Search for the Japanese Fleet: USS Nautilus and the Battle of Midway

In the extensive literature about the Battle of Midway, the role of American submarines has not received adequate attention. In The Search for the Japanese Fleet: USS Nautilus and the Battle of Midway, David W. Jourdan, one of the world’s experts in undersea exploration, has reconstructed the critical part subs played in the action that many chroniclers of World War II consider to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

In the direct line of fire was one of the oldest submarines in the navy, USS Nautilus. On their first war patrol, Lieutenant Commander William Brockman and his ninety-three-man crew wondered what would war be like, and as events unfolded, their actions during an eight-hour period early in that voyage would rank among the most important contributions of a submarine to the most decisive engagement in U.S. Navy history.

Fifty-seven years later, Jourdan’s team of deep sea explorers set out to discover the history of the famous Battle of Midway and find the ships the allied fleet sank. Key to the mystery was the Nautilus and her underwater exploits. Relying on logs, diaries, chronologies, manuals, sound recordings, and interviews with veterans of the battle, including men who spent most of the day of June 4th in the submarine conning tower, the story breathes new life into the history of the epic engagement. Woven into the tale of World War II is the modern drama of deep sea discovery as explorers deploy technological marvels to the seafloor, over three miles down, to reveal the relics of history and commemorate fallen heroes.