 On a bright spring morning in 1932, a fleet of aircraft appeared over the U.S. Navy anchorage at Pearl Harbor. Those aircraft swooped in without any prior notice whatsoever and surprised the U.S. Navy battleships that were located in Pearl Harbor. This was a fleet problem in 1932. The aircraft arrived after the skipper of the USS Lexington, Captain Ernest J. King, maneuvered behind a weather front to go to a position in close proximity to the striking target, Pearl Harbor. After he executed a simulated attack on Pearl Harbor in 1932, he came to Newport, Rhode Island and studied at the Naval War College. This wasn't the first time that King had been at the Naval War College. He earlier completed the correspondence course of the Naval War College, studying tactics and strategy. When he executed the first simulated attack on the fleet anchorage at Pearl Harbor, he had already devised ways of doing load and launch on carriers that had never been done before. While he was at the Naval War College, he also studied logistics. At the dawn of the 20th century, Frank Friede Fletcher devised a system called the Fleet Train System to support logistics. Ernest King knew Frank Friede Fletcher and studied the methods of Frank Friede Fletcher in executing logistical operations in the First World War while serving in the Atlantic Fleet staff. Later on, Frank Friede Fletcher's nephew, Frank Jack Fletcher, would serve as the task group commander at the Battle of Coral Sea. It's the studies at the Naval War College and the experience of the First World War, which influence strategy at the beginning of the Second World War. 1938, another fleet problem involving Ernest King as a three-star admiral and none other than William F. Halsey Jr., operating in the carrier Saratoga and Lexington. They executed another simulated attack on Pearl Harbor. During those exercises, they realized that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable, but they also understood the difficulty of logistics in reaching Pearl Harbor. Operating as far away from California as, equivalently, what the Japanese would be operating, they realized that the logistics was a key element in any potential attack on Pearl Harbor. So in December of 1941, when the Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor, it truly was a surprise. Given all of the circumstances that are required to execute a secret operation such as the Pearl Harbor attack on the 7th of December 1941, the Americans believed it was too difficult to do. And so they deduced that the Japanese were actually focused on Singapore, not Pearl Harbor. This is the element of surprise, even though the U.S. Navy understood the vulnerability of Pearl Harbor, they recognized that the difficulties involved with doing it were such that it wasn't worth the effort. The Japanese surprised the Americans at Pearl Harbor. At that time, Ernest King was operating in a quasi-war in the North Atlantic. He was in the rank of four-star admiral at that time. He was fighting U-boats without a declaration of war. On Halloween night, 1941, Ernest King was in command of the Atlantic fleet when the destroyer Ruben James was sunk by a German submarine. When Pearl Harbor happened, they called Ernest King to Washington. Chester W. Nimitz had already gone to Pearl Harbor to assume command from the Commander-in-Chief U.S. Fleet, husband E. Kimmel, and Nimitz was basically picking up the pieces up after the attack on Pearl Harbor when King arrived in Washington. At that time, Ernest King was told, you are going to assume Supreme Command of the United States Navy as the Commander-in-Chief U.S. Fleet. At that time in the United States Navy, the term was called Sinkus, the acronym. When King said, my title is Sinkus after Pearl Harbor, he said, I'm going to change the title to Cometch. Commander-in-Chief U.S. Navy. It's in these dark days of 1941, December and the spring of 1942 that King immediately sent the United States Navy on the offensive. Lacking resources and lacking logistical means, it was unclear where the Japanese mainline of effort would be. Everybody concluded it might be Singapore, but Australia loomed on the horizon. King immediately sent orders to Nimitz, keep the lines of communication open between the West Coast of the United States and Australia. The key to victory in the Second World War was through three different routes, one being the northern route, the other being the central route aimed at Formosa, and the other being the southern route. Trying to keep those options open, King used his carriers in sweeping strike operations during the spring of 1942, keeping the Japanese guessing where the United States was going to hit. But keeping those lines of communication open to Australia was the key element in the early strategy of the U.S. Navy in the Second World War, and that job felt to Chester W. Nimitz. And when you work for a boss like Ernest King, you better do your job. It's in that spring 1942 context that offensive mindset that Ernest King brought to the table as the Commander-in-Chief U.S. Navy that culminates in one of the most stunning adventures in the Second World War. Only five people knew what the plan was. Ernest King and his staff officers Francis Lowe and Admiral Duncan, Wu Duncan. Colonel was also brought into the room, and he was told of this idea of launching Air Force land-based bombers from an aircraft carrier. But the plan was a Navy plan. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jim Doolittle flew off the decks of the Hornet and executed what is now known as the Doolittle Raid. In the spring of 1942, Ernest King was taking the fight to the enemy, even lacking the resources to do it, he was keeping the enemy on their heels. Having conducted the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo, Admiral Halsey returned to Hawaii to refit. At that time, he received orders from Chester Nimitz to prepare to get underway within five days. At that time, Chester Nimitz had just returned from meeting with Ernest King in San Francisco. Ernest King shared with Chester Nimitz the decisions made by the Combined Chiefs of Staff during their Arcadia Conference during their meeting in March of 1942. Chester Nimitz advised Admiral Halsey of plans to strike in the Mandate Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, because intelligence had revealed Japanese plans to take positions at Port Moresby and Toulogy. To interdict those operations, Frank Jack Fletcher received the job of executing interdiction operations against the Japanese forces. During the months that followed and weeks that followed, the United States Navy was still building up for the main offensive in the Pacific. Simultaneously, efforts to realize the vision of the Europe First Strategy were unfolding. This was a global war. These operations were very difficult to execute given the resources available, given the fact that the Japanese had numerical superiority and they had the ability to use geography much easier than the United States Navy. It was logistics and planning and intelligence which enabled the United States Navy to maneuver their forces with precision in order to interdict the Japanese offensive into the Southern Pacific Ocean area. On the 4th of May 1942, forces under the command of Frank Jack Fletcher, Aubrey Fitch and Thomas Kincaid, located the Japanese fleet and struck using aircraft carrier aircraft to sink Japanese forces as they were trying to maneuver. Not to be outdone, the Japanese did maneuver around and were able to strike the United States Navy's carriers as well. As a result, the United States ship Lexington, King's old ship, was sunk. It actually had to be scuttled because the damages sustained on the Lexington made it impossible to repair. And so the United States Navy sank its own ship after the Battle Coral Sea ended on the 8th of May 1942. With the Lexington taken out of action and sinking, the crew of the Lexington ultimately had to scuttle the ship. The Japanese had also sustained significant damage. Frank Jack Fletcher reconciliated his task force and maneuvered away from the scene of the battle. Ultimately, the Battle Coral Sea was a draw at a tactical level. But from a strategic level, the Japanese had actually lost the initiative. Intelligence derived from the solution of JN-25B, the Japanese operational code, enabled the United States Navy to predict where the next attack might happen. They deduced that the next Japanese attack would be focused on either Kiska or Midway Island. Because the United States Navy had so few resources at the time, they had just lost the Lexington, Chester W Nimitz back at Pearl Harbor ordered that the damaged Yorktown be reconfigured to participate in the upcoming action. It was because of the intelligence, logistics, and the strategic foresight that the United States Navy was able to set the stage for what would become a true turning point in the Second World War, the Battle of Midway. It was the Battle of Coral Sea that seemed like an initial skirmish to Ernest King, the first battle that he noted that the two fleets did not come into direct contact, but with aircraft conducting most of the tactical strike during the battle, the first time in history King noted that that skirmish at Coral Sea was what set the stage for what became a decisive turning point at the Battle of Midway. And with that, happy birthday United States Navy.