analysts decoded Japanese messages and baited their enemy into revealing its plan.Īs Japanese warplanes started bombing the military installation at Midway Atoll, a tiny group of islands about 1,300 miles (2,090 kilometers) northwest of Honolulu, U.S. The attack from the Japanese Imperial Navy was meant to be a surprise, a strike that would give Japan a strategic advantage in the Pacific. This is the first time it has looked for warships from the Battle of Midway, which took place six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and left more than 2,000 Japanese and 300 Americans dead. military gravesites, and their exact coordinates are kept secret. It is illegal to otherwise disturb the underwater U.S. Navy and other officials around the world to find and document sunken ships. For years, the crew of the 250-foot (76-meter) Petrel has worked with the U.S. The expedition is an effort started by the late Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. 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 - had been located. Its guns, some still intact, stick out the side. bombs that struck the Kaga caused a massive fire that left it charred, but the ship stayed mostly together. The front of the vessel is buried in mud and sediment after nose-diving about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) to the bottom. 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. “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.” 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, D.C., who is onboard the Petrel. “We read about the battles, we know what happened. Historians consider the Battle of Midway an essential U.S. This week, the crew is deploying equipment to investigate what could be another. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands already have led the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga. 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. MIDWAY ATOLL, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands - Deep-sea explorers scouring the world’s oceans for sunken World War II ships are focusing in on debris fields deep in the Pacific, in an area where one of the most decisive battles of the time took place.
0 kommentar(er)
