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American Morning

'National Geographic' Expedition to Solomon Islands Finds Chunk of History

Aired July 11, 2002 - 09:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: It is a piece of presidential history buried at the bottom of the Pacific: PT-109, the Navy patrol boat captained by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy in World War II. It was sunk by a Japanese destroyer in 1943. Now Kennedy towed one of his shipmates to an island and later arranged for his rescue of most of his crew. This war hero reputation didn't hurt him in the presidential election either.

And this year, explorer Robert Ballard has led a "National Geographic" expedition to the Solomon Islands to search for the sunken remains, and what they found is a chunk of history.

Robert Ballard, explorer-in-residence with The National Geographic Society joins us now.

Good morning.

ROBERT BALLARD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY: Thank you.

ZAHN: So good to see you. Congratulations.

BALLARD: Thanks very much. It was a needle in a haystack, that's for sure.

ZAHN: I bet it was. Are you 100 percent convinced what you found is the PT-109.

BALLARD: Well, because there was only one PT boat ever sunk in that area. It was the identical design. You're looking a the port side of it. You see the torpedo launcher with the tornado still in it. You see the deck fittings. We've had Navy experts sit there and say, yes, yes, yes, that's PT-109.

Now it didn't say 109 on it.

ZAHN: Right, right. You've got to use your imagination.

How hard was it to get to this point of the exploration?

BALLARD: It was tough, because we didn't have a lot of time. We only had 10 days. It was just a budgetary issue of how much money you can spend.

ZAHN: It's amazing what budgets force results, isn't it?

BALLARD: Yes, you like all the money you need. We had 10 days, and we thought we'd start by looking at the stern section, was cut off by the destroyer. We got up in that neck of the woods, and we saw 1,000 targets, and we went, oh, my gosh, we have got a problem. We thought we were toast. And then we said let's forget about this little section of the stern, let's go out into the bow. No one new what happened to the bow. They know that Kennedy floated on it. He got off it, took his crew, and then everyone sort of lost sight of the bow section, and it went somewhere. And so we tracked it down and fortunately found the bow section, because it sunk, but sank in a raging sandstorm, if you want to really know it.

At 1,300 feet, there was a strong, strong current. And there's big sand dunes, so imagine you're in the Sahara Desert and you're standing on top of sand dune, and you look down at the base of another one sticking out of the bottom. So it was down in a trough between sand dunes, and we found it with our sonar, as you can see here, and then we sent down our little robot, coming in, down on the side of this sand dune, and sure enough, the port side of the torpedo boat is sticking out.

And now you could go back tomorrow, it could be completely covered; you could miss it. Now if you look, you'll see that that's an actual torpedo right there. You can see the counter-rotating. It's a Mark VIII torpedo, and that was very important.

ZAHN: That is amazing.

BALLARD: Yes.

ZAHN: And how different was the technology you used on finding this exploration for what you used in finding the Titanic.

BALLARD: Well, now we have high-definition television. We now don't have to physically go down in submarines. We can sit in a control room, very much like a control station on a television station and operate these vehicles 24 hours a day and then -- no, this new high-definition technology is pretty cool.

ZAHN: Describe to us the elation you must have felt after you said, finally you're finding that needle in the haystack and you see that tornado column.

BALLARD: There's two reaction that you always have. One, is you're -- it's like scoring the goal at the buzzer. We're down to the last moment, and we did it, but then you also realize you're at a grave site, and you know that two sailors died there, and the Kennedy family, who were so helpful for the project and are doing a beautiful TV special on it with them, wanted us not to disturb the site. They said please don't disturb the sight, because when we found buried it, it was difficult, because most of it was buried. But we honored the Kennedy family, as well as the other families who lost people on PT- 109, and we left the site exactly the way we found it.

ZAHN: Hasn't there been talk over the years about someone trying to bring that boat back up?

BALLARD: They always want to bring them all up. I don't believe in that. In fact, we have great experiment going on at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, where you can go in a room and be live underwater. In fact, if you come up there with your crew, I'll have you drive a robot that's in a kelp forest in Monterey Bay, live.

ZAHN: I'll volunteer.

BALLARD: Come on up.

Actually you can do it. We've actually put it right here. We'll give you the controls right here in your room, and you can operate vehicle systems on the bottom of ocean, with that in mind, we think we will create underwater museums, underwater memorials, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now creating underwater parks called marine sanctuaries, and we're going to access them with this new Teleprism (ph) technology.

ZAHN: What a life of adventure you leave.

BALLARD: It's good.

ZAHN: You kind of found your dream life. You know, the guy -- you dreamed about becoming Captain Nemo, right?

BALLARD: That's right. I grew up in San Diego, and wanted to be Captain Nemo from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," and I think I pulled it off.

ZAHN: You're better than Captain Nemo.

BALLARD: Thank you very much.

ZAHN: Thank you very much for sharing some of that exploration. We look forward to seeing the National Geographic...

BALLARD: Yes, we have a tease this Sunday on "National Geographic Explorer," but the big program will be in November.

ZAHN: Thank you very much for dropping by, and I'm going to take you up on driving through the kelp beds.

BALLARD: You bet.

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