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Robert C. Stern - Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

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Book:
Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea
Author:
Robert C Stern
Publisher:
Indiana University Press
Genre:
Books / History
Year:
2019
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Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea: summary, description and annotation

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By the beginning of May 1942, five months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the US Navy was ready to challenge the Japanese moves in the South Pacific. When the Japanese sent troops to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the Americans sent the carriers Lexington and Yorktown to counter the move, setting the stage for the Battle of the Coral Sea.

In Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea, historian Robert C. Stern analyzes the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first major fleet engagement where the warships were never in sight of each other. Unlike the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Coral Sea has received remarkably little study. Stern covers not only the action of the ships and their air groups but also describes the impact of this pivotal engagement. His analysis looks at the short-term impact as well as the long-term implications, including the installation of inert gas fuel-system purging on all American aircraft carriers and the push to integrate sensor systems with fighter direction to better protect against enemy aircraft.

The essential text on the first carrier air campaign, Scratch One Flattop is a landmark study on an overlooked battle in the first months of the United States engagement in World War II.

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SCRATCH ONE FLATTOP

TWENTIETH-CENTURY BATTLES

Spencer C. Tucker, editor

The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment by John A. Adams

Operation Albion: The German Conquest of the Baltic Islands by Michael B. Barrett

Prelude to Blitzkrieg: The 1916 Austro-German Campaign in Romania by Michael B. Barrett

New Georgia: The Second Battle for the Solomons by Ronnie Day

The Brusilov Offensive by Timothy C. Dowling

The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in Mesopotamia, 19151916 by Nikolas Gardner

D-Day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan by Harold J. Goldberg

Invasion of Norway, 1940 by Jack Greene

Balkan Breakthrough: The Battle of Dobro Pole 1918 by Richard C. Hall

The Battle of the Otranto Straits: Controlling the Gateway to the Adriatic in World War I by Paul G. Halpern

The Battle for North Africa: El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II by Glyn Harper

Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway by Dallas Woodbury Isom

Chinas Battle for Korea: The 1951 Spring Offensive by Xiaobing Li

The Imjin and Kapyong Battles, Korea, 1951 by S. P. MacKenzie

The Second Battle of the Marne by Michael S. Neiberg

The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition by Robin Neillands

In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 by Vincent P. OHara

The Battle of Heligoland Bight by Eric W. Osborne

Battle of Dogger Bank: The First Dreadnought Engagement, January 1915 by Tobias R. Philbin

The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China: Siping, 1946 by Harold M. Tanner

Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948 by Harold M. Tanner

Battle of Surigao Strait by Anthony P. Tully

Written in Blood: The Battles for Fortress Przemyl in WWI by Graydon A. Tunstall Jr.

The Battle of An Loc by James H. Willbanks

The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action by H. P. Willmott

The Generals War: Operational Level Command on the Western Front in 1918 by David T. Zabecki

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2019 by Robert C. Stern

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-03929-3 (hdbk.)

ISBN 978-0-253-03930-9 (web PDF)

1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19

This book is dedicated to Beth,

the ever-patient, without whom nothing

I do would make the slightest sense.

Klotzen, nicht Kleckern!

Heinz Guderian

(Reportedly used by the German Panzer general to describe his philosophy of armored warfare. It has no good literal English translation, being a colloquial expression meaning Fists, not fingers! or more specifically Dont slap them! Punch them!)

CONTENTS

Many people over many years have helped me gather the materials that have gone into making this book. Sadly, the list is far too long and my memory far too fallible to list them all below, although I will attempt to make it as complete as possible. To any I have failed to mention, please accept my thanks and my apologies.

Oka Akio, who translated sections of Senshi Sosho for me, and, by extension, Vince OHara, who introduced me to Akio and made those translations possible;

Michal A. Piegzik, who generously shared his wide knowledge of matters regarding Japanese naval aviation;

Richard Leonard, the son of Lieutenant (jg) William N. Bill Leonard, for the sharing of multiple Air Action Reports;

John B. Lundstrom, for his timely answers to my many questions;

The ever-patient staff at the Modern Military Branch at the US National Archives (officially, the National Archives and Records Administration [NARA]), College Park, MD, particularly Nate Patch.

All these kind folk and more have helped make this book possible. The responsibility for any omissions or errors is mine alone.

SCRATCH ONE FLATTOP

Every American schoolchild since 1945, at least those who did not sleep through history class, learned that the seemingly unstoppable Japanese onslaught in the Pacific in the Second World War was turned back by the pluck and luck of a handful of United States Navy fliers at Midway. It is quite likely that they were never told at all about another major naval battle that took place a month earlier on the other side of the Pacific, where the forces had been just as evenly balanced, where the stakes had been just as great, but where the idea of a carrier air battle had been so new that some were sure both sides would suffer devastating losses.

As it was, the Battle of the Coral Sea, which stretched over most of a week in early May 1942, dealt some hard blows and taught some hard lessons to both sides, though the Americans were better positioned to absorb the blows and certainly did a better job of learning the lessons. It was a landmark battle for many reasons, primarily because it was the first naval battle during which the surface units of the opposing sides never came within sight of each other. The entire engagement was fought between the air forces, mainly carrier-based, of the two sides. For the first time, the fate of a major military movement, in this case the Japanese attempt to occupy the south coast of Papua New Guinea, was decided by aircraft flying off aircraft carriers against each other and against the carriers that brought them to the battle. How that battle unfolded, and why it did not unfold differently when it very well could have, is the story to be told in this book.

Because the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval engagement fought entirely between the carrier air forces of the opposing fleets, it is appropriate to start this account with a very brief overview of the state of carrier aviation at the start of 1942. The first real aircraft carrierthat is, a ship intended to operate wheeled aircraft as opposed to a seaplane carrier handling floatplaneswas HMS Furious (47), which joined the Royal Navy in July 1917 complete with a flying-off deck covering the first third of her length. By October of that year, it was obvious that this design was unsuccessful, and she was withdrawn from service for a much more extensive rebuild that saw a hanger and a flying-on deck added aft, though she retained her amidships superstructure. In this form, she was used to launch the first carrier air attack, the Tondern Raid of 19 July 1918, in which seven Sopwith Camels were launched from a position off the Danish coast against the Zeppelin base at Tondern. The raid was basically successful, achieving complete surprise and destroying two Zeppelins, but none of the seven aircraft were safely recovered. Nevertheless, the Tondern Raid established the feasibility of projecting air power from a ship at sea.

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