Original subtitles

Narrator: 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.

World war ii was fought on vast landscapes across the planet.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Narrator: But the evidence of that war is disappearing fast.

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

That's it. Congratulations!

Narrator: Now, technology expert pete kelsey...

Pete: I've gotta scan this...

Narrator: And military historian marty morgan...

Marty: Oh my god, look at this view.

Narrator: 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 take-off?

Pete: That's amazing.

Narrator: What part does a hidden underground fortress play in

This long and bloody campaign?

Marty: Cranking up right now...

Narrator: And can marty and pete find the most remote battlefield on the planet,

Lost for nearly eight decades?

Pete: Marty, this terrain is insane.

(theme music plays).

Narrator: 1937, world war ii is approaching,

And japan has its sights set on building an empire.

It's the beginning of a 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.

Australia.

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

The remote jungle of papua new guinea.

But japanese troops never made it to australia.

Their ambitions crushed in a bitter and

Now largely forgotten campaign here on papua new guinea.

Nearly 80 years on, 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 new britain.

Their target?

The port of rabaul.

It was a vital strategic location defended

By a small force of just 1400 australians.

Marty: From up here I can really picture it, pre-dawn, January 23rd, 1942,

A japanese force of over 5000 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,

Simpson harbor.

Narrator: Rabaul was the perfect location for a japanese attack

On the papua new guinea mainland.

But the allies soon retaliated.

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

It was bombed more than berlin.

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 pearce has been

Studying the waters around rabaul for decades.

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

Marty and pete join him in the search.

Pete: Tell me you have sonar gear?

Rod: Yep I've got it.

(laughter).

Marty: So what are we waiting for?

Narrator: Using sonar, rod's boat scans the harbor.

It's not long before marty spots something.

Marty: Hey rod! We've got something.

Rod: Let's have a look. Marty: Yeah.

Is that what I think it is?

Rod: Yep, definitely worth a dive.

Narrator: Pete is taking cutting edge photogrammetry kit on the dive.

Pete: I'm going to go down and have a look, see what it is.

♪ ♪

Narrator: Photogrammetry captures thousands of images

And uses state of the art software to create a 3d 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,

This plane is japanese.

Then the team locate another wreck nearby.

This time the structure is much less clear,

But pete scans it just in case.

Rod: What do you think of that?

Pete: Rod, that's a japanese airplane!

Rod: Yep, absolutely amazing.

Pete: That's incredible. Rod: Absolutely.

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

Narrator: So what are these planes and what can they reveal?

Can pete's scans uncover the extraordinary evidence of the aircrafts' fate?

Pete: Marty have a look, clearly an airplane.

Marty: Oh definitely.

Pete: Clearly upside down.

Marty: Clearly a fighter, that looks like a zero to me.

Pete: Really? Marty: Yeah.

Pete: Fighter? Marty: A fighter definitely.

Narrator: 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?

Pete: Have a look at this one, this one is a bit of a mess.

All I can tell you is pretty much what you see it's big, it looks heavy.

Marty: It's shattered, it's in a bunch of pieces

And that automatically makes me suspect this is an allied aircraft

That was brought down by japanese anti-aircraft fire

During one of the air raids.

Pete: Allied?

Marty: This looks like it might be an avenger.

Narrator: The tbf avenger was the newest addition to the americans'

Fleet of torpedo bombers in 1942.

It had airborne radar that could locate targets in the dark.

So allied aircraft could relentlessly attack japanese positions,

Both day and night.

Returning to the scan of the japanese fighter plane,

Pete has noticed something unusual.

Pete: Have a look at this because this just grabbed me when we were in the water.

That is a rock, inside the wing.

Marty: Embedded in the wing?

Pete: It's about that big, grapefruit size.

Marty: Is the prop blade bent? Pete: It is, yep.

Marty: Is the landing gear up? Pete: Is up.

Marty: So it sounds like something happened on take off.

Pete: What put a rock in his way, you know, in his flight path?

Marty: Maybe the field was under attack while he was trying to get in the air,

There was an explosion nearby.

So this guy was rolling out,

He got it airborne, brought his gear up,

Threw a rock into the wing.

Pete: That would do it, wouldn't it? Marty: That would do it.

Pete: That would explain why it's in such perfect condition except for this rock.

Narrator: These scans show the japanese were taking off to defend themselves even while

Bombs rained down around them.

But what they can't explain is just how they held off the

Might of the allies for so long.

Narrator: Pete kelsey and marty morgan are on a mission to discover

How the japanese managed to hold the key strategic

Town of rabaul in the face of a massive allied retaliation.

The us alone dropped 20,000 tons of explosives.

This level of bombing should have led to surrender in months.

But local historian rob rawlinson thinks a clue to the japanese

Success lies on the outskirts of town.

Rob: Get in here okay.

Pete: Wish me luck.

Rob: Ok well we've managed to get in the entrance has been covered up by a landslip,

Some are exposed, and some are opened up all the time because of the weather.

Follow me.

Narrator: Contemporary accounts tell of a buried

Japanese military fortress at rabaul.

Rob believes that these caves were

An underground headquarters for the japanese forces.

Rob: The japanese concreted the tunnels to stop them collapsing,

You can see the tubes inside of the tunnels,

These would have been coconut palms then they would have cut them off.

They would have held the roof in place.

Marty: Is that metal from like a hinge or something?

Rob: Yeah, there would probably have been a hinge here and probably a door here;

There were probably two doors,

There might be some hinges over the other side, are there?

Marty: Looks like it. Rob: Yeah.

Narrator: In these dark, difficult conditions,

It's almost impossible to get a proper picture of what really lies buried here.

Rob: Now we go up here.

Marty: Whoa!

This area is dripping with water even today.

Narrator: Pete is going to use 3d laser scanning technology to build the first ever

Digital model of the tunnels, bringing them to life...

Out of the darkness.

His hand-held scanner fires out tens of thousands of laser beams a second.

It then measures the response time to create a detailed point-scan model of the tunnel.

Can it prove that this really was the military fortress?

Pete returns to base to process the results.

His findings are remarkable.

Pete: I actually really kind of like this one just because it's so random and complex,

Great evidence of just how easy it was to actually tunnel in this lava rock.

Narrator: This subterranean world is vast.

A massive system that is, in places, five stories high.

And there is clear evidence that it was occupied.

Pete's scans reveal offices, barracks, a complete underground city.

Safe from allied bombing raids, deep underground.

And in one part of the tunnels the scan points to an area with a darker purpose.

Pete: Let's bring up this other tunnel we went in with rob,

What I'm thinking is, that's clearly a concrete door frame.

And you go a little further in,

And see these nooks,

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Marty: Yeah, that looks like a place where they are keeping prisoners,

And why would you build a door frame in a tunnel if

You didn't want people getting out of it.

Pete: So what?

Downed airmen because of all these air raids?

Marty: Absolutely, and australians that were captured

Here during the invasion in 1942.

Narrator: The japanese were notorious for the terrible treatment of prisoners of war,

And pete's scan suggest rabaul was no exception.

Eye witness accounts confirm that those that managed to

Stay alive were packed into the tunnels.

They also reveal that forced labor was the key to japanese survival,

They worked the prisoners to death to create the fortress so quickly.

Rabaul was a safe location from which they could make their next move,

An assault on port moresby and the mainland.

Port moresby, capital of papua new guinea,

Just 300 miles from the northern coast of australia.

If it fell to the japanese, they would have control of

Australia's main shipping route,

Leaving it isolated and vulnerable to invasion.

But the first japanese attack ended in disaster.

May 4th, 1942, the japanese send a fleet of nearly

50 ships on a mission to take port moresby.

This time, after losing rabaul, the allies were ready.

The us navy intercept the enemy in the coral sea

And cripple japan's best naval vessels.

The japanese wouldn't attack from the sea again.

What the japanese did next was bold, brave and totally unexpected.

They decided to use their highly trained jungle forces to launch an overland attack,

Through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet.

But something equally unexpected stopped them in their tracks.

Narrator: Somehow in 1942, australian forces in papua new guinea,

Newly trained and barely tested,

Managed to hold off the brutal might of the japanese army.

And marty morgan and pete kelsey are on a mission to find out how.

Pete: So we are going to go? Marty: We're going!

Pete: We're going, going. Marty: Its electric isn't it?

Pete: Wow!

Narrator: Marty has discovered accounts of a ferocious and decisive battle,

Deep in the treacherous jungle.

But the battlefield has been lost for decades.

Marty: We're cranking up right now.

Narrator: Pete and marty want to use 21st century technology

To find and explore it.

Marty (over radio): Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Pete (over radio): Unbelievabl!

Narrator: July 1942, over 4000 jungle trained japanese

Soldiers land on the northern beaches at buna.

Their mission was to use a jungle path called the kokoda trail to attack port moresby.

It crosses the owen stanleys, a formidable mountain range,

With an elevation of 13,000 feet.

Marty (over radio): The owen stanleys are notorious for being some of the most

Treacherous and rugged terrain on planet earth and I believe that what

I'm seeing is living up to that reputation.

Narrator: The australians got wind of the invasion within days.

They immediately sent two battalions into the steaming jungle.

They had no idea what was waiting for them.

Marty (over radio): I've spent my entire life reading about this battle

And I have never appreciated it fully until just this momen.

Pete (over radio): Coming in hot,

It's the only opening in the canopy I've seen in 30 minutes.

Narrator: Marty and pete are greeted by local villagers to

Guide them through the jungle to a place they call etoa.

The locals' ancestors passed down stories of the war that

Swept through their land nearly 80 years ago.

Sam: This place was a wasteland.

All the trees and plants were dead, the rivers were polluted with blood.

We couldn't drink the water for 7 or 10 years afterwards.

This stream that goes down to eora creek,

Many soldiers died there, it's full of bones.

Narrator: Located midway between port moresby and buna on the kokoda trail,

Etoa was clearly the scene of heavy fighting.

But can technology find proof of the bloody stories they tell?

And is this the place where the australians defeated the japanese?

The team set up camp on the only flat piece of land for miles.

At first light, pete gets to work.

He's going to use a drone fitted with a powerful laser scanning system, lidar.

The data it records will allow him to strip away the trees

And map the area around the camp in amazing detail.

Pete: Now I know what was inside that big box.

You must be jeremy.

Jeremy: I am.

Pete: And gavin then? Gavin: Nice to meet you.

Pete: I'm pete, wow am I glad you guys are here.

Narrator: Jeremy and gavin are experts in gathering lidar data

From challenging environments.

Pete: So what have you brought?

Jeremy: Well we've brought this larger drone and

A lidar mapping system called hoverrmap.

Hopefully it will allow us to penetrate through the canopy so that we can image

The ground and hopefully find some interesting features.

Pete: That's perfect because what we are looking for are

Any signs of battle, of warfare, so you can guess them.

Trenches, foxholes, whatever and this can do that right?

Jeremy: It can.

Narrator: But flying a drone in this dense jungle is incredibly difficult...

The thin air drains the drone battery quickly,

And keeping eyes on it during the short flight window is a challenge...

So pete's smaller drone will be their eyes in the sky.

Gavin: We are at 6,000 feet, and the last time I flew this type of mission at 6,000 feet,

The best I could get was six to seven minutes flight time.

In between windows of weather, so we are really up against a lot here.

Pete: Because hitting a tree here would be a bad day.

Jeremy: Yeah it's pretty much a pack up our stuff and let's go back.

Pete: How shall we do this?

Shall we put the little one up first, get eyes in the air, what's the plan?

Jeremy: Sounds like a plan. Pete: Yeah? Okay.

Narrator: Pete and the team start with a scan of the area around the camp,

Hoping they might find something.

Jeremy: Roger.

Narrator: If not, they'll widen the search.

Pete: This is great already he's covering so much ground,

This would take us weeks to walk what he's doing.

First flight successful, the birds come back, it's all good,

Of course now we want to push further out and get more data.

Narrator: Pushing further out will take the drone further from

The controllers over tougher terrain,

And is fraught with danger.

Jeremy: Now he's climbing to 40 meters... Gavin: Okay.

Jeremy: Coming across... Coming over.

Gavin: Okay. Just stop it there hold hold hold.

Jeremy: Yep, holding.

Gavin: That's good position. That's three minutes.

Jeremy: Roger.

Pete: Wow he is way low!

Jeremy: You need to come home.

Pete: He is low.

Jeremy: We are having a problem.

I can't climb, it wants to come right down.

Gavin: Its descending.

Jeremy: Yep, there's nothing I can do to stop that.

Gavin: Here it comes!

Pete: Oh no! Oh no! That's bad, that is bad!

Jeremy: Well then that's game over.

Narrator: In the dense papua new guinea jungle, pete,

Jeremy and gavin are hunting for the missing drone.

Gavin: I've got a rough idea where it is.

Jeremy: Yeah where's that?

Gavin: See that tall dead skinny tree in front of you?

Narrator: If the lidar unit is undamaged, there's a chance they can retrieve its data.

Gavin: Yeah, the tall skinny one, with straggly branches.

Jeremy: Can you show me where?

Man: Right at the top.

Jeremy: Oh yeah, there it is, right on the top, okay, well,

Hopefully we can find a way to get it down?

Narrator: With the fate of the lidar map still unknown,

Marty heads onto the ground around the camp with gregory bablis,

A curator at the papua new guinea national museum.

He was one of the first historians ever to explore this site,

And he thinks there is evidence of fighting visible to the naked eye.

Gregory: Marty keep your eyes open for things we can find of the surface.

Marty: There are still things on the surface?

Gregory: Yeah they are scattered all over the place, the whole island's littered

With surplus materials from the war.

I think I got something here.

Marty: Uh-oh... Uh-oh.

Gregory: That's a nice find.

Marty: Tell you that's a nice find, alright.

Gregory: What do you reckon that is?

Marty: That's an australian water bottle, isn't it?

Is it common to find things like this?

Gregory: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Marty: Let's keep looking. Gregory: Yeah.

Jeez. I think there's some things here under the brush.

Marty: Oh that's something isn't it?

Is this a helmet?

Gregory: Yeah that's a helmet.

Marty: Oh that's japanese.

Uh oh, wow! Oh my god!

Gregory: Look at this!

This looks like the locals have found things around the area

And just kind of plied them up in one place.

Narrator: Lost in the jungle for nearly eight decades this

Is the wartime evidence that marty has been looking for.

Marty: Oh god look at this japanese type 99 light machine gun magazine

Its corroded through to where you can see the spring inside...

Gregory: Oh yeah. Marty: That's incredible.

Yeah. There was a fight up here.

Narrator: Pete, gavin and jeremy have retrieved their missing drone.

Jeremy: The drone's a total write-off.

Narrator: To find evidence of a real battle, the drone's lidar scan will be critical.

They hope it'll reveal fighting positions, dug outs, signs of battle...

But only if they can get the data off the drone.

Jeremy: You see that?

Its transferring the data off.

Gavin: Yeah, that's why I left it on. Amazing...

Jeremy: Yeah, it's pretty good.

Narrator: As night falls back at camp pete processes the lidar data

And transforms it into a 3d landscape of the jungle floor.

Pete: Now look at that.

Narrator: With the damaged drone,

The team have only covered a small part of the target area.

So have they managed to capture any of the battlefield itself?

Jeremy: Well, we have found some potential sites.

Pete: Uh, yeah.

Jeremy: What do you make of that?

Marty: They are quite deep aren't they?

Narrator: The lidar reveals two pits in the jungle floor that appear man made.

They are located very close to the camp.

Pete: There's no doubt those are fighting positions.

Marty: Yeah those are prepared fighting positions.

Narrator: But to find out for sure they'll have to be checked out on the ground.

Jeremy: So do you think that that gives you guys some targets to look for tomorrow?

Pete: This is great.

Narrator: Have the team found evidence of a battlefield that has been

Lost to the outside world for nearly eight decades?

Narrator: Marty and pete are deep in the jungle of papua new guinea,

On the kokoda trail, investigating the forgotten battlefield of etoa.

Pete has made the first 3d lidar model of what he hopes is the battlefield site.

Arranged around their modern-day camp, the scanning has revealed a series of

Anomalies they think might be dug-in fighting positions.

And marty sets out with archaeologist kenneth miamba to investigate.

When they reach the location, nothing is visible to the naked eye.

Marty: You think you have something?

Kenneth: Yes, its spongy so if you literally stand on top of the hole here.

Marty: Oh yeah, I feel it, you want to hit it with the metal detector

And see if there's something in there.

Kenneth: Yes, I'll give it a try and see what's coming out from the hole.

(low frequency noise).

Marty: Oh, I hear it.

Kenneth: It's picking up something really heavy here.

Marty: So shall we dig it?

Kenneth: Yep.

Marty: Alright, I'm just gonna dig in literally.

Oh!

Kenneth: There it is!

Marty: Jackpot there is it!

It's a boot heel...

That's incredible.

Soldiers don't just discard their boots so this belonged

To somebody who didn't make it out.

Narrator: This is an australian boot heel, but the japanese were known to take

Boots from fallen soldiers, so it's not certain proof of an australian position.

So they move to another pit identified by the lidar in search of stronger evidence

That these are fighting positions.

This one is located directly north of the camp.

(low frequency noise).

Marty: Well this is interesting,

You guys just found two very interesting artifacts.

Both of them 1941 dated, mark 7.303 caliber cartridges.

One fired, one unfired, and that's a sort of an exceptional thing to find.

That's proof positive that australian troops were fighting right here over this

Prepared fighting position and the interesting detail about

That is what's exactly behind me...

That's our camp.

Narrator: The cartridges are solid proof that these pits discovered by

The lidar are dug in fighting positions for australian soldiers.

Marty believes that the australians were shooting in the direction of the area

Where they have set up camp.

But who and what were the australians firing on?

Back at camp, the team have been investigating another anomaly identified in the

Lidar scan.

Marty: We heard you guys found something.

Gregory: Yes! Marty: Oh, look at that!

Gregory: What is it? What do you think it is?

Marty: Oooooh pete what do you think?

Pete: Can I touch?

Gregory: Yes you can but be careful, it looks like sulphur.

Pete: Sulphur? Marty: Well if there's sulphur, maybe it's a battery?

Gregory: Yeah.

Marty: But that knob wouldn't be on a battery?

Pete: Oh that looks like numerals.

Marty: This is a radio, because that's how you're changing your frequency.

Pete: So this would be a pot then?

Wow!

Narrator: Contemporary records help the team identify the radio as japanese.

And this radio type was only issued to battalion commanders.

It's positive proof that they are near a base for a sizeable japanese force.

Marty: So that makes me think that where we camped might

Have been a japanese battalion headquarters.

Narrator: The ground-truthing has confirmed what the team suspected,

This was the location where the australian soldiers attacked a japanese camp

Pushing them back away from port moresby.

They've finally found the battlefield they were looking for.

And there is more.

The radio has been buried.

Pete: But why bury a radio?

Marty: Ah radio operators were under a very strict order that in the event that you had to

Abandon your equipment or surrender you had to either destroy it or bury it,

So whoever buried this did it in a hurry.

Narrator: Australian soldiers who fought in the kokoda campaign recall that the

Japanese were a formidable opponent, often unafraid to fight to the death.

But this radio suggests something different happened here.

Marty: If they did this, they didn't stand and fight,

They didn't stand and fight to the death like they would,

They withdrew, they withdrew under pressure from the enemy.

Pete: Wow, wow wow.

Narrator: So what happened to them in this jungle?

Why did they run?

Narrator: Pete kelsey and marty morgan have discovered that the battle of etoa

Ended with the japanese held at bay.

And records suggest that when the australians attacked them here,

The japanese were already in serious trouble.

Pete: So what do you suppose actually happened down there?

Marty: The japanese, the farther they go, the weaker they get,

And they reach a breaking point

And it's not far from here that they have to pull back.

Narrator: Military records reveal that the japanese set out on this

Campaign with just over two weeks of rations.

But australian resistance slowed them down... For four months.

Tropical disease had taken its toll, 3000 men, over half of the troops on the trail,

Had severe malaria, or were starving.

With port moresby almost within sight, the exhausted japanese were forced to

Give up and retreat back along the kokoda trail.

And the australians would push the retreating soldiers back

To the coast from where they had come.

November 1942.

The kokoda trail campaign ended where it began

At the buna coast, still in japanese hands.

And just a mile from the beach at buna,

Marty discovers the wreckage of something that helped

The allies to finally win this fight.

Marty: Oh my god look at this, the wreckage of a b24.

Narrator: The american b24 bomber could carry 5,000 pounds

Of bombs for nearly 2000 miles.

More importantly the b24s could avoid the heavily defended japanese beaches

And supply reinforcements.

Marty: Aircraft like this that are not just contributing to the strategic air war against

The japanese base at simpson harbor and rabaul.

But they are also contributing to ground combat operations around buna.

Because airplanes like this, they could function as a transport

And they could move supplies.

And it is spectacular to see this one still here after all these years.

Narrator: Supported by aircraft like these, in September 1942 american troops

Finally joined in the battle for papua new guinea.

It would take a brutal struggle,

But the tide of the pacific war was finally turned.

January 22nd, 1943, exactly a year since their arrival in rabaul,

The japanese were finally driven off the papua new guinea mainland.

It had been a fight to save australia, waged in the air, sea and in the jungle.

But it also shook america to the core, with one iconic image taken at buna beach.

Pete: Are we getting near... The place?

You know the place. The photo place.

Marty: The famous photo, yeah. Pete: Are we?

Marty: It's just up ahead.

Narrator: On September 20th, 1943

Life magazine printed a truly shocking image...

For the first time the american public saw a photograph of their own dead

From world war ii.

Pete: Is this it?

Marty: This is it, there's no doubt about it it's probably

Further down the beach this way.

Pete: It's there. We're here.

Marty: I think we're on it.

Pete: That is chilling.

Marty: When I turned 14 my parents gave me a book for my birthday

Of the most famous photographs of the second world war.

And I still have that book, and I loved it because it was full of all the things

That a 14 year old boy gets excited about.

Airplanes and tanks and ships and machine guns.

But it also included this photograph.

And at that age, this had a powerful emotional impact on me

That changed the course of my life.

I cannot begin to estimate the emotional impact this would have had on people back home.

These three us army soldiers are just three of the

292,000 americans who were killed in action

During the second world war.

But millions of people saw them because of this image.

And millions of people personalized the human loss of the second world war

Through this image, and it was right here.

Narrator: Around 14,000 allied soldiers including 7,000 americans

And 200,000 japanese lost their lives in the fight for papua new guinea.

An unknown number of papuans also died, in a war that wasn't their own.

Captioned by cotter captioning services.