Prof. Greg Jackson

Moreover, the Japanese and American fleets never even came close enough to see one another, let alone fire at one another in this battle.

Yes, the Coral Sea proves that the once mighty battleship is now a dated technology.

Sea battles are now air battles, or as Lieutenant Commander John A. Collett will put it later this year, Air power has not displaced sea power.

Air power is sea power."

Nonetheless, the importance of the Coral Sea is often eclipsed by the seismic shift in the Pacific War, caused by another battle about a month later, the Battle of Midway.

And this battle is our story for the remainder of this episode.

We'll begin by setting the stage as we take in some high-level Japanese battle plans.

We'll then pivot across the ocean to the U.S., where the newly minted Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.

Pacific Fleet, or SINKPAC, Chester Nimitz, has some inside knowledge about those Japanese plans.

After that, we'll follow the action of the Grand Battle itself, particularly on its first and decisive day of fighting, June 4th, 1942.

As at the Battle of the Coral Sea, we'll find that air power is sea power, as planes clash and bomb aircraft carriers near the Midway Atoll, located about midway, pun intended, between Japan and the Pacific coast of America.

But let's not give anything away.

Rather, let's begin our tale by backing up just ever so slightly to take in the whole Japanese strategy in the Pacific for the summer of 1942.

Ready?

Rewind.

In the spring of 1942, the land of the rising sun truly feels like an empire kissed by the early morning's first rays of light, both internally and abroad.

Within its massively expanded borders, Japan claims it's fighting the effect of European imperialism with its greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere.

Founded back in 1940 by Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke, this initiative asserts that it is casting off the evils of European imperialism to bring Manchukuo, China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, in short, the quote-unquote eight corners of the world, under Japan's supposedly benevolent rule.

But is it?

Or has European imperialism simply been replaced by Japanese imperialism?