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Warships: Pearl Harbor to Midway

George Gay John Waldron (Actor), John Ford (Director) Format: DVD

3 customer reviews

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Warships: Pearl Harbor to Midway

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Editorial Reviews

The devastating sneak attack on Pearl Harbor crippled America's vaunted battleship fleet, but left the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers untouched. Thus the burden of victory fell to the crews of the flattops USS Yorktown, USS Lexington, USS Ranger, USS Hornet, and USS Enterprise. Hornet led the charge, launching Gen. Jimmy Doolittle's B-25s on a daring raid over Tokyo in April of 1942. In May, Yorktown and Lexington fought valiantly at Coral Sea, haulting Japanese plans to assault Australia. Then in June, the Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise achieved a stunning victory, smashing the Japanese carrier fleet at Midway. Featured on this DVD are rare U.S. Navy films and newsreels showing the war in the Pacific 1941-42, including John Ford's famed "Battle of Midway" in full color. Also included is "Hook Down, Wheels Down", an account of the carrier battles that shaped WWII that features famous veterans from Midway, including Torpedo Squadron 8's sole survivor, George Gay. Please note, some films are silent pictures with intertitles and historic music soundtracks. Digitally remastered and restored from original 16mm prints. Please note: because of the age and rarity of these films, image and sound quality may vary.

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Product details

Actors: George Gay John Waldron
Directors: John Ford
Format: NTSC
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Periscope Film
DVD Release Date: September 15, 2006
Run Time: 110 minutes
Average Customer Review: 3 customer reviews
ASIN: B000ICM2O2
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #584,726 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #440277 in Movies & TV > DVD

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		33%
4 star		67%
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Naval Aviation History Lesson

ByKindle Customeron November 11, 2006

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Quality of the old films reproduced in the dvd is much better than I expected.

0Comment 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Warships: Pearl Harbor to Midway

ByEdwin C. Becanon January 9, 2007

Verified Purchase

Good Documentary - would like to see Midway to end

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

A great collection of early WWII naval air action

ByR. W. Russellon November 3, 2006

This DVD production is a compilation of mostly WWII-era motion picture film clips from official USN sources as well as studio archives and newsreel footage. Some of it is familiar, but there is quite a lot that this reviewer hasn't seen before in more than 50 years of watching this sort of thing. That was a welcome surprise.

Some of those scenes are worth special mention. One of them was a brief movie clip of a twin-engine Japanese Betty bomber flying past a U.S. cruiser, maybe a hundred feet above the water and very close. You'd think the pilot was doing a fly-by in an air show! I found it truly amazing.

Other memorable movie scenes: battleship messman Dorie Miller on the USS Enterprise, getting his Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor; fighter ace Jimmy Thach personally explaining the "Thach Weave;" dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky's interview from the 1970s; and an interview with Torpedo Squadron 8 survivor George Gay from about the same time.

The program is arranged into 8 discreet segments: (1) the Pearl Harbor attack, (2) the Marshall Islands raids, (3) the Doolittle raid, (4) "Carrier X" (USS Yorktown and Coral Sea), (5) Coral Sea and Midway, (6) the John Ford "Battle of Midway" film, (7) "Hook Down, Wheels Down" Part 1, and (8) "Hook Down Wheels Down" Part 2. Watching it reminded me of one of my favorite World War II films, "A Wing and a Prayer" (Don Ameche, 1944). The value of that movie is not its historical accuracy, for it has nearly everything wrong in that regard. Rather, it's the contemporary scenes and dialogue played by actors who looked and talked exactly like the men they were portraying. You don't get that in later movies, like "Midway" (1976) and "Pearl Harbor" (2001).

One gets that same effect from this production. Don't watch it for an accurate historical treatise on the various segments, for you'll see numerous out-of-place clips and a whole lot of misstatements of fact. Instead, remember that the film and its accompanying dialogue were created *back then* when the true facts of a given battle were often unknown or classified. Thus when the announcer makes a statement that we now know to be historically wrong, remember the vintage of what you are watching and appreciate it for its classic quality.

Speaking of quality, the video imagery is as good as modern digital remastering can make it, and the surround-sound background music that the producer has inserted here and there sounds great. All in all, it's a great production that any WWII naval aviation fan should find quite entertaining.

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