Searchers find sunken Japanese aircraft carriers
A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships have found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway.
Vulcan Inc.’s director of undersea operations Rob Kraft and Naval History and Heritage Command historian Frank Thompson reviewed high frequency sonar images of the warship yesterday and say that it’s dimensions and location mean it has to be the carrier Akagi.
The Akagi was found in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument resting in nearly 5490 metres of water more than 2090km northwest of Pearl Harbor.
The researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out overnight collecting data, and the image of a warship appeared in the first set of readings yesterday morning.
The find comes on the heels of the discovery of another Japanese carrier, the Kaga, last week.
‘‘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,’’ said Frank Thompson, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC, who is onboard the Petrel. ‘‘You see the damage these things took, and it’s humbling to watch some of the video of these vessels because they’re war graves.’’
Sonar images of the Kaga show the bow of the heavy carrier hit the seafloor at a high rate of speed, scattering debris and leaving an impact crater that looks as if an explosion occurred in the ocean. The front of the vessel is buried in mud and sediment after nose-diving about 4.8km to the bottom.
The US bombs that struck the Kaga caused a massive fire that left it charred, but the ship stayed mostly together. Its guns, some still intact, stick out the side.
Until now, only one of the seven ships that went down in the June 1942 air and sea battle – five Japanese vessels and two American been located.
The crew of the research vessel Petrel is hoping to find and survey all lost ships from the 1942 Battle of Midway, which historians consider a pivotal fight for the US in the Pacific during World War II.
The battle was fought between American and Japanese aircraft carriers and warplanes about 320km off Midway Atoll, a former military installation that the Japanese hoped to capture in a surprise attack.
The US, however, intercepted Japanese communications about the strike and were waiting when they arrived.
More than 2000 Japanese and 300 Americans died. – had