Book Description

This is a modified version of the original May, 1942, Commander-in-Chief, United States Pacific Fleet War Diary. May, 1942 - May continues the format from April, with the daily "Narrative", "Daily Distribution of Operating Forces", "Current Movements of Naval Units", and "War Plans - Daily Summary". Readers of the previous volumes are aware that the CinCPac War Diary is not an in-depth chronical of battle, as, for instance, the minimal information about the actual Battle of the Coral Sea confirms. What the War Diary does give is a detailed list of the ships participating and how they were organized. Due to distance and limited communications, even this information is not always 100% up to date, or 100% accurate (LEXINGTON lingered under the Task Force 11 heading for five days after she was sunk on May 8; she, and Task Force 11, were not removed from the diary until May 13). NOTE: This document has been altered from the original for publishing and readability purposes. Individual redundant page headings have been deleted. Empty page space has been removed. Typos have been corrected and inconsistencies eliminated. Geographical misspellings have not been changed. Select words in all-uppercase have been replaced with conventional lower case. Other than the above revisions, this is the original CinCPac War Diary, as submitted to the Chief of Naval Operations. The War Diaries were compiled to chronicle the daily operations of the ships and commands of the U.S. Navy. This was done for contemporary analysis and as a historical record.