When I watched "Battle of the Coral Sea", I naturally thought I'd be seeing a film all about this famous WWII battle. Instead, the battle is tacked on to the last 5-10 minutes of the movie and what precedes that isn't the battle or anything really about the battle! I am sure a lot of audience members were annoyed by this and what the film does show is poorly done (featuring lots of stock footage...some of which showed planes which never could have fought in the battle).The story ACTUALLY is about Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Conway (Cliff Robertson) and his command of a submarine during the war. His ship is captured in a rather impossible to believe sequence but he is able to skuttle the boat after his crew is taken prisoner. The rest of the movie consists of Conway and a few other officers in a Japanese prison camp plotting their eventual escape. So is the film any good? Not especially. It's not a good history lesson and the film itself only adequate. Not a terrible film...just not a very good one.

"The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional", says the opening credits. That statement is just about the most accurate thing in this film. The Battle of the Coral Sea was a strategically-important naval engagement fought between the U.S. and Japanese Navies between 4 and 8 May 1942. It stopped a Japanese attempt to carry out an amphibious invasion against Port Moresby, the last Allied stronghold in new Guinea. It also stopped Japanese expansion towards Australia.However, there is nothing in this movie about the Battle of the Coral Sea until the last ten minutes. The rest is a fairly routine story about POWs and their warders. consequently any viewer interested in learning about the Battle of the Coral Sea is advised to look elsewhere than this mis- named movie.

I'm a big fan of WWII movies - even though Im a 40 yr old female. Go figure?! So I was glad to come across one I hadn't seen yet.The basic story of the movie follows events leading up to the Battle of the Coral Sea, not the actual battle itself. One thing I'm unsure of is whether the storyline of the movie itself actually took place. The basic synopsis is a Sub commander, Jeff Conway (played by Cliff Robertson}, is given basically an intelligence mission to go scope out a build-up of Japanese navy ships & carriers in the Pacific. They aren't to engage the enemy, just capture photos & record details of the specific ships and their locations. In the process, their sub is discovered and ordered to surrender. The main crew is sent to a regular POW camp but the commander and his officers are sent to a special island interrogation camp in order to try to force info regarding their mission out of the commander.As I mentioned before, there isn't a tremendous amount of action since its the events that precede the actual battle. But it still kept me interested enough to keep watching. I think Cliff Robertson plays his role very well and is the best in the picture. I also liked Teru Shimada who played the Japanese commander Mori at the POW camp. I like when he & Robertson first meet and play a sort of cat & mouse game trying to size each other up.This movie may not keep you on the edge of your seat, but is still worth the watching to see whether or not Robertson's character gives up the info or is able to get off the island.

The Japanese lost the 11,000 ton light-carrier Shoho, while the Americans lost the much more valuable Lexington. In addition, each-side had a top-notch CV (Shokaku and Yorktown) damaged. The Japanese had a 3rd carrier, Zuikaku, which was undamaged during the battle. Based on that, the Japanese won the battle, however, their air group was punished heavily. Their carriers were assigned to support the invasion of Port Moresby, and they had suffered a lot of plane losses so that they no longer felt confident they could do this. So, this swings it to an overall draw.In the end, it would be the Japanese who were hurting more, because the Americans not only had a lot more pilots in reserve, and thus could replace losses more easily, at this point in the war the Japanese Navy had the more experienced pilots. So, losing pilots hurt them more than it hurt the USA. Also, it took nearly 2 months to sail Shokaku back to Japan and repair her, but Yorktown headed for Pearl Harbor and was patched-up and ready for battle (although not fully repaired) in 3 days.Incidentally, their plane/pilot losses were so heavy that Zuikaku sat out the battle of Midway waiting for replacement pilots. This was a huge mistake since the 5th flight deck would have been invaluable.