Coral Sea logistics and the fast-tanker shortage

The account follows the rendezvous and refueling movements of the American task forces and their oilers Neosho and Tippecanoe before the battle. The prominence of those details exposes a British logistical concern: fast tankers had been diverted to amphibious roles just when mobile fleet operations demonstrated their value. Admiral Reginald Henderson had tried to build up that capability before the war, but conversions after his death rapidly reduced it. Replacing fast oilers competed with the equally urgent demand for merchant tankers supporting the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean war. Fleet endurance had become an industrial allocation problem as well as an operational one.