bottom line, it is shocking what the japs accomplished with so few resources. and shocking how one sided production was after that.


Maybe their approach to war was more "modern" than ours was in the beginning; remember, we still had command staff in place that wanted battleships as opposed to carriers; that attitude changed real quick after Pearl Harbor. Plus, while we thought and knew in some cases that the possibility of an attack existed, we had no clue when and where. Japs were well organized and focused and frankly we weren't until 12.8.1941. They caught us totally off guard which really helped their success in the beginning. As for replacing armaments, etc since the US was supplying them a large chunk of raw product prior to the war the Japs attacked their main supply source which really hurt them going forward. Remember, the original thought process behind Pearl Harbor in the first place was to destroy our main fleet which the Japs thought would force the US to sue for peace if they had succeeded. The Japs screwed us up for 3-5 months but once we got going in the US there was no way the Japs could hold what they had gained. The big mistake for the Japs was the American carriers not being in Pearl Harbor on 12.07.1941. If you really want to look at it from that angle, the war started to turn within weeks after the attack: Japs sliced their own throat.

i usually like war movies, and especially the older WWII story movies,
but this one just didn't sit well with me. I felt like we got too much "personal" story and not enough of the war.

maybe i'm off-base, but it's usually not often I don't like a movie. I was entertained, but left disappointed.

cbr said:

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for a period of time after midway, the big E was our ONLY carrier in action.

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Incorrect. Hornet (which was totally left out of the Midway battle portion of this new movie) also survived the battle, but was put up at Pearl for 6 weeks beginning June 16, 1942, and did not participate in the initial landings on Guadalcanal in early August.

Saratoga had reached Pearl on June 6, 1942 - the last day of the Midway battle.

Enterprise, and Saratoga supported the initial landings on Guadalcanal in early August 1942. Both took part in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in late August, where Enterprise suffered bomb damage that forced her in for repairs. Saratoga was torpedoed (again) a week later, leaving Hornet the only available carrier until Wasp arrived from the Atlantic.

Wasp was sunk in September, 1942, by a Japanese submarine.

Enterprise returned in time to join Hornet for the Battle of Santa Cruz in October, where Hornet was sunk and Enterprise damaged.

The Guadalcanal campaign was very hard on the USN carrier force!

Now, my couple of OCD nit picks with the move:

- When the Lexington is shown sinking at Coral Sea, the ship shown was NOT a Lexington class ship. The Lex and her sister Sara had very distinctive silouettes, with a huge stack and separate, skinny island. Very different from Yorktown/Hornet/Enterprise.

- The B-26s flying from Midway actually attacked with torpedoes, not bombs. The high level bombing was done by B-17s. The bit about the one crippled B-26 trying to crash into a Japanese carrier actually happened. Another one actually flew right down the length of the deck of the Akagi after dropping its torpedo, firing it's machineguns as it went. Why they left that out of the movie is beyond me. It would have looked cool as hell.

- The density/proximity of the IJN ships during the American torpedo bomber attacks. Way too close - naval formations are far, far more dispersed than that. But it provided a much more dramatic look.

Overall, to me it was an entertaining movie in it's own right. My boys enjoyed it. Personally, I like the older movie, because I felt like it gave a better overall picture of the whole battle - the role of the PBY scout planes from Midway, the near cluster**** of the different squadrons and carrier wings trying to get themselves together and find the Japanese, then the amazingly fortuitous way that mess turned to the Americans' advantage, and the role of a 30 minute delay in the launch of one Japanese scout plane - the one that ended up finding Yorktown - played the plane re-arming chaos that helped doom the Japanese carriers.

Some good points in your post.

This ...

Quote:

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Another one actually flew right down the length of the deck of the Akagi after dropping its torpedo, firing it's machineguns as it went.

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When I saw the Marauders in this movie, I had a bit of a warbird-nerdgasm thinking they would show this lone B-26 pulling that maneuver along the deck of the Akagi. That would have been a great moment in the movie.

By and large, I think this movie was a homerun, but it's not without its faults. The biggest, for me, is the depiction of the divebombing. While highly visually and very entertaining, the depiction of en masse diving was simply inaccurate - the doctrine at the time was to go in one after the other. But, not really a huge issue in terms of enjoying the actual movie. And like you pointed out, naval fleets in WWII tended to be far more dispersed than depicted in this movie.

Something else that I wish this movie had done was to linger a bit longer on some scenes. As it is, the movie feels almost like a Cliff's Notes of the Battle of Midway, but doesn't give enough details to those of us who are quite familiar with the history. For instance, we see certain characters on screen momentarily, never get a name of who this particular character is, things like that. And just completely ignoring the fighter action in the defense of Yorktown ...

Thanks Titan! What a wonderful thread to read through. I just watched Jonathan Parshall's presentation at the Naval War College last night (on Youtube). You sure do know your stuff sir! Makes me swell with pride to have served 10 years in one of the greatest navies in history.

BigJim49 AustinNowDallas said:

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Side note : I visited my cousins in Houston mid to later 30s . Uncle took us on a tour of Houston port .

When I saw scrap metal being loaded on a ship, I asked why they were doing this? My uncle replied

" It's going to Japan to be used to make weapons for their war " .

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My grandfather worked for Proler steel on the ship channel handling scrap metal back in the 40s.