Well, "silly" or not, that's a large part of what the term "tactical victory" means. How else do you think that so many well-informed sources arrive at the conclusion that Coral Sea was a Japanese tactical victory?Eugen Pinak wrote:So what? You are absolutely correctly pointed out themselve all the differenses between boxing fight (winning by points - how silly!) and war battle.
There are two points that you consistently seem to overlook in this debate:
1. Whether or not a battle counts as a tactical victory for one side has little or nothing to do with strategic factors.
2. It's possible for a single battle to be a tactical victory for one side but a strategic victory for the other. E.g. Coral Sea: Japanese tactical victory, American strategic victory, overall American victory.
So again, your citing of countless operational/strategic successes for the Americans at Iwo Jima is basically irrelevant when debating whether or not the Japanese scored a tactical victory there. If the title of this topic was "Defeat of the US marines at Iwo Jima" (or "Strategic Defeat of the US marines at Iwo Jima") then yours would be compelling points disproving this hypothesis - but this of course isn't the title nor the original proposition.
Indeed, and there are probably several other strategic benefits of the battle to the Americans that I didn't mention. But by coming up with further American strategic successes at Coral Sea you're only further proving my point that the concept of a tactical victory is independent of these. I'd be willing to wager that the sources I listed have a more comprehensive knowledge of the battle than you or I do, and that they'd be able to cite even more American strategic successes than you or I have thought of so far - yet they still count Coral Sea as a Japanese tactical victory.Eugen Pinak wrote:BTW, you've forgot one more important point: while Japanese learned no lessons form Coral Sea battle, while USN managed to learn a few things - like importance of damage control ("Lady Lex" could've survived, if not faults in damage control), importance of proper recon and trust in US COMINT.