A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway.
Vulcan Inc's director of undersea operations, Rob Kraft, said a review of sonar data captured on Sunday shows what could be either the Japanese carrier Akagi or the Soryu resting in nearly 5,490 metres (18,000 feet) of water in the Pacific Ocean more than 2,090 kilometres (1,300 miles) northwest of Pearl Harbor.
Researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out overnight collecting data and the image of a warship appeared in the first set of readings on Sunday morning.
To confirm exactly which ship they have found, the crew will deploy the AUV on another eight-hour mission where it will capture high-resolution sonar images of the site. The initial readings were captured using lower resolution sonar. The high-resolution scans will allow the crew to measure the ship and confirm its identity.
