Just weeks before WW2 ends, USS Indianapolis is violently sunk. 900 men go in the water, but no one searches for them. For 5 days they fight off exposure and shark attacks. It is the worst disaster at sea in U.S. Naval history.
Undersea explorers aboard the research vessel Petrel detect a wreck off the coast of the Philippines that fits the profile of an American destroyer. Could it be the wreck of the USS Ward, the ship that fired America's first shot of WW2 at Pearl Harbor?
The USS Lexington birthed naval aviation and was victorious in the first carrier-to-carrier battle during WWII. Hours later she erupted in flames due to enemy fire. 80 years later, Petrel hopes to spot the wreck and storied planes that went down with her.
The Petrel team searches for the American aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The Doolittle Raid was launched off her deck to avenge Pearl Harbor. But six months later, the ship's life is cut short when the Hornet sails into a hornet's nest of Japanese ships.
What happened aboard the USS Juneau would inspire the film 'Saving Private Ryan'. Five brothers were lost, but not all perished when the ship went down. At least one brother was among scores of men stranded at sea for 8 horrifying days.
In one night, over 1000 Allied sailors died when 4 cruisers went down in flames. They rest in a graveyard littered with so many ships that it has become known as Iron Bottom Sound. Petrel undertakes a 'needle in the haystack' search to find the 4 ships.
Rob Kraft is hunting for Musashi, the biggest battleship ever built and considered to be unsinkable by the Japanese. How did the US Navy sink this 'indestructible' ship? And why did she end up in 10,000 pieces on the seafloor?
When research vessel Petrel picks up what they believe to be the debris trail of the USS Johnston, they are about 8,000 feet deeper than the Titanic wreck. A manned submersible is deployed, but will it put eyes on the deepest shipwreck in the world?
