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New Kind of Battle. Naval warfare has changed its ways since Jutland. The Battle of the Coral Sea was not a clash of a whole fleet against another whole fleet. It was a battle of relentless air bombing and the rapid parry-&-thrust of task forces.
The task force, a varied group of vessels strong enough to carry out a specific job, has become the sea weapon of World War II. Modern naval warfare in the Pacific has kept the slow-footed battleship in port, made the carrier the center of task-force operation, the long-range reconnaissance plane the eyes of the striking force. The airplane has so changed sea warfare that its apostles think they will soon see the day when the plane wall drive the battleship completely from the seas.
The plane has also vastly increased the risk of offensive warfare, even with an overwhelming surface force. A few squadrons of land-based bombers with surprise and skill on their side can knock the stuffing out of a task force in a couple of hours' attack, as the Jap did when he swarmed down on the mighty Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Thus Navy task missions out of Honolulu have become hell-for-leather, slam-bang affairs planned with the stealthy calculation of Indian raids, and executed with the bludgeon force of gang assassinations. For this kind of operation, well executed in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands and in the assault on Marcus Island only 1,200 miles from Tokyo, the U.S. public could thank Planner Nimitz.
And Admiral Nimitz could thank his task-force commanders, sea dogs like bushy-browed Vice Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr., a naval aviator who knows the potency of the swift attack, sighted and powered from the air; and scholarly Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, who helped give the Jap a mauling in the Marshall Islands raids. These and others were the men who carried out his tasks: broad-stripers like Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, new commander in New Zealand, and Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, onetime Superintendent of the Naval Academy and now Commander of the Pacific Scouting Force.
Who the commander was in the Battle of the Coral Sea the Navy was not yet ready to announce. Probable it was that Vice Admiral Herbert Fairfax Leary, recently detached from Nimitz' command and placed under MacArthur in Australia, was in on the show. It was equally probable that some of Nimitz' commanders were there, too.
Intention Known. Both Army & Navy pilots, ranging far to sea from bases and carriers, had seen the battle building up. Three weeks ago the Jap had begun massing a task force in the Marshalls, 1,700 miles north of New Guinea, and his force there set Chester Nimitz and Douglas MacArthur to work at the deadliest guessing game they had ever sat in. Where would the Jap strike?
He gave himself away. He had to, because his rendezvous point was squarely under the eyes of MacArthurs pilots. For a fortnight the Jap, massed transports and fighting ships off Lae and Salamaua, the ports he had seized on the north side of New Guinea. For a fortnight he piled equipment, men and ships into the port of Rabaul on New Britain.