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 victory for the U.S. 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. “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. The find comes after the discovery of another Japanese carrier, the Kaga, last week. “She’s sitting upright on her keel, we can see the bow, we can see the stern clearly, you can see some of the gun emplacements on there, you can see that some of the flight deck is also torn up and missing so you can actually look right into where the flight deck would be,” Kraft said.
