Peter and Dan Snow tell the story of the decisive naval battle that that spelled the beginning of the end of Japan's dreams of empire in the Far East. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor inflicted a crippling blow on the US Pacific Fleet, but the American aircraft carriers had escaped the attack unscathed. Now they would be the spearhead of a counterstroke that would challenge the Imperial Japanese Navy's bid to rule the Pacific.

Peter and Dan Snow describe how the battle was won and lost in five crucial minutes, ultimately inflicting a crushing defeat on the Japanese carrier fleet.

Peter uses his BAFTA-award winning graphic technology to explain the cascade of events, as Japanese and American carriers hurled bombers and fighters at each other in this titanic battle in the which the opposing ships never came in sight of each other. Fire was one of the worse hazards facing the crews on board these massive vessels and Dan Snow undergoes naval fire-training to see what the men would have had to face.