NARRATOR: Pearl Harbor is just the beginning.
In the terrifying weeks after Japan's surprise attack,
more shocking blows fall upon the Allies,
as a wave of terror spreads across the Pacific,
leaving behind a tragic trail of wreckage
on the ocean floor.
Imagine if we could empty the oceans,
letting the water drain away to reveal
the secrets on the sea floor.
Now, we can.
Using accurate data and astonishing technology
to bring light once again to a lost world.
This time...what can a shattered wreck in the South China Sea reveal
about the technical brilliance of the Japanese navy?
ANTHONY: The result was complete collapse of half
of the ship's systems from a single blow.
NARRATOR: What secret weapon sends this mighty battleship down?
OSAMU: If you can't see it coming, how do you avoid it?
Well, the answer is you don't.
NARRATOR: And why does this sleepy Australian port become a second Pearl Harbor?
[theme music plays].
December 1941.
The empire of Japan is on the march.
It already holds parts of China.
Now it targets the regions beyond, sparking conflict with America and her allies.
Including Great Britain.
From the fortress of Singapore,
the Royal Navy dominates the South China Seas.
Can the ruins of a mighty battleship reveal just how badly the British misjudged
the power of their new enemy?
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,
Winston Churchill worries that Japan might invade
the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya,
areas rich in the resources
that Japan badly needs, especially oil.
Seeing the imminent threat, the Royal Navy mobilizes a battle group of six powerful
war ships, and call it Force Z.
Its mission is to head north east from Singapore, on the lookout for Japanese invaders.
Leading the convoy is a brand new battleship, HMS Prince of Wales.
Churchill believes that her mere presence will be enough to deter the enemy.
ERIC: Prince of Wales was a state of the art battleship, very heavily protected.
The ship with its armor was pretty immune to attack.
ROD: The battleship was the supreme embodiment of
a nation's sea power and majesty.
If you saw Prince of Wales coming over the horizon, you knew you were in big trouble.
NARRATOR: Armed with ten 14 inch main guns, plus 16 secondary guns and
anti-aircraft capability, the Prince of Wales is lethal to targets at sea,
on land and in the air.
She's also well protected.
Armor shields the deck, and an additional 15 inch thick belt surrounds her massive hull.
Force Z is 50 miles east of British Malaya,
when it encounters Japanese naval units for the first time.
But by early afternoon the following day,
the Prince of Wales is at the bottom of the South China Sea,
and Britannia's rule over these waters is over.
Decades later, diver Rod MacDonald is part of a military expedition
to research what happened here.
ROD: My role in this expedition is basically to try and work out
exactly why the wreck sank.
When this vessel was built, it was a state of the art battleship.
NARRATOR: The location of the wreck is well known.
But her condition has not been revealed in such detail before.
Over 200 feet down, the mighty Prince of Wales,
silent on the sea floor.
There are areas of serious damage.
Over weeks, the divers scour the wreck, gathering data.
And as the waters roll back,
light shines for the first time in almost 80 years
on HMS Prince of Wales.
It's mostly intact,
but its starboard side is punctured by three massive holes.
From their position below the water line, they look like torpedo strikes.
Elsewhere on the wreck, further details of her final battle.
The smaller 5.25 gun turrets on the starboard side are all aimed downwards.
As the British sailors fight to defend their ship, what are they shooting at?
The answer may lie with another ship, the USS North Carolina.
A battleship built to similar specifications.
It survived its own deadly encounters with the Japanese.
Naval historian Anthony Tully believes this battleship holds clues
about the downfall of its British cousin.
ANTHONY: Behind us here, the North Carolina's secondary battery,
a five inch 38 caliber guns.
The Prince of Wales had eight five inch mounts of similar size.
These guns were trained low on the horizontal.
They're not elevated like this, but rather like this.
NARRATOR: Guns trained low couldn't hit distant ships.
And they aren't for taking on submarines.
Tully believes it can only mean one thing, air attack.
ANTHONY: So they're trying to track the planes 'cause the Japanese aircraft were
attacking at wave top level and they had to lower them to this level to even have a
chance of hitting them.
NARRATOR: 5.2 inch guns are formidable against attacking aircraft,
but the armor belted hull is the Prince of Wales ultimate defense,
impervious to most gun fire and torpedoes.
ERIC: If any ship would be able to shrug off an air attack,
it was Prince of Wales.
ROD: No battleship had been sunk in action in the open sea.
The big guns of battleship were the only things
that could take out another battleship.
NARRATOR: Despite all this protection,
somehow the Japanese managed to break through.
The drained wreck exposes more clues.
The holes reveal whatever hit this hull created massive damage,
much bigger than damage caused by a typical torpedo of the day.
It points to one thing, a new Japanese wonder weapon.
The type 91 torpedo.
OSAMU: The standard torpedo can break the surface and
run in an erratic directionthat you don't intend it to go.
But the Japanese had pretty much worked the bugs out of their torpedoes.
NARRATOR: The Japanese military used the 91, with devastating effect,
for the first time just days earlier at Pearl Harbor.
OSAMU: It came as a nasty surprise to the Allies.
The war head was quite powerful compared to other contemporary torpedoes.
It could be released at a higher altitude, at a longer distance from the target,
at higher speed.
These innovations made it a revolutionary version of an aerial torpedo.
NARRATOR: The type 91 torpedo is indeed revolutionary.
At its nose is a warhead carrying a payloads of 450 pounds of explosive.
Wooden stabilizers on its tail fins guide it into the water.
On entering, the fins snap off.
Then an internal depth meter keeps the missile from rolling off target,
and at a steady 20 feet below the surface.
But if the torpedo was at this depth, it should have hit the ship right in the armor belt.
ROD: If any of these torpedoes had hit the armor belt,
Prince of Wales would have survived unscathed.
NARRATOR: But the damage on the wreck is way below the armor...
On the ship's soft underbelly.
How did the Japanese 91s strike so low?
NARRATOR: The battleship HMS Prince of Wales is sunk
while patrolling the South China Sea.
Japanese aerial torpedoes, designed to strike at precisely 20 feet below
the water line, have pierced the battleship.
But her hull is supposed to be impenetrable.
Looking at what remains of the battered wreck, the hull damage shows torpedoes strike
three times on the starboard side,
outside the protective armor belt and below the
normal operating depth of the type 91.
And there's another hole on the port side, close to the stern.
Can this torpedo strike explain the ship's fate?
The damage at the stern attracts the attention of naval historian Anthony Tully.
He's on board the USS North Carolina, a ship with similar
design features to the Prince of Wales.
ANTHONY: This is the propeller shaft we're seeing.
If you were standing right here, it would be spinning like crazy.
Because of the torpedo hit, you had a bent shaft rotating out of, out of alignment.
NARRATOR: The bent shaft causes a dangerous chain reaction.
A ship's hull is divided into partitions known as bulkheads.
These add strength and can be sealed off to contain water if flooding occurs.
They are what allow a warship to take a hit but stay afloat.
Running through these bulkheads are the ship's four propeller shafts.
A damaged but still rotating shaft would rupture the
bulkhead seals all along its length.
This would allow water to flood the engine room, deep in the center of the ship.
ANTHONY: This entire space, this entire vast claustrophobic space,
would be filled with water.
ROD: It doesn't take much water inside a ship to alter the trim of the ship.
NARRATOR: If flooding makes the ship list to one side, it would raise the armor belt out
of the water, exposing the ship's vulnerable hull to further torpedo strikes.
ROD: If the ship had been on an even keel, that torpedo would have hit the armored
belt, which would have dealt with it quite easily.
NARRATOR: Using all the evidence, we can now recreate what likely happened.
It's late morning.
Force Z are spotted by enemy aircraft and turned back, heading to Singapore.
But the hunter becomes the hunted.
Japanese bombers arriving from nearby bases spot the British fleet.
The Prince of Wales lowers her anti-aircraft guns and opens fire on the enemy.
A bomber now at wave top level on her attack run launches her deadly type 91 torpedo.
It strikes the Prince of Wales.
Right by the port propeller.
ERIC: It is impossible to protect the propellers and steering gear of a battleship.
NARRATOR: The flooding ship starts to list.
The armored section rises up, bringing the unprotected hull
into the firing line of the torpedo.
OSAMU: It's a sitting duck.
NARRATOR: Three more torpedoes strike the Prince of Wales,
on the starboard side, beneath the armor plating.
A state of the art battleship is now brought down by a handful of torpedoes.
ERIC: In about 100 minutes, less than two hours, one of the most modern battleships in
the world had been sunk by torpedo bombers.
NARRATOR: Force Z loses the Prince of Wales and one other warship in the battle group,
HMS Repulse.
840 British sailors are dead and naval warfare has been changed forever.
ERIC: No battleship had been sunk by air attack at sea.
This is a major landmark in naval history.
NARRATOR: This catastrophic defeat marks the beginning of the end for the British Empire
in the east, and the Japanese have only just begun.
What can we learn of the scale of Japan's ambition from a vessel lost over
3,000 miles from Japan itself?
Expedition diver Mac McCarthy has been investigating wrecks
in the Pacific Ocean for decades.
War records reveal a Japanese submarine, I-124,
was sunk off the coast of Australia in January, 1942.
And he wants to find it.
His mission takes him to waters north of Australia.
To an area declared a war grave and off limits to diving since 1976.
MICHAEL: I had a personal desire to see it because it had so much mystery around it.
NARRATOR: In 1988, Mac and his team gained permission to explore the wreckage.
MICHAEL: The problem was that the position fixing in those early days wasn't very good,
so it was very difficult to locate the wreck.
NARRATOR: The crew deploys a side scan sonar.
MICHAEL: You clearly start to see this pointy shape, which is about,
of course it's a glorious moment.
Oh heckety deck, look at this.
NARRATOR: Mac's team have pinpointed what looks like their sunken sub.
Next, they lower an ROV.
MICHAEL: There we all were around the screen.
And then down it goes.
We're watching the compass and we're watching what's in front
and then there comes the submarine.
NARRATOR: The submarine has suffered damage.
But is this the sub he's looking for?
To find out, we're now able to drain the waters of the Timor Sea.
The submarine appears.
A five and a half inch deck gun is clearly visible.
The conning tower shows signs of damage from enemy attack.
It must have been hit hard and repeatedly.
And there's more.
Markings visible on the tower.
Japanese submarine, I-124.
Submarines are the ultimate maritime stealth weapon.
Nearly undetectable when submerged, but something must have found this one.
Australian naval historian Tom Lewis is trying to work out
what the submarine was doing here.
He's found blueprints that match the sunken sub's features.
TOM: If you look at this, you've got torpedo tubes, ballast tanks,
you've got diesel engines, you've got electric batteries, you've got periscopes.
You sort of say okay, German U-boat from World War I.
So, Japan took the plans of one of the German U-boats and they copied it.
NARRATOR: But this isn't a straight copy of a German sub.
The Japanese take the design and develop it further to give the submarine a new role.
TOM: This is a mine laying submarine.
It's designed in a different way from other submarines of World War I and II.
The mines are bigger than the average sort of mine.
You make a big mine and you dispense it and it's got more fire power,
it's got more punch.
NARRATOR: The I-124 is one of four underwater mine layers in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
280 feet long, it carries a crew of over 75 men.
Its armed with torpedoes, and a deck gun, and it carries 42 powerful sea mines.
MICHAEL: This book here is the wreck inspection journal, which we have to keep.
NARRATOR: So what was this minelayer doing here?
Mac McCarthy finds a map detailing the war movements of all four Japanese mine layers.
MICHAEL: These are the Japanese records and they show the movements of these
Japanese submarines in the north Australian coast, and their proximity to the coast.
NARRATOR: The Japanese subs are targeting this critical supply route between northern
Australia and the Dutch East Indies.
A mine layer should be undetectable.
So how did it somehow make itself a target?
NARRATOR: Off the coast of northern Australia, diver Mac McCarthy has found
a Japanese World War II submarine.
A closer look at the drained wreck reveals something unusual.
Hatches in the hull have been blown open.
Elsewhere on the sea bed, something curious.
Objects that looks like oil barrels.
These are submarine killers.
Depth charges.
Depth charges are deployed when a submarine is spotted.
As a charge sinks to a pre-selected depth, it detonates.
The shockwave can send a sub down.
This sub must have been spotted then hit hard.
But how did the enemy know where I-124 was?
January 19th, 1942, the submarine sends
a routine message that is picked up by Allied intelligence.
The following day, a torpedo attack on a US ship
alerts them to Japanese submarine activity.
The Australian sub-killer, Deloraine, armed to the teeth with depth charges,
heads off to search for it.
While Japanese and German subs are similar, their tactics are very different.
The Germans target merchant shipping,
while Japanese subs shadow and attack Allied task-forces.
TOM: The Japanese strategy in World War II, how they use their submarines, is floored.
They attack warships.
It's a sort of odd concept.
NARRATOR: When the Deloraine spots a torpedo fired at it, it's the clue the crew needs.
For once, the Japanese navy is too ambitious for its own good.
It allows the Deloraine to pinpoint the sub, then attack.
Now using evidence from historical records and our drained shipwreck,
we can illustrate I-124's final hours.
The I-124 is laying mines in the Allied shipping lane.
Allied intelligence alerts HMAS Deloraine to the presence of a sub.
She fails to find it.
The I-124 spots the Australian warship first and attacks.
A torpedo narrowly misses and the Deloraine is alerted to the sub's position.
TOM: Unfortunately, they took on a modern warship,
specifically designed to kill submarines.
NARRATOR: The minesweeper immediately charges the sub.
MICHAEL: Where do you go?
Once they've got a lock on you and they can see where it's come from,
they know where you are.
It's a suicidal position.
NARRATOR: I-124 is pummeled by round after round of depth charges.
Seconds later the hatches blow and she plunges to the depths.
The first Japanese submarine to be sunk by the Australian Navy in World War II.
There are no survivors.
Despite their advanced technology, the Japanese strategy of using subs for
pre-emptive attacks costs them dearly here.
But the wreck of I-124 is evidence that the Japanese do quickly bring the war to
northern Australia.
They will be back, and in shocking force.
Maritime archaeologists David Steinberg and Silvano Young are leading an expedition dive
in Darwin Harbor, northern Australia.
They've come to investigate the largest ever attack on Australian soil.
The only warning is the drone of an air armada.
Nearly 200 Japanese planes descend on Darwin, strafing the harbor.
Next, they target the town itself.
Nine naval vessels are sunk.
And hundreds are dead and wounded.
DAVID: It's a massive attack and was devastating and overwhelming and
lived in people's memories.
Those that experienced it will never forget it.
I think Darwin is Australia's Pearl Harbor.
NARRATOR: David and Silvano are searching for evidence to understand just why
the raid was so successful and so deadly.
DAVID: There it is.
One of the main things we're gonna be looking for is any damage that's been done from
the attack on the 9th February, 1942.
DAVID [over radio]: Heading down.
Roger, left surface, 0918.
On a wreck.
SILVANO: Yeah, Roger, just have a swim round and just work out where you are.
DAVID [over radio]: This looks like a structure here.
NARRATOR: But the dive can only reveal so much.
Using data from David and Silvano's survey,
we can lay the floor of Darwin Harbor bare.
To reveal not a ship...
But a plane.
Camouflaged paintwork suggests it's military, not civilian.
Features on the plane help David identify it.
It's a Catalina.
The Catalina is an Allied flying boat.
It was used for vital intelligence gathering and surveillance.
SILVANO: The Catalinas were essential for the Allied war effort because the only way
you were, you were gonna find the enemy at sea was with your own eyes.
DAVID [over radio]: Here you've got some tall sheeting and I'm just, oh look at this.
Does that look burnt to you?
SILVANO: Certainly does. It's definitely burnt.
NARRATOR: There's clear evidence of fire.
SILVANO: That's most definitely burn damage from the fire that caused
the loss of the aircraft.
NARRATOR: So what caused this fire?
And ultimately sent this Catalina down.
DAVID [over radio]: Can you see this clearly?
We've got more examples of damage.
SILVANO: So you got machine gun damage.
NARRATOR: Returning to the drained wreckage, there's more evidence.
More signs of gunfire.
Under the pilot's window, something else.
Larger holes.
Tell-tale signs.
SILVANO: Yeah, that looks like 20 millimeter canon damage there.
NARRATOR: Which points to one particular fighter plane.
A brilliantly designed killer that is a vital cog in Japan's military machine,
the Zero.
SILVANO: Yeah, it's very exciting, yeah.
It was really a process of elimination.
There was Zeroes that came down, strafing on them.
NARRATOR: The Mitsubishi A6M, or Zero, is a fighter plane
capable of launching from aircraft carriers.
It carries a pair of 7.7 millimeter machine guns.
and a twenty millimeter cannon in each wing.
It has an unparalleled range of over 1,500 miles.
OSAMU: The Zero is an iconic Japanese fighter.
It is to the Japanese what the Spitfire is to the British.
NARRATOR: Japan attacks Darwin with her best, and fresh evidence beneath the waters
of the harbor reveals a secret tactic that almost guarantees success.
NARRATOR: David Steinberg and Silvano Young have found one plane in Darwin harbor.
Now they extend their search.
And discover two more downed Catalinas.
Mapping the position of all three planes reveals they lie in a line.
They couldn't have all crashed this way,
the wrecked flying boats must have been moored at
the time of the attack.
Evidence on the drained Catalina sheds light on
Japanese tactics that February morning.
The position of the damage, all on one side, is revealing.
The bullet-holes all lie on its south side,
suggesting the direction of the attack comes
not from the sea, but from inland.
An approach from the south, over the Australian mainland, would surprise the Allies.
And Tom Lewis thinks the Japanese tactic of attacking in the morning
gave them another advantage.
TOM: There's a number of reasons for attacking from the south.
The first is you're attacking out of the sun.
You've still got the sun behind you,
which is good because it blinds your defenders.
So it gives you that element of surprise.
NARRATOR: At the time of the attack, Darwin is a small town of 2,000 civilians.
But Darwin's size belies its importance.
Its location isn't just the perfect place for launching surveillance aircraft,
like the Catalinas, as David and Silvano discover
as they continue to scour the sea bed.
They find another wreck.
A large ship.
Much of it is gone, salvaged in the decades since it sank.
But enough remains to reveal what it was.
A cargo ship.
DAVID: We can see there is trucks and motorbikes andammunition and also on this
side is gas masks and mortars, military equipment.
NARRATOR: And the importance of Darwin becomes clear.
It's a crucial link in the Allies supply chain.
A base for vessels and the hub for shipping ammunition and other vital supplies.
Now, it's possible to understand exactly what happened in Darwin harbor.
188 planes are launched from four Japanese aircraft carriers,
nearly 200 miles to the north.
But rather than heading directly to Darwin, the planes fly east,
circling around the town.
They want to attack Darwin harbor from the south.
TOM: You would have seen the aircraft coming towards you this way,
crossing the beach down there.
NARRATOR: The Australians are unprepared.
The town is poorly defended for an attack from the air.
The Catalinas are sitting ducks as the Zeroes circle round to attack,
protected by the full glare of the sun.
The pilots swoop down, unleashing the full force of their weapons.
Machine gunning the moored planes.
A second wave of planes arrives.
High altitude bombers.
TOM: The place was in absolute pandemonium.
NARRATOR: The fighters and bombers destroy 30 military aircraft
and nine ships anchored in the harbor.
TOM: Behind is left chaos, ships on fire, ships sinking,
people underwater who are dead.
OSAMU: Darwin remained ineffective as a harbor that could support the war.
NARRATOR: The Japanese have used advanced technology and smart tactics against
an unsuspecting and unprepared enemy.
The Allied supply chain into the Pacific is crippled.
And still, the shockwave spreads.
In Washington DC and London, Allied leaders are astonished
at the scale and speed of Japan's victories.
Just days before the Darwin bombing, the Japanese also capture
the famous British stronghold of Singapore.
Now Japan has its eye on Java, in the Dutch East Indies, today known as Indonesia.
The Imperial Navy mobilizes a landing fleet to seize its precious oil fields.
The Allies scramble to stop them.
Pulling together a force that includes one of Australia's most famous warships,
HMAS Perth.
At 550 feet long, the light cruiser HMAS Perth is almost twice the length
of the Statue of Liberty.
Achieving 32 knots, she is built for speed.
Armed with almost 40 guns, the Perth is a fearsome opponent.
But the Allied fleet she' s sailing in is unprepared for what's to come.
ERIC: There was an ad hoc forceof cruisers and destroyers
from four different countries,
Australia, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands.
So you have this almost Rag, Tag and Bobtail force of ships
against the very highly trainedand motivated Japanese Navy.
NARRATOR: The two fleets meet in the Battle of the Java Sea,
and the Allies don't stand a chance.
They lose five vessels.
Along with 2,300 lives.
ERIC: There was no common doctrine.
No common signaling system.
The whole thing degenerated into complete chaos.
NARRATOR: Two Allied cruisers escape, seeking refuge on the southern coast of Java.
An American heavy cruiser, USS Houston, and HMAS Perth.
ERIC: They had been told that there were no Japanese forces in the vicinity
so therefore they could have a safe passage.
NARRATOR: But 48 hours after escaping the Japanese in the Java Sea,
the Perth disappears.
Diver Andrew Fock and skipper Vidar Skoglie lead an expedition to unravel
the fate of the Australian warship.
Her last known position is in the Sunda Strait, a narrow passage of water between the
islands of Java and Sumatra.
Andrew surveys the area.
Eventually, the sonar detects something promising.
VIDAR: The biggest thrill of all is to find a new wreck.
You never know what you're gonna find down there.
NARRATOR: The team dives.
They encounter a massive wreck.
And as the waters roll back...
We can see for the first time
a huge vessel lying on her port side.
With four large gun turrets visible and several gaping holes in the hull.
It's definitely the Perth.
The guns on one of the turrets are pointing straight down into the sand
and the sighting ports on the two half turrets are both open.
These guns were operational and firing to the end.
She did not go down without a fight.
NARRATOR: Andrew and Vidar are investigating the wreck of HMAS Perth.
The exposed starboard side of the Perth hull shows several gaping holes,
and underneath they find something else.
VIDAR: It had some very serious torpedo damage right behind the bow.
We could actually swim through the hole from one side to the other.
NARRATOR: Using the data, we can look beneath the wreck,
to reveal something impossible to see from diving alone.
Two bigger holes on the opposite port side.
The Perth was under attack from both directions.
And one attacker hit the ship with something unusually powerful.
A typical torpedo wouldn't cause such massive damage.
Wartime records suggest the most likely cause was something that wreaked havoc
in the Java Sea days before,
a Japanese wonder weapon.
The long lance torpedo.
ERIC: The long last was by far the most effective torpedo in the world,
and the western navies had virtually no idea of its existence.
NARRATOR: Reaching faster speeds than anything else afloat at the time,
the long lance has a huge warhead, packing around twice the payload
of an average torpedo.
It has an astonishing range of 23 miles.
Inside, it uses a revolutionary system of propulsion
which leaves no trail of bubbles.
OSAMU: The standard surface torpedo ran on compressed air,
which means that you get bubbles.
It leaves a wake in the water which you can see from quite a distance.
You can see it coming.
If you can't see the torpedo coming, how do you avoid it?
Well the answer it you don't.
You can't.
NARRATOR: Its ability to target ships at distances unheard of means the Japanese
can attack the Allies while keeping their own ships out of range.
Tragically for the Perth, she escapes one Japanese fleet,
then sails unwittingly into the path of a second.
ERIC: What they didn't realize was that they were
running into a major Japanese invasion force.
NARRATOR: It's now possible to understand the final hours of HMAS Perth.
In the Java Sea, the Allies take on the Japanese.
Over the course of the battle, they are hit hard.
The Perth escapes.
Told that the Sunda Strait is safe, the captain heads for this narrow stretch of water
off the Java coast.
But she's spotted by a Japanese destroyer.
Minutes later, three entire destroyer divisions close in.
Salvos of torpedoes come from all sides.
The Japanese go in for the kill.
ERIC: Now they could concentrate a superior force of long lance fitted
destroyers against the Allied ships.
NARRATOR: Two long lance torpedoes likely hit the port side,
causing a massive explosion.
ERIC: It was very difficult to counter a long lance because you couldn't see it coming.
NARRATOR: The Perth goes down just eight minutes later,
along with 375 sailors.
Another emphatic victory for the Japanese navy.
The following day, Japanese landing fleets begin their invasion of Java island.
Just one day after originally planned.
ERIC: With the delay of the invasion of Java by a mere 24 hours,
and the heavy losses suffered,
this must go down as one of the greatest disasters in naval history.
NARRATOR: Thousands of Allied lives were lost across the region in just three days.
But today, surveys reveal that little remains of the Perth,
or many other ships sunk by the Japanese.
These and other vessels face another more recent enemy...
Salvagers, with the wrecks being illegally ripped apart for their metal.
VIDAR: The grab itself would go down on top of the wreck and it would stab into it,
that would close up and then just tear, tear chunks of metal off.
So piece by piece, they would rip it up.
ANDREW: There's just no wreck at all.
As if it's just been lifted.
NARRATOR: What remains of these wrecks is a continuing reminder of the first shocking
months of the Pacific war.
And the price of Allied overconfidence.
ERIC: There was a tendency at this time to underestimate the Japanese.
OSAMU: The Japanese actively encouraged that kind of misperception on the part of
the western countries because they didn't want them to know how advanced they really were.
NARRATOR: Less than three months after Pearl Harbor,
the empire of Japan is at the apex of its power.
With superior technology and strategy, it now controls the entire region and its oil.
It will take the Allies three deadly years to
defeat an enemy they so shockingly underestimated.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.