For the first time since the loss of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, a remote, robotic expedition has ventured inside the wreck—discovering new reminders of individual and collective valor and answering questions about the ship’s loss and the battle itself.
This April 2025 deep-ocean exploration mission conducted a detailed external documentation of the wreck with high-resolution cameras and sonar mounted on the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) Deep Discoverer and Seirios. We were all official participants in the dives through a live video feed from the ROVs as they hovered over the wreck, with long tethers connecting the robotic vehicles to a ship far above, allowing us to cooperate and also lead the investigation along with other scientists, archaeologists, and historians ashore. We did so via telepresence, with only a few seconds’ delay in the 4K video broadcasted live from more than three miles of water depth.
The ability to be connected to a project, even though it is thousands of miles away, promotes public access and participation and encourages collaboration across scientific disciplines. Real-time video feeds and near-immediate satellite communication means we can play an active role, even when not in the field, to the same degree as if we were on the ship.
The wreck of the Yorktown rests some 17,000 feet below the surface, within the U.S. exclusive economic zone and inside Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a place sacred to native Hawaiians for the exceptional array of natural and cultural resources.
The boundaries of the monument encompass the final resting place of thousands of U.S. and Japanese sailors and airmen who perished during the Battle of Midway, as well as the wrecks of five fleet carriers—the Yorktown, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū, and Sōryū—plus the destroyer USS Hammann (DD-412), the heavy cruiser Mikuma, and nearly 400 aircraft of assorted types. A joint National Geographic/U.S. Navy team led by Dr. Robert Ballard located and dived the Yorktown wreck in May 1998.
The Latest in a Series of Expeditions
In September 1999, an expedition led by David Jourdan and Jeff Morris of Nauticos and the Naval Oceanographic Office located a large piece of wreckage that was conclusively identified as part of the starboard 25-mm gun gallery from the Japanese carrier Kaga. Nearly three decades would pass before an expedition led by Rob Kraft in the research vessel Petrel discovered the wrecks of the Akagi and Kaga in October 2019 as part of an expedition sponsored by the late Paul Allen.
A subsequent mission by the Ocean Exploration Trust returned to Midway on board the exploration vessel Nautilus in 2023 to dive and document each of the three known wrecks from the epic World War II battle. We were all lead scientists in that expedition, some on board, with others remotely from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Ocean Exploration’s Exploration Command Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The latest expedition, undertaken by NOAA Ocean Exploration, deployed the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer to Papahānaumokuākea with research and science partners from other government agencies, including the Naval History and Heritage Command and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, plus nongovernmental organizations, universities, the archaeology firm SEARCH, and the nonprofit Air/Sea Heritage Foundation.
Communicating in real time with the crew on board the ship through satellite-enabled telepresence, we four helped lead the exploratory dives, along with many others from various onshore locations. After extensive planning, two non-disturbance dives were executed on 19 and 20 April 2025, and were the first to explore the carrier’s hangar deck (in a deeply respectful way that did not disturb the wreck), revealing several unexpected discoveries.
A Still-Vivid Map and a Dauntless Discovery
During the dive on 19 April, for the first time ever we were able to completely image an enormous mural that the crew had hand-painted on the starboard bulkhead inside their ship’s #2 elevator shaft. This artwork had been only partially visible in known historic photographs taken when the Yorktown was afloat, and its subject matter, colors, and composition had become the focus of intense speculation. We had reason to suspect it was there, but no idea how well it may have survived the rigors of its long immersion. In 1998, Dr. Ballard’s team had glimpsed it but were unable to access the elevator shaft for a closer inspection and confirmation.
The mural is a vibrant world map tracking the voyages of the ship and is titled “A Chart of the Cruises of the USS Yorktown.” Measuring approximately 42 feet by 12 feet, its motifs highlight the pride the Yorktown’s sailors had in their ship, the global scale of the Yorktown’s activities, and the strategic role the ship played in defending the United States and democracy. While streaked with rivers of rust, it is largely intact and retains its vivid hues.
The 1998, 1999, and 2019 missions to Midway had not encountered any trace of aircraft. The hundreds of planes lost in combat included U.S. and Japanese aircraft shot down by other planes, as well as by antiaircraft fire from ships and shore batteries. A glimpse of a possible wing positioned vertically in the Yorktown’s hangar deck imaged during the 2023 expedition was one of the dive objectives for the 2025 return.
After confirming that this indeed was the starboard wing of a Douglas SBD Dauntless, the 2025 dives also resulted in the first-ever underwater discovery of aircraft that fought in this seminal clash between sea and air power still in situ on the actual Midway battlefield. Previous exploration dives in the area have investigated ships that engaged in the battle; however, those explorers did not see or verify the presence of aircraft or aircraft components. The aircraft that won the battle were absent from the archaeological record until 2025. These dives established beyond a doubt that the wreckage of multiple warplanes remain inside the Yorktown.
The extraordinary discovery of aircraft that fought at Midway initially may seem unsurprising given that reams of after-action reports, photographs, and films from the time record the splashing of scores of planes over the course of the multi-day battle. The massive 825-foot hull of the Yorktown was but a blip on the sonar maps created by the multibeam echosounder on board the Okeanos Explorer. Aircraft are assuredly on the seafloor at the Battle of Midway sites but are impossible to locate from the surface. Much of the Yorktown’s surviving air groups landed aboard other carriers, splashed, or were jettisoned during the efforts to save the carrier. A systematic, comprehensive survey of the seabed with an autonomous underwater vehicle at close range could conduct such a search, but that type of equipment was not available for these dives.
We also reasonably expected to find aircraft, or the remnants closely associated with their carriers. The Petrel’s March 2018 discovery of the USS Lexington (CV-2), lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea, had documented a variety of well-preserved planes scattered on the seabed in close proximity to the wreck, having survived the fire and explosions that sank the vessel. However, no hint of aircraft was seen and documented at the Yorktown site until 2023, when a glimpse into an open side-curtain hangar door revealed a shadowy outline of what appeared to be an airplane wing. Penetrating the sunken ship for a closer look was impossible at that time because of equipment limitations, but the suspected wing—or whatever it was—was the impetus for our plan to be the first mission to go inside the Yorktown.
‘As If Time Itself Was Blurred’
The expedition team achieved that goal on Day One as the ROV drifted up to the Yorktown’s portside hangar deck, where the roller doors are either missing or still in the “up” position, providing a view of the ship’s interior. The wing was indeed there—a spare, ready to repair a damaged aircraft returning from a strike against the enemy fleet and still emblazoned with the bright colors of the U.S. national insignia.
Curiously, the marking was an early/prewar roundel—a red dot inside a white star surrounded by a larger blue circle, which was changed in May 1942 (a few weeks prior to the Battle of Midway) to a simple white star in a blue circle, eliminating the inner red ball to avoid potentially deadly confusion with the similar Hinomaru (“rising sun”) device on Imperial Japanese aircraft. The fact that the Yorktown’s crew had not yet revised the insignia on this piece of equipment further bolstered the supposition that it was part of a spare supply and not used on a plane engaged in combat operations.
Nevertheless, the wing was the first verified trace of aircraft of any kind seen in the Yorktown, and our team was thrilled with this result. However, what followed the next day was the most exciting development and beyond our fondest hopes.
In an extremely challenging maneuver executed by pilots from the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration, the ROV Deep Discoverer descended into the Yorktown’s hangar deck by means of the #3 elevator shaft. For us, contemplating the scene as wisps of sediment mimicked drifting smoke to create an almost battle-like atmosphere, it was as if time itself was blurred. Deftly avoiding several entanglement hazards, the ROV cameras soon revealed the jumbled wreckage of at least three Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers resting in the aft starboard quarter of the elevator well.
We found that one of the planes, likely part of the Yorktown’s reserve force on the first morning of the battle, was still fully armed, lying inverted with a bomb secured in the release cradle. This may be an aircraft noted in Captain Elliot Buckmaster’s after-action report as “one Yorktown plane fueled and armed with a 1,000-pound bomb.”
Another plane, with the figures “B-5” boldly legible on its fuselage, is an SBD-3 (BuNo 4581) assigned to Bombing Squadron Six (VB-6) of the USS Enterprise (CV-6). This Dauntless had executed a daring dive-bombing attack run on the Kaga as part of a devastating sortie that pummeled and sank that carrier along with the Japanese flagship Akagi. It is more than a rare (for now) archaeological survivor of the larger battle—it is an aircraft whose crew flew into the heart of the enemy fleet and helped take the Kaga out of the fight.
Records show that, in the chaos of combat, the Yorktown recovered two Enterprise aircraft from VB-6 that had been severely damaged in the attack on the Kaga. These refugee planes were moved down to the hangar deck and later set afire by one of three enemy bombs that struck the Yorktown. Unfortunately, the archival reports were vague on the specific identity of the aircraft involved, which temporarily frustrated research to determine definitively if 6-B-5 was one of the two Enterprise dive bombers lost with her sister ship.
But then, three days after the dive concluded, Thomas Moore, one of thousands of people who watched the exploration live online, was able to close the loop, pointing out that the pilot of 6-B-5, Naval Reserve Lieutenant (junior grade) Wilbur E. Roberts, is listed in the muster role of survivors rescued from the Yorktown. The sharp-eyed Moore, who is the grandson of Yorktown crewman James Mack Moore, also noted features on another wing fragment the team had located forward of #3 elevator that are consistent with a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter (probably from pre-battle replacement stocks). The team also sighted another pair (or potentially folded set) of wings in the hangar deck forward of elevator #2, which likely were spares for a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator torpedo bomber—meaning that fragments of all three major U.S. carrier-based naval aircraft are represented at the Yorktown wreck site.
The Curious Case of the Car
Exploration often provides surprises. During the final minutes of the 19 April dive, we noticed the unexpected, yet unmistakable, outline of an automobile while peering into the aft hangar deck from the port side of the Yorktown. The team on board the Okeanos Explorer and contributors ashore analyzed diagnostic features of the vehicle observed during the follow-up 20 April dive and tentatively identified the car as a 1941 Ford Super Deluxe “Woody” in black. With “SHIP SERVICE ___ NAVY” written on a placard attached to its front bumper, this car likely was used for Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, Captain Elliott Buckmaster, or other ship crew to conduct business while the Yorktown was in port. It likely had made the voyage to the Coral Sea, survived and returned to Pearl Harbor, and then remained on board for Midway.
Why, though, did the car remain stowed in the hangar deck throughout the frenzied 48-hour repair period in Pearl Harbor, when the ship’s officers knew it was heading into battle off Midway? During the valiant efforts to correct the Yorktown’s dangerous list, why too wasn’t this car jettisoned like the antiaircraft guns and some of the aircraft? Did this automobile carry any particular importance to crew and officers who hoped it could be saved?
The two days of diving also extensively explored the exterior of the sunken ship. On our first approach, the ROV moved across a seabed that has been visibly disturbed by the impact of the Yorktown’s massive hull. Blocks of mud and clay, thrust up and tumbled, surround the wreck. Scattered ship debris, machinery, and equipment lie about, including an upright airplane cart and displaced plates from one of the aerial torpedo hits scored by the Hiryū’s B5N “Kate” squadron on 4 June 1942. The destruction wrought by these Type 91 weapons is extensive; as the 1942 post-battle report of loss noted, they struck 30 seconds apart well below the waterline, where the damage could not be inspected, especially with the later loss of the carrier.
The after-action report speculated that “it is quite possible that the skin was destroyed for about 20 feet vertically and 20 to 30 feet horizontally.” The sinking of the Yorktown after being struck on the opposite side by two additional torpedoes fired from the submarine I-168 left the wreck heeled hard to starboard on the seabed, hiding her fatal wounds. But as we approached the hull on the first dive, we could see that the initial injuries inflicted by the Hiryu’s torpedo planes on the port side were exposed. It is a scene of twisted ruin, extending in area closely to the wartime estimate of the damage. In a Naval History article, David Lee Bergeron opined that the explosive shocks meant “the hastily repaired 24-foot seam on her shell [inflicted at the Battle of the Coral Sea] likely reopened,” and he was right. (See “Fighting for Survival,” December 2019, pp. 14–21.) We found that the seam is indeed open, rivets sheared off, leaving empty holes that would have allowed more water to pour inside the battered ship.
Another focus of our dives was to examine the area of the stack, which, as captured in iconic combat camera images from the battle, was set aflame by a bomb hit that pierced the flight deck and exploded in the uptakes, starting intense fires that sent billowing clouds of black smoke rising into the sky. The dramatic appearance of the stack—with its after-most intake shattered and lying in pieces—is defined by its outer skin, which has the appearance of having bubbled as paint and some of the metal sloughed off under extreme heat. If so, this was the result of the intense fires that came up through the intakes—as the after-action report stated, “The paint caught fire and flaked off in patches, starting other fires wherever this burning paint fell.” Something naval historian Chuck Haberlein noted during the dive was that this effect was like a creosote fire inside a chimney, burning with intensity.
Illumination in the Eternal Darkness
There were many moments like this one where we felt again the near blurring of time on this startling well-preserved wreck, as our ROV lights illuminated the eternal darkness of the deep sea. Revealed were tableaux that bore silent witness to scenes familiar from photos, related in post-battle reports, or shared through the intimate reminiscences of survivors. As we explored the flight deck by the #2 elevator and paused the ROV over the jagged hole blasted by a 550-pound bomb hit, our electronic gaze fell in a direct line with Mount #4 and its 1.1-inch/75-caliber antiaircraft gun. From this perspective, we realized we beheld the same vista, decades later, as a powerfully moving period photograph showing Navy corpsmen tending to their fallen comrades at the same spot. It was a humbling moment.
We also were often reminded of the heroic work performed by the ship’s damage-control parties, from the crystal-clear view of an intact gauge on an American LaFrance shipboard firefighting system, through the unambiguous evidence of the cutting and unbolting of shields to allow dumping heavy guns off the galleries of the port side in an attempt to correct the ship’s severe list after the aerial torpedo hits.
Another moment was when the ROV paused at a single .50-caliber machine gun mount on the aft port boat well, which was reached and fired to alert nearby destroyers that two survivors, thought dead, were still on board. The mortally wounded survivor—who came to, climbed out of the sick bay over three levels on canted ladders, and fired that gun—was very much in all our thoughts as we approached that very weapon and Chuck Haberlein told his story.
This mission, along with many others, was set in motion a decade ago during a series of planning workshops to select the priorities for Pacific Ocean exploration. This expedition was made possible through the contributions of partners including NOAA Exploration; the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration; NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aircraft Operations; the officers and crew of the Okeanos Explorer, including Sam Cuellar (expedition coordinator) and Sara Kahanamoku-Meyer and Brian Kennedy (science leads); NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries; the Naval History and Heritage Command; SEARCH; the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation; the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency; Nauticos; AzulMar Research; Ocean Networks Canada; the Ocean Exploration Trust; and talented historians Anthony Tully, Jonathan Parshall, and Chuck Haberlein.
The scientific results and conclusions, as well as any views expressed herein, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or the Department of Commerce.
