National Geographic EXPLORER Presents The Battle for Midway

“She was a mass of flames from bow to stern, with tremendous eruptions of smoke and blasts of flames coming up every four to five seconds,” U.S. veteran Dick Best recalls in “The Battle for Midway,” premiering on National Geographic EXPLORER Wednesday, April 14 at 8:05 p.m. (ET), exclusively on TBS Superstation. This powerful new film, narrated by Peter Coyote, joins deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard and battle veterans in the Pacific Ocean on a quest to find the remains of the U.S.S. Yorktown and four Japanese carriers, along the way remembering the human drama and strategic military clash that was the Battle of Midway.

Ballard (best known for having found the R.M.S. Titanic in 1985) sets off on the National Geographic Midway Expedition in May 1998. In the new film his search is juxtaposed with remarkable eye-opening footage of a brutal and bloody battle. Producers Peter Schnall and Brian Breger found rarely seen color shots taken by Hollywood director John Ford, documentary footage of the fleets in action and interviewed veterans who survived to tell the story of one of the greatest naval battles of WWII.

“This is like going to Gettysburg,” said Ballard. “This is like going to Bull Run or Normandy. This is a great chapter in human history—tragic in many ways—that was played out on the stage. We’re on the stage right now.”

With Ballard on this momentous pilgrimage are four veterans of the battle, Americans Bill Surgi and Harry Ferrier, and two Japanese, Haruo Yoshino and Yuji Akamatsu. Each was just a young man in 1942. Each enlisted to fight for the glory of their nation. Each experienced the terror of being targeted and fired upon by the enemy. Now in their 70s, they have joined Ballard to revisit a turning point in their lives. On an exploration for sunken ships, the men meet again, though this time as respectful comrades.

Funded in part by Newport News Shipbuilding, the same company that built the original Yorktown, the National Geographic Midway Expedition had only four weeks to find the lost ships. A race against time, the program takes viewers through the tense moments of Ballard’s calculated mission, interchanging between the labored hours in search of the Midway ship graveyard to the tense minutes leading up to and during the fateful battle.

Viewers share in the moments when American code breakers cracked the Japanese radio transmissions that called for a major strike against the already weakened U.S. Navy barely six months after Pearl Harbor. The U.S. forces went into Midway as the underdogs, their key weapon being this strategic knowledge that allowed an ambush of the Japanese Navy.

Perhaps most incredible, “The Battle for Midway” features spectacular color footage that renowned director John Ford took on his 16-mm camera of the fierce assault. “I was doing all right till I had a blast of shrapnel that knocked me out. I was wounded pretty badly there, however I managed to come to long enough to finish the job,” recalled the Navy reservist after having survived the battle.

Ballard’s mission—to find the remains of the U.S.S. Yorktown and four Japanese carriers—was almost impossible because his search was based almost entirely on eyewitness accounts scrawled in the heat of the battle more than 50 years ago. The huge search area and the size of the sunken vessels only added to the challenge. New advanced technology for deep-sea exploration played a major role on the expedition. Ballard and his crew used the University of Hawaii’s towed search system, the MR-1, to collect digital bathymetry (water depth) and acoustic imagery, allowing them to create precise charts of the sea floor. An Advanced Tethered Vehicle (ATV), a self-contained remotely operated submersible vehicle, made the dives to photograph and explore the wreckage.

Though the equipment was extremely sophisticated, several problems occurred, beginning when the ATV imploded 400 feet (122 meters) from the bottom of the ocean floor. It is one of many gripping moments in “The Battle for Midway,” and through such trials, the veterans, who looked on, could only hope each mechanical crisis wouldn’t mean the end of the mission. With Ballard at the helm, perseverance, patience, expertise and gut instinct led them to the sunken treasure—an amazingly intact Yorktown resting upright and peaceful at 16,650 feet (5,075 meters) or about three miles (5 kilometers) below the ocean surface, nearly one mile (1.6 kilometers) deeper than where the Titanic was discovered.

Midway was more than another fight in a long war. “This is the U.S. Navy at its finest hour,” noted Ballard. It was a battle that shaped history and shaped lives as young men proudly risked everything to serve their country and protect what they held dear. Now “The Battle for Midway” completes a story begun some 56 years ago at a small Pacific island outpost.

EXPLORER Host Boyd Matson adds another bit of historic insight and appreciation as he visits the birthplace of the U.S.S. Yorktown. Matson filmed the host segments at Newport News Shipbuilding, where the great carrier’s keel was laid in 1934.

In addition, the Battle of Midway, as told by some of its survivors, will be the subject of a cover story in the upcoming April issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine, illustrated by renowned underwater photographer David Doubilet. A sidebar by Ballard will chronicle his team’s discovery of the Yorktown.

TBS Superstation, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.’s flagship network seen in more than 75 million households, is watched by more people than any other cable network and has been for 22 consecutive years. The Superstation features popular movies, original programming, outstanding sports and favorite comedies. The Superstation’s Web site is located at http://TBSsuperstation.com.