The Search For USS Lagarto

55m 42s

A fierce WWII battle at sea, unreported for more than 60 years is revealed at the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand in HD underwater video. There lay the US submarine Lagarto and the remains of her 86 crewmen, 8,000 miles from the town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on the edge of Lake Michigan where dairy farmers and cherry-pickers learned welding and pipe-fitting and became a skilled shipyard workforce that built 28 submarines, far from any ocean. Families of Lagarto’s crewmen share how their husbands and fathers’ disappearance shaped their lives and led to Lagarto’s discovery by a British diver and later confirmation by the Navy as the first sunken US submarine from WWII to be found since the war. Wreck divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, profiled in the best-seller Shadow Divers, lead numerous dives to solve the mystery of Lagarto’s final seconds that provide lasting proof to the Navy and to Lagarto families that their loved ones ‘went down fighting’ and deserve full military honors overlooked until the discovery. LOST AND FOUND: The Search for USS Lagarto is a powerful story of a Wisconsin town, a submarine and families intertwined to remind us that it is never too late to honor those who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. Winner of three Chicago/Midwest regional Emmys® for Documentary of Historical Significance, Writing and Original Music, LOST AND FOUND: The Search for USS Lagarto is a modern undersea detective story of clues undisturbed at the bottom of the sea since 1945. Producers Harvey Moshman and Chuck Coppola present high-definition underwater video of the net-shrouded submarine which shows why generations of Thai fishermen suspected ‘something big’ was snagging their nets, but never knew what it was until now. Computer-generated animated graphics based on accounts by the last submarine skipper to see Lagarto’s crew alive, reconstruct battle tactics used by Imperial Japanese Navy warships and American submarines in WWII.