And so it was an incredible turning of events—as Tim said, the U.S. Navy’s finest hour. Actually, it was the U.S. Navy’s finest half hour. It was all done in less than a half an hour—going from a tremendous pounding, where it looked like we were going to be obliterated and suffer yet another defeat, to then turning the tide of war and taking out their four carriers. But the focus of our expedition, which I want to now concentrate on, was the Yorktown.

The Yorktown was this great warrior who had stood its ground in the Battle of the Coral Sea, had limped back into Pearl, turned itself around, and sprinted out to the battlefield of Midway to join the Hornet and the Enterprise. And it was the pilots, striking from those carriers and from the Yorktown that played such a critical role in our history. But all things did not go well.

Although we had sunk three of their carriers at this point, the Hiryu had escaped detection to the north under cloud cover, it was able, finally, to get off a strike, and its target was the Yorktown. And it was able to sustain a successful attack. Although we took out most of their planes on that attack, they were still able to put in some fatal hits on the Yorktown. Initially, they abandoned ship. They thought the ship was going to be lost, and you can see the sailors pouring down the sides of the ship to the awaiting destroyer escorts who were picking up the survivors. But then they realized that she wasn’t going to sink.

Then they began the chore of removing her from the battlefield, taking her under tow and pulling her back towards Pearl for yet another miraculous rising of a phoenix from the ashes of war. And they began to save her again. They began to control her list, began to control her fire. The fire control capabilities were just remarkable at this point, certainly superior to what sunk the Japanese aircraft carriers, with all their weapons on the decks. But they began to look optimistic that they were going to be able to save the Yorktown. As she was being withdrawn from the battlefield. The Hiryu was finally sunk, but she [the Yorktown] had a strong list to starboard as the destroyer Hammann came along side and began helping in trying to save her.

They began jettisoning everything they could jettison: one of her big anchors on the port side, different machinery, aircraft—whatever they could throw overboard to lighten her load to try to right her and save her. But then a Japanese submarine snuck in under the destroyer escort and fired a four-torpedo salvo. One missed, one hit the Hammann directly tied up against the Yorktown, and two struck fatal blows into the Yorktown. The Hammann broke in half, broke her back, and sank immediately, with great losses. Ironically, one of the sailors the captain tried to save and bring to the surface—when they found him, he had in his arms a dead sailor by the name of Robert Ballard, which is quite amazing. So anyway, the Hammann went down like a stone and exploded again on her way down, and now the Yorktown was dead in the water and taking on water. It was a fatal, final attack on her, and she could not sustain that. And finally, the next day, she rolled over, and this is the last shot they have of the Yorktown, upside down on her fatal plunge. And that’s where our expedition begins.