BEFORE: I've covered World War II films at least 20 times during this project, with everything from "Patton" and "The Dirty Dozen" right on up to "Red Tails" and "U-571". It's obviously been fertile territory for Hollywood films, both then and now. But as far as telling the tales of particular battles, I've covered Pearl Harbor ("From Here to Eternity" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!"), Guadalcanal ("The Thin Red Line") and Iwo Jima ("Flags of Our Fathers"). I can't say I did everything in the right order, because the Battle of Midway (June 1942) preceded those last two battles - but I'm backtracking anyway to see what got us there.
Linking from "Ensign Pulver", both Walter Matthau and Larry Hagman link back through "Fail-Safe" to Henry Fonda (last seen in "Mister Roberts").
AFTER: I'm using this as an excuse to also read up on the true details of the Battle of Midway, to see if this film got it right. Everything mostly checks out, the breaking of the Japanese code alerted the U.S. Navy to the impending attack on Midway, but since their code changed shortly after, there's still the possibility that Yamamoto was trying to lure the U.S. fleet into a trap. And the timing of the attack on Midway was critical, with the Japanese having recently damaged the USS Lexington and the USS Yorktown one month earlier in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
However, the Yorktown was repaired in record time at the Pearl Harbor base, and was set back out again to join the fleet. The Navy was still having something of a rebuilding year after Pearl Harbor, but the strength of U.S. resources and construction was perhaps better than the Japanese anticipated. Meanwhile, the Japanese fleet was still short a few aircraft carriers because of that Coral Sea battle.
The Japanese had four aircraft carriers available, and the U.S. only had three, but the U.S. carriers had larger air groups. Meanwhile, the breaking of the Japanese code meant that the U.S. forces knew the size of their opponent's forces, while the Japanese admiral had no idea how many ships he was facing.
Much of the battle's screen time in this film is devoted to U.S. airplanes locating the various Japanese ships - reconnaissance may be an important part of wartime strategy, but in the film this became too repetitive - it was just the same concept over and over again. Obviously you need to find a ship before you can send planes to attack it. But couldn't we just take this as a given and cut right to the action?
Anyway, the point is that knowledge of one's opponent is key to a battle. The Japanese planes were equipped with bombs to drop on land-based targets, then when Admiral Nagumo was made aware of the size of the U.S. fleet, he ordered the bombs to be replaced with torpedoes, which I assume would be more effective against ships. But switching the ordinance took time, and since the aircraft carriers needed to receive returning scout planes, as a result the Japanese planes were not ready to launch in time. U.S. planes from the Enterprise and the Hornet were already en route to strike the Japanese ships, and a third attack later came from the Yorktown.
Japanese planes were eventually launched as a counter-attack, taking down the Yorktown, but the damage had already been done. Plus the majority of the U.S. forces had already withdrawn for refueling.
One reason this is seen as a turning point battle in the war is that the Japanese military refused to acknowledge this battle as a defeat - wounded soldiers were kept in secret hospitals and those not wounded were transferred to more dangerous duties in the South Pacific, so many did not survive. The sudden need for replacement pilots meant that training regimens were shortened, which then resulted in a decline in the skills of Japanese pilots going forward, while the American air groups continued to improve.
Wow, who says films can't be educational? I learned a lot about battle tactics in the Pacific today. Unfortunately, along with the real historical figures like Admirals Nimitz and Fletcher and Spruance, the film adds a fictional (I think...) Capt. Garth as the central character, and the storyline with his son as a Navy pilot in love with a Japanese girl seems very tacked-on, as an attempt to add some human drama to the whole thing, to keep it all from being too technical. My feeling is that screenwriters are sometimes good at writing battle scenes or love scenes, but rarely both.
A disclaimer at the start of the film claimed that actual battle footage was used "whenever possible", but it also failed to mention that footage was also recycled from such films as "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!". The goofs section on IMDB is therefore filled with instances of planes looking different from shot to shot, but I admit I don't really have an eye for military aircraft. I just wondered why so many planes were shown with open cockpits. Didn't the pilots have trouble breathing at high altitudes?
Also starring Charlton Heston (last seen in "Tombstone"), Glenn Ford (last seen in "Gilda"), Hal Holbrook (last seen in "Julia"), Edward Albert (last seen in "Butterflies Are Free"), James Coburn (last seen in "California Suite"), Robert Mitchum (last heard in "Tombstone"), Robert Webber, Robert Wagner (last seen in "The Towering Inferno"), Cliff Robertson (last seen in "Three Days of the Condor"), Toshiro Mifune, James Shigeta, Pat Morita (last heard in "Mulan"), Clyde Kusatsu (last seen in "Volunteers"), Robert Ito, with cameos from Dabney Coleman, Erik Estrada, Tom Selleck, Steve Kanaly.
RATING: 4 out of 10 dive bombers
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