Free Republic

Deep-sea explorers scouring the world's oceans for sunken World War II ships are investigating what they believe could be the third ship of seven lost to the Pacific during the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of miles off Midway Atoll, nearly halfway between the United States and Japan, a research vessel is launching underwater robots miles into the abyss to look for warships from the famed Battle of Midway. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have already led the crew of the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese ship the Kaga. This week, the crew is deploying...

The wreck of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Hornet has been discovered in the South Pacific, 77 years after Japanese forces sunk the ship in a fierce battle. The research vessel Petrel, owned by the estate of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, discovered the Hornet three miles under the ocean surface off the Solomon Islands late last month. The Hornet, the last U.S. fleet carrier to be sunk by enemy fire, lost 140 hands under a relentless Japanese air bombing attack at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942. As Imperial Navy surface forces...