Name: The Battle That Won the Pacific War (Full Episode) | Buried Secrets of WWII | National Geographic
Uploaded: 2026-01-29T17:10:46.000Z
Duration: 44 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Papua New guinea, one of the most unexplored places on Earth.

Beneath this dense jungle, there are scars of a bloody battle that may have changed the course of history.

Basic passive voice

World War II was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.

But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in the water.

Are using 21st century technology to strip away the present and reveal the buried secrets of World War II.

This time, why was Japan's most fearsome fighter plane downed minutes from takeoff?

What part does a hidden underground fortress play in this long and bloody campaign?

And can Marty and Pete find the most remote battlefield on the planet lost for nearly eight decades?

World War II is approaching and Japan has its sights set on building an empire.

It's the beginning of a flight five year rampage across the Pacific Ocean.

They're fast, terrifying and unstoppable, painting the ocean the red of the rising sun.

By 1942, they have full control of the western Pacific.

Only one major territory was left unconquered.

And before they could attack, one thing stood in their way.

But Japanese troops never made it to Australia.

Their ambitions crushed in a bitter and now largely forgotten campaign here on Papua New Guinea.

Scanning, expert Pete Kelsey and military historian Marty Morgan want to understand how events here turned the tide of war.

The answers lie hidden in the dangerous jungles and murky swamps.

Historical accounts show that in January 1942, the Japanese launched an attack on the island of North New Britain.

It was a vital strategic location defended by a small force of just 1400 Australians.

A Japanese force of over 5,000 men land at four points around Rabaul.

The Japanese quickly overpower the smaller Australian force that was here and they seize Rabaul.

And more importantly, they seize this, the ideal fleet anchorage.

Rabaul was the perfect location for a Japanese attack on the Papua New guinea mainland.

They dropped 3,000 tons of explosives on the Rabaul base in one month alone.

And yet somehow the Japanese held Rabaul for the next three years, only giving up when Hiroshima was bombed and Japan finally surrendered.

But how did they defend this place so far from home, from the combined might of the Allied forces?

Local historian and wreck diver Rod Pierce has been studying the waters around Rabaul for decades.

He thinks clues about the Japanese defenses lie in the waters of the harbor.

Using sonar, Rod's boat scans the harbor.

It's not long before Marty spots something.

Pete is taking cutting edge photogrammetry kit on the dive.

I'm gonna go down and have a look, see what it is.

Photogrammetry captures thousands of images and uses state of the art software to create a 3D model model.

It's not long before they reach the aircraft Marty located with the sonar.

On the wing is the symbol of the rising sun.

Then the team locate another wreck nearby.

This time the structure is much less clear, but Pete scans it just in case.

So what are these planes and what can they reveal?

Can Pete scans uncover the extraordinary evidence of the aircraft's fate?

The Japanese Zero was a legendary fighter plane with a kill ratio of 12 to 1.

In the early days of World War II, the zero wreck was largely intact.

But what can the scans show of the more damaged wreck?

All I can tell you is pretty much what you see.

It's big, it looks heavy, it's shattered, it's in a bunch of pieces.

And that automatically makes me suspect that this is an Allied aircraft that was brought down by Japanese anti aircraft fire during one of the air raids.

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The Battle That Won the Pacific War (Full Episode) | Buried Secrets of WWII | National Geographic

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