Video editors: Vivek Gupta and Purnendu Pritam
Vulcan Inc's director of undersea operations Rob Kraft and Naval History and Heritage Command historian Frank Thompson discovered a World War II era Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi under Pacific ocean. The carrier had went down in the historic ‘Battle of Midway’.
Kraft and Thomson reviewed the high frequency sonar images of the warship and after confirming it’s dimensions and location, came to a conclusion that it was Akagi indeed.
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 on Sunday (20 October) morning.
The first scan used low-resolution sonar, so the crew sent their AUV back to get higher-quality images. The vessel is sitting among a pile of debris and the ground around the warship is clearly disturbed by the impact of it hitting the seafloor.
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 WWII.
The battle was fought between American and Japanese aircraft carriers and warplanes about 200 miles (320 kilometers) 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 2,000 Japanese and 300 Americans died.
(With inputs from AP)
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