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The Pacific War at sea

By lex, on July 13th, 2008

Courtesy of the BBC, back in the day.

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July 13th, 2008 | Tags: | Category: History

13 comments to The Pacific War at sea

  • Guy
    July 13, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Great stuff. Lot there I haven’t seen before.

  • Fast Nav
    July 13, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Awesome clip.

    Too bad everyone knows the Pacific was a submarine war. ;)

    Midway shmidway. It’s all about Mush Morton, Gene Fluckey, Dick O’kane, Lawson Ramage, George Street, and the others!!!

    Or at least I can dream, right??

  • All’s Fair « Checks with Chart
    July 13, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    [...] 13, 2008 · No Comments So, Lex posted this clip of the Pacific war at sea during World War [...]

  • Mongo
    July 13, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Not a dream, Fast Nav, a reality. ‘Dust on the Sea’ is, for me, still one of the most telling books about that era. I’m sure that an active sonar mapping off the coast of China would be VERY revealing, mostly of just how much havoc we wreaked on the Japanese war machine.

    One of my most heartfelt moments of gratitude was during a visit to the submarine memorial at Pearl Harbor; a must visit for anyone.

    Between the sub war and the Marine invasions in the Pacific, we have an accountability to some of our nation’s finest that can never be repaid.

  • Grey Goat
    July 13, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    “Aircraft Carrier X it was called.

    Actually, it was the Enterprise.”

    Beadwindow :)

  • cardoso
    July 13, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    Looks like a lot of fun. Good film to show to some foot soldiers who think Navy service is all about hot meals and lots of time to read and catch up the news.

    Not a nice place to be, no sir. And that includes the japanese pilots. A little more flak and they´d need to be night-flight qualified.

  • Phil Andrilla
    July 13, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    I just finished reading “The Battle of Leyte Gulf” by E.P.Hoyt. Among other things, it cronicles the exploits of most of the pilots of Composite Squadron 3, flying off the USS KALININ BAY a CVE.My cousin was up close and personal right there, Navy Cross award and a gold star for my aunt.Very brave men in those ships and airplanes.

  • sid
    July 13, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    Its refreshing seeing footage from some source other than the usual Discovery Channel, once edited (to varying degrees of enduring accuracy), and interminably repeated, fare….

  • Larry
    July 14, 2008 at 6:48 am

    Amazing footage from the Battle of Santa Cruz (the main battle scenes). Funny….they refer to the Enterprise as “Carrier X” when the battleship in her screening group, BB-57 South Dakota, really was called Battleship ‘X’ for quite a while in late 1942. A further bit of trickeration/deception? Interesting also how the newsreel didn’t talk much about “the other carrier” in the battle – of course, Hornet was sunk. Good stuff, should be seen by every high school history student, at least twice.

  • SSG Jeff (USAR)
    July 14, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Anyone notice the P40s being escorted by a F4U Corsair?

  • wolfwalker
    July 14, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Spectacular combat footage.

    The narration, on the other hand, sucks. It’s flat wrong on a number of points. Don’t know why — maybe it was written under wartime censorship rules — but it’s got several obvious errors:

    1) it’s flatly not true that in the first year of the war, all major Pacific battles were fought by carriers and there were no capital ship gun duels. There was Japanese battleship Hiei vs American cruisers in the Bloody Friday battle off Guadalcanal on November 13th, 1942, and the battleship duel two nights later between USS Washington and HIJMS Kirishima. Depending on your reckoning, you could also include the Battle of the Java Sea, which was a Japanese cruiser force against an Allied cruiser force, and the rest of the Ironbottom Sound battles.

    2) Japanese losses at Coral Sea were one carrier sunk, one heavily damaged. No cruisers.

    3) The “battle” footage showed an American aircraft carrier under air attack with planes parked on the flight deck. As far as I know, American carriers just didn’t do that. The Big E was hit twice, at Eastern Solomons and at Santa Cruz, but I have accounts of both those battles and they say nothing about her having planes on deck when she was attacked. Note that the footage of Enterprise being hit probably _is_ from Santa Cruz, and the flight deck is suddenly, mysteriously empty where prior footage shows planes parked there.

    Most of the film clips are Enterprise or one of her sisters — one showed Colonel Doolittle’s B-25s on Hornet’s flight deck. But I think I saw one or two shots of either Saratoga or Lexington — they had a huge funnel structure that is unlike any later carrier.

  • JoeC
    July 14, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    And all the time I was watching that I was thinking “By the grace of God and superior strength we will NEVER have to face that kind of war again”. Nope the next MAJOR war will be more horrible than most can contemplate, a nuclear exchange of cruise missiles, out of sight by the sender, out of sight by the receiver. Electronic warning blips on some flat screen ala “War Games” terminated in a flash. M.A.D? You bet. The lucky ones go in the flash. I just hope that we don’t let our leaders eviscerate our defenses…………..

  • Mike Z.
    July 14, 2008 at 7:56 pm

    Thanks, Larry and wolfwalker, for mentioning the Battle of Santa Cruz. I couldn’t remember the name of that action. Time to go back to cv6.org for a refresher.

    That was one brave cameraman.
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