Quotes from Robert C. Stern

The implication, in the minds of some, was that it certainly appeared that Fletcher wanted to be sure someone else was in change when the fatal blow struck his task force.

The Bombing Two Dauntlesses were launched with 12 percent less than maximum fuel, which would have critical impact later in the morning.

This linkage of goals was one reason why Fletcher and TF17 can rightly be said to have won the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Allied commanders simply had more achievable goals. But also, they made fewer mistakes (or at least got caught making fewer mistakes).

Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that Fletcher did not lose the Battle of the Coral Sea at the tactical level, despite Morison's judgment to the contrary, because he was sufficiently cautious most of the time and sufficiently lucky when he was not. Hardly a glamorous way to win a battle, but victory has never been a beauty contest.

Overall, one gets the impression of a commander who was unsure of himself and consequently inconsistent. In other words, just about the worst kind of commander imaginable, although one blessed with uncanny luck.

the MO Operation presented a golden opportunity, the chance to catch half of America's carrier strength with all of Japan's.

The kamikaze pilots had forced the Allies to pay a much higher price than they might have otherwise paid to retake the Philippines, but they did not buy the Emperor or the Japanese one moment of relief from the relentless Allied advance.

Her awards included not only honors from the US Navy – a Presidential Unit Citation, a Navy Unit Commendation and 20 battle stars for her flag – but also a rare honor from the Royal Navy. She became, when she stopped at Southampton in November 1945, the only non-Royal Navy warship ever awarded an Admiralty Pennant.

The writers of these reports used typewriters and carbon paper, making the correction of mistakes difficult, and they were often better at fighting their ships than writing reports, so there are a good many misspellings and grammatical errors in these pages.

The importance of ships employing these optimum tactics is illustrated by the fact that only 29 percent of the dives on ships using the proper tactics, as defined above, were successful whereas 47 percent of the dives were successful on ships using other than these tactics.14

The Japanese were aware that there was a tendency among these young men to close their eyes just before the crash, a very human reaction to the situation. They were repeatedly exhorted to keep their eyes open and to continue aiming their aircraft to the last moment. It is impossible to forget that these were very young men on both sides of this story.