On October 26, 1942, the USS Hornet, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, went down during fierce fighting in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

When it sank, strapped to its deck was an unlikely piece of equipment—a farming tractor.

This machine had been converted to help move planes across the carrier’s surface. More than eight decades later, the tractor has become the focus of an unusual recovery mission.

Rather than raising the carrier itself, a British tractor enthusiast is aiming to bring the tractor back to the surface.

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Tobias Wedgwood, who restores old tractors with his son and runs a YouTube channel called Father and Son Tractors, stumbled across the story while reading a scientific journal.

He discovered that the International Harvester A14 Shop Mule, a machine originally designed for farming, had been surprisingly well preserved underwater.

Wedgwood said he felt sympathy for the abandoned machine and floated the idea of recovering it. The BBC first reported on his effort, which soon drew attention from the U.S. Naval Institute.

As he explained through updates on his YouTube channel, what began as a lighthearted idea quickly gained momentum.

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Marine biologists and archaeologists showed interest in joining the project because it offered a rare opportunity to study underwater life thousands of feet below the surface.

This growing team hopes to secure enough funding for an expedition in 2026.

“We don’t know what is going on at these depths, have very limited knowledge, we’ve got a team of marine biologists on board,” Wedgwood told the BBC.

“We know in shallower waters that wrecks will act as incredible artificial reefs but we don’t really know what’s going on at these sort of extreme depths.”

The plan is ambitious, but it faces serious obstacles. The cost of such an expedition is estimated at around $13 million. Just as challenging, the tractor is still legally U.S. Navy property, and strict laws prevent most interference with sunken military vessels.

Only in limited cases, such as when a mission has genuine scientific purposes, can exceptions be made. Therefore, this expedition would require official approval before any attempt could be made to recover the vehicle.

The story of the tractor itself is a fascinating reminder of wartime ingenuity. The International Harvester model was taken from a farm and re-engineered to push and pull planes across the deck of an aircraft carrier. It was chained to the Hornet’s surface when the ship went down.

The wreck of the Hornet remained lost for more than 70 years until it was discovered in January 2019. The research vessel Petrel, funded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, carried out the search with underwater robotic vehicles.

These machines scoured the seafloor until they finally identified the Hornet 17,500 feet below the waves.

The USS Hornet was one of three Yorktown-class carriers built before America entered the war.

Commissioned in October 1941, it soon joined its sister ships, the USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise, in some of the Pacific’s most decisive battles.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December of that year, the Hornet was still stationed in the Atlantic. It was quickly moved to the Pacific and soon played a starring role in a daring mission.

In April 1942, the carrier launched 16 B-25B bombers under the command of then-Lt. Col. James Doolittle.

This famous Doolittle Raid marked the first American bombing strike on the Japanese home islands and gave the Allies a badly needed morale boost.

The Hornet later took part in the Battle of Midway, which was a turning point in the Pacific war. After that, it supported American troops during the Solomon Islands campaign, including the hard-fought battles on Guadalcanal.

Its final mission came during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942. The Hornet’s aircraft scored major hits on the Japanese carrier Shokaku, but enemy bombers struck back with devastating effect.

The Hornet was bombed repeatedly, and two damaged dive bombers deliberately crashed into its deck. The ship lost all power and became immobilized. Efforts to restore it or tow it away failed, and the order to abandon ship was eventually given.

Although U.S. forces attempted to scuttle the Hornet, Japanese warplanes delivered the final blows. The carrier slipped beneath the sea, taking 140 American crew members with it. It was the last U.S. carrier to be sunk during the war.

Today, the Hornet rests silently at the bottom of the Pacific, and the tractor remains chained to its deck. For Wedgwood and his supporters, raising this single machine represents more than a quirky project.

It offers a chance to combine history, marine science, and engineering in one extraordinary effort. Whether the expedition succeeds will depend on funding, permits, and technology, but the vision alone has already captured worldwide attention.

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