Episode 4: USS Hornet: America Strikes Back

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.

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.

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?

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.