A month later, Shimazaki participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea. On the morning of 7 May 1942, his attack group took off "Zuikaku" in search of the US aircraft carriers. They were unable to find the carriers, however, but did locate the fleet oiler and its escort destroyer instead. After further fruitless searching, Shimazaki's colleague from "Shokaku", Lt Cdr Kakuichi Takahashi, ordered him to take the torpedo bombers home rather than waste their ordnance on small targets. Shimazaki complied, while Takahashi attacked with his dive bombers, sinking "Sims" and heavily damaging "Neosho". Later that evening, he took part in an attempted night attack on the US carriers. However, the group was jumped by F4Fs before they could find their targets, and nine planes - primarily crewed by division and section leaders - were lost. Shimazaki's group took particularly heavy losses - five planes lost out of nine - but he survived to return to "Zuikaku".