Posted on 10/18/2019 11:10:41 AM PDT by DFG
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 equipment to investigate what could be another.
Historians consider the Battle of Midway an essential victory for the U.S. and a key turning point in WWII.
Frank Thompson, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C., who is onboard the Petrel said: 'We read about the battles, we know what happened. But when you see these wrecks on the bottom of the ocean and everything, you kind of get a feel for what the real price is for war.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Subplot was Charleton Heston’s character being the father of a young butterbar officer who was dating a Japanese girl who, along with her family, were in an internment camp.
thank you. That is the rest of the story I didn’t know.
I don’t understand the lure of finding ships miles deep in the sea. The cost is monumental and when you get there all you have is a picture of a wreck.
I know we raid tombs in the name of archeology and discovering secrets of ancient peoples. (Whatever is found, if we don’t understand it or cant read the strange maarkingsm it is usually labeled as religious rites
But a battleship picture from two miles deep holds my attention for a few seconds, less time than it takes to type this rant. Why not just do a computer creation and I’ll be just as satisfied.
Pox is correct, the upper photograph of an intact Kaga is a file photograph they are using to compare to what they are seeing through the cameras.
In the video is a few seconds of film that shows the Kaga sitting upright on the ocean floor, but with its flight deck completely gone. She was head by at least 4 bombs from SBD Dauntless dive bomber which set the deck and planes on it and in the hanger under it on fire.
Consider this underwater archaeology. One can see what the ships look like after they were sunk and see the amount of damage done. I’m a military historian and find this as interesting as I find in walking land battlefields.
And how do we do a computer recreation of how a sunken vessel looks, if we have no pictures of it on which to base the computer recreation. For example, the Kaga is sitting upright and the hull is intact from stem to stern; whereas the Bismarck rolled over and is on the floor bottom up and the gun turrets scattered near it.
This effort and the Research Vessel Petrel are fully funded by the estate of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RV_Petrel
And these warships are treated as war graves and are NOT raided by the RV Petrel. And fortunately are too deep for others to try and recover them, as has been done with some WWI and WWII ships sunk in shallower depths.
Real super duper and nano second per pulse hi-frequency with mil paint thickness resolution.
I’ll have to re-watch “the Battle of Midway” to see if it includes the US submarine sending the first notice of locating the Japanese fleet. The morning of the battle, a PBY crew made the first sighting of the carriers.
What you recall of the SBD’s following the lone destroyer is correct, but that was after the initial location sent by the PBY and then the intercept point was mis-calculated by one of the carrier CIC’s. Cdr Wade McCluskey led the dive bombers and followed the Jap destroyer that he figured was heading to rejoin its main fleet.
This Wikipedia article is quite accurate about the battle of Midway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
The new movie coming out. Woody Harrelson. High tech explosions out of a 360 Xbox. I dunno. Hopefully it’s accurate history.
I think the first PBY contact was with the invasion fleet, not the carrier battle group. There was great hesitation about what to do — whether to launch or hold back. These were incredible gambles.
Not necessarily arguing your point. PBY’s were used extensively during the battle to both reconnoiter and attack.
Movie looks good however it looks like it includes the battle of Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle raids. Not bad but both are their own stories.
I can’t find much about this from Midway but what little I can find has some Japanese planes needing to ditch as all of their carriers were gone.
No problem. My main point of the post was to correct the person to whom I was replying that Cdr. McCluskey following the destroyer to the carriers came many hours after the initial sighting of the Jap fleet, which gave Fletcher an initial heading to launch his strike force toward.
Well they all lead to Midway. Just as long as they don’t spend too long on them.
I am just about certain it will be better than that awful Pearl Harbor.
There’s a song that says it all about that movie;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=p9jS4gppIFs
The Japanese kept referring to attacking "AF" and there was some disagreement among the American codebreakers as to it's identity.
Someone got the brainstorm to have Midway transmit an uncoded message that it's desalinization plant had broken down.
Soon there was a Japanese message saying that "AF's" desalinization plant was out of order.
Gotta love it. Crafty Americans.
Japanese carriers did not have nitrogen blanketing systems for the avgas storage tanks, nor could they purge their piping systems with nitrogen. This was a fatal design flaw in their carriers. Our carriers could fill avgas fuel lines with nitrogen and blanket the avgas fuel tanks with nitrogen. Also at Midway, the Japanese did not strike bombs below to magazines when rearming their aircraft with torpedoes. These two factors resulted in 3 of their carriers being destroyed by bomb hits that would not have not seriously damaged an American carrier.
that was Coral Sea. Both Shokaku and Zuikaku were damaged in the battle and ordered back to Japan for repairs. They were not available for the Midway operation.
My old man was on Yorktown during Midway. He was overjoyed when the NatGeo issue showed photos of the Yorktown on the bottom.
Was he on Yorktown at the Coral Sea battle? We turned the Japanese back but they lost a light carrier. We lost the Lexington and Yorktown was badly damaged. The fact that Yorktown was at Midway is a tribute to the sailors and yardbirds at Pearl Harbor. The loss’s the US took in torpedo planes at Midway is a heartbreaker. The fact that your dad survived is a great achievement. A good man in harms way.
He was a machinist mate on Yorktown. He had been on the ship since mid 1940. When the Captain realized she was not going to sink from her initial damage, he ordered the engineers back on board to get her on an even keel and power restored. My dad was one of the snipes that went back on board. He was in one of the engine rooms when the Japanese torpedoed her. He was not injured. Had Yorktown not been torpedoed, she would have been saves. They had put out the fires, restored some power, and were getting ready to get her underway. He finished the war on USS West Virginia.
Thanks for the story!
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