air group suffered heavy attrition. The balance of destruction nonetheless favoured the Japanese, who had better planes than the Americans and handled them more effectively. Amazingly, however, Inoue abandoned the operation against Port Moresby and retired, conceding strategic success to the U.S. Navy. Here, once again, was a manifestation of Japanese timidity: at the Coral Sea, victory was within their grasp, but they failed to press their advantage. Never again would they enjoy such a favourable opportunity to establish dominance of the Pacific.
IN THE COURSE of the war, the U.S. Navy would show itself the most impressive of its nation’s fighting services, but it faced a long, harsh learning process. Several early commanders were found wanting, because they were slow to grasp the principles of carrier operations, which would dominate the Pacific campaign. American fliers’ courage was never in doubt, but at the outset their performance lagged that of their enemies. At Pearl Harbor, albeit against an unprepared and static enemy, Japanese planes achieved the remarkable record of nineteen hits and detonations out of forty torpedo launches, a level of accuracy no other navy matched. When U.S. carrier planes attacked the Tulagi anchorage on 3 May 1942 against slight opposition, twenty-two Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers achieved just one hit. Attacking Shokaku two days later, twenty-one Devastators scored no hits at all. Most American torpedoes, the Japanese said later, were launched too far out, and ran so slowly that they were easily avoidable.
Among U.S. naval aircraft, the Coral Sea battle showed that the Dauntless dive-bomber was alone up to its job, not least in having adequate endurance. The Devastator was “a real turkey,” in the words of a flier, further handicapped by high fuel consumption. Worst of all, the Mk 13 aerial and Mk 14 sea-launched torpedoes were wildly unreliable, unlikely to explode even if they hit a target. A most un-American reluctance to learn from experience meant that this fault, afflicting submarine as much as air operations, was not fully corrected until 1943.
War at sea was statistically much less dangerous than it was ashore for all participants, save for such specialists as aviators and submariners. Conflict was impersonal: sailors seldom glimpsed the faces of their enemies. The fate of every ship’s crew was overwhelmingly at the mercy of its captain’s competence, judgement—and luck. Seamen of all nations suffered crampled living conditions and much boredom, but peril intervened only in spasms. Individuals were called upon to display fortitude and commitment, but seldom enjoyed the opportunity to choose whether or not to be brave. That was a privilege reserved for their commanders, who issued the orders determining the movements of ships and fleets. The overwhelming majority of sailors, performing technical functions aboard huge seagoing war machines, made only tiny, indirect personal contributions to killing their enemies.
Carrier operations represented the highest and most complex refinement of naval warfare. “The flight deck looked like a big war dance of