[Torplexed]

Indeed. While Spruance and his staff were convinced the day after the battle that the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu had been dispatched, they thought perhaps the carrier Hiryu only crippled. And no one could discount the possibility of a fifth carrier out there. Like the Yorktown, the Japanese carrier Zuikakau could have been present at the battle. She was unscathed except for her heavy loss in pilots at the Coral Sea. Had she combined her decimated air group with that of the damaged Shokakau she would have only been a few planes short of her nominal establishment. But the Japanese were evidently convinced enough of another impending victory that working Zuikaku into the mix wasn't deemed worth the effort.