UH team locates
Yorktown’s grave

The carrier was sunk during
the Battle of Midway

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

A team of University of Hawaii scientists returned to the islands this weekend confident that they have found the Pacific gravesite of the only U.S. carrier sunk during the Battle of Midway more than half a century ago.

The group headed by Bruce Appelgate, director of field operations for the UH's Hawaii Mapping Group, spent the past two weeks scanning the floor of the Pacific Ocean with specially built sonar scanners looking for the final resting place of the USS Yorktown -- sunk on June 7, 1942, during the decisive Battle of Midway.

"We found some pretty juicy-looking targets," Appelgate said, describing an area about six hours north of Midway Atoll, about 1,250 miles west-northwest of Honolulu.

He described the area where the Yorktown may be located as 15 miles long and 12 miles wide. Attempts will be made this week to probe the ocean's depths using a special Navy submersible craft, dubbed the ATV, rigged with video cameras and lights.

But after more than three days of searching another area, he isn't very optimistic the four Japanese carriers sunk during the same World War II battle can be located.

The area where the Japanese carriers are believed to have gone down is very mountainous, Appelgate said. "The only way to adequately search that area would be to systematically drive back and forth over the area, and that would take a lot of time."

The search ran into trouble on several occasions. On May 6, the Navy's ATV lost power as it was being lowered to the sea floor because of a cracked seal. About one third of the way down at a depth of 5,500 feet, the submersible had to be hauled back up and the tether cord replaced.

Two days later, the Navy crew radioed its San Diego headquarters that two 17-inch glass instrument packages containing the power source for the expedition's underwater lights imploded under extreme pressure.

However, the damage was repaired once the submersible was brought back to the surface.

The search for the 19,800-ton Yorktown is the sixth time Robert Ballard, best know for discovering the Titanic; is working with the Navy and the National Geographic.

The Yorktown's resting place lies three miles down, about a mile deeper than where the Titanic lies in the Atlantic, making this exploratory expedition one of the deepest dives on record.

Moving like a lawn mower, the 260-foot long chartered vessel, the Laney Chouest, dragged the UH's torpedo-shaped MR-1 sonar scanning device 180 miles northeast of Midway looking for a 827-foot long blip on the ocean floor.

Using historical data Ballard chose a rectangular search area about 10 miles wide and 20 miles long. The search area was later modified into a circle with deep water ocean transponders anchored to the ocean bottom by weights. The transponders send out signals used by the crew to pinpoint target areas.

Navigating by global positioning system satellites, the Hawaii Mapping Group 13-foot long MR-1 transmitted sonar signals to the ocean floor 17,000 feet below. The sounds, converted to images, were transformed into data printed on a chart of the ocean bottom.

Manning the University of Hawaii's computer monitors aboard the Laney Chouest were Appelgate, Todd Erickson, Steven Tottori, Karen Sender and Nathan Becker. Their job was to sift through the data looking for blips on the ocean floor.

Besides the Yorktown, Ballard and his crew are trying to find and photograph the wrecks of four Japanese aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga and Soryu -- veterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 -- and the Hiryu.

Ballard, who describes himself as a high-tech, modern day Captain Nemo, said there will be no attempts to try to raise any of the wrecks. "We don't believe in taking things from these sites," he said in a National Geographic interview. "It's like removing belt buckles from the Arizona in Pearl Harbor."

Federal law probits the removal of any portion of a Navy wreck. In addition, the Japanese government has asked that no photographs be taken of any human remains found on the four Japanese carriers.

Besides filming the Yorktown for a 1999 television special, National Geographic Society crews have spent time at Pearl Harbor gathering footage of the room where Navy cryptanalysts broke the Japanese code which revealed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto's plan to assault Midway and the Aleutian Islands.

The Japanese had hoped to lure the Americans to the Aleutians, leaving Midway exposed and vulnerable to Japanese attack and a stepping stone to the invasion of Hawaii.