War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its size,

and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history

through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Welcome back to key battles of the Pacific War of World War II.

We are now up to episode eight.

In our last episode, we talked about the Battle of the Coral Sea, which in some ways

was a comedy of errors.

The Japanese and the American fleets that were present had a lot of trouble finding

each other.

They kept misidentifying ships.

And it ended up as basically a tactical Japanese victory that the Japanese sank more

tonnage of American ships than the American sank Japanese ships, but the whole point

of the Japanese operation was stopped.

The Japanese were trying to invade and take over the key port of Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea. There was going to the Japanese were trying to invade and take over the key port of

Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea. That did not happen. Now, so you could say in a

strategic sense, it was an American victory. Now what we're going to look at today, or today,

in this episode, I guess today, if you're caught up, if you're not binge listening.

But anyway, you get the idea.

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