For centuries naval warfare was dictated by the horizon: you saw the ship you were trying to sink, and it saw you. In the first week of May 1942, that paradigm vanished. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, two fleets fought a world-altering engagement without a single surface ship firing its main guns at an enemy vessel. The entire battle was decided by aircraft launched from carriers against targets hundreds of miles away.

This episode uses declassified reports and cryptographic histories to unpack how fragmented JN-25 intercepts let Admiral Nimitz set a trap with the Yorktown and Lexington, and how May 7 became a comedy of deadly errors: a Japanese strike of 78 aircraft wasted on the oiler Neosho, an American pilot's misaligned pegboard sending 93 planes after a phantom fleet, and US Army B-17s bombing Allied cruisers. We follow the May 8 car ...