National Geographic: The Battle for Midway Page #6

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Two hours later, as the Yorktown

continues to patch herself up,

a second wave of enemy planes target

the carrier.

Yorktown's fighter pilots scramble

eager to engage the enemy.

Down goes one Japanese torpedo bomber

after another.

But still the enemy comes.

I look out there and

here's this torpedo coming,

and it looks like a brand new nickel

just come shining through the water,

right beneath us. And I said,

Oh, my God, this is it.

And it goes off.

One American carrier is down.

The Japanese carrier Hiryu must

be stopped-fast.

When they find it, Lt. Dick Best

is right there, once again.

And I did look back when I was

far enough out to the west to turn,

and she was aflame,

and burning just the way the ones

in the morning had been.

I felt myself to be the Lord

of creation at the time,

the sense of accomplishment,

and fulfillment of revenge

is so sweet that

I don't think I ever felt anything

as intensely again in all my life.

Caught in the inferno on the Hiryu

is Taisuke Maruyama,

one of the torpedo pilots

who had just crippled the Yorktown.

The maintenance crews and emergency

crews who had tried

to extinguish the fire were injured

by the explosion,

and many lost their legs and hands.

The military doctor was operating

on them on the deck, soaked in blood.

The troops were burnt black,

dead bodies strewn across the deck.

Hiryu, Soryu, Akagi, Kaga.

By the end of the day, all four

Japanese carriers have been destroyed.

Hundreds of young men dead, maimed,

burned, or left to drown.

Twenty-four hours later,

the injured Yorktown is still afloat

and headed home

escorted by the destroyer Hammann.

What nobody sees is the enemy

submarine below the surface

with two sitting ducks in her sights.

Japanese torpedoes split the Hammann

in two, taking 81 men to the bottom.

And mortally wound Yorktown.

For nearly a day, the carrier lingers

on the surface, refusing to die.

Yorktown Radioman Lloyd Childers

is in sick bay, on a nearby ship,

with serious wounds to both legs.

He watches his carrier go down.

This huge ship slowly sank below the

water, the waves,

until it disappeared and we watched it

until it was completely gone.

It's very brutal business.

My other thoughts were that

it's a terrible thing

that so called civilized nations could

do things like that to each other,

convincing me that we're not really

civilized yet.

It is Day 19 of the expedition.

It has been hours since Robert Ballard

sent a robot vehicle down

nearly 17,000 feet

to find the USS Yorktown.

And half a century since Bill Surgi

has seen his carrier.

Ballard has only a left

to find the Yorktown.

After six long hours, the ATV finally

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