This is a pretty rudimentary war flick, the story of Torpedo Squadron 5 aboard a US carrier after Pearl Harbor and during the battle of Midway. Nobody is more than one dimensional and everybody is predictable. The acting isn't bad, though, and the scenes of TBFs or TBMs landing and taking off are exciting to watch. These were big airplanes with 3-man crews and pretty cozy inside. George Bush flew one during the war and chose to do so because it gave him a chance to work aloft with a team instead of alone.
Most of the combat footage is familiar from other movies but some is not. The real footage is pretty much a sloppy lash up as was usual at the time. Curtiss Helldivers are repeatedly shown although they weren't deployed at the time, nor were they an improvement over the dive bombers they replaced. Ditto for the Gruman Hellcats. There are some shots of F4F Wildcats, which DID participate at Midway, but they're used as stand-ins for Japanese Zeroes!
As for the accuracy of the story itself, there were carrier strikes against Japanese bases after Pearl Harbor and before Midway, although they were more a matter of showing the flag than doing substantial damage. And at Midway, alas, American torpedo planes not only failed to damage the Japanese forces but were savaged by Japanese fighters and by AA. The dive bombers saved the day for us, aided by submarines, and all four Japanese carriers went down, along with all their airplanes and many of their most experienced pilots, while we lost the hastily repaired Yorktown.
The chief reason for our success was our having broken the Japanese code, so we knew they were coming. The Japanese also canceled the attack on Midway even though there was a decent chance they could have succeeded without their carriers. They were to do something similar at Leyte Gulf two years later. If Halsey, who was given to issuing orders like "Attack -- repeat -- attack," had been in charge at Midway instead of the more cautious Spruance things might have turned out differently.
But these sorts of twists, errors, and lack of subtleties were common in war movies at the time. It's a decent, watchable movie. It gives you a rather good feeling for what it was like to be a crew member of a TBF, where they were positioned with respect to one another -- that sort of thing. Its spirit is true to the times, so to speak.
Most of the combat footage is familiar from other movies but some is not. The real footage is pretty much a sloppy lash up as was usual at the time. Curtiss Helldivers are repeatedly shown although they weren't deployed at the time, nor were they an improvement over the dive bombers they replaced. Ditto for the Gruman Hellcats. There are some shots of F4F Wildcats, which DID participate at Midway, but they're used as stand-ins for Japanese Zeroes!
As for the accuracy of the story itself, there were carrier strikes against Japanese bases after Pearl Harbor and before Midway, although they were more a matter of showing the flag than doing substantial damage. And at Midway, alas, American torpedo planes not only failed to damage the Japanese forces but were savaged by Japanese fighters and by AA. The dive bombers saved the day for us, aided by submarines, and all four Japanese carriers went down, along with all their airplanes and many of their most experienced pilots, while we lost the hastily repaired Yorktown.
The chief reason for our success was our having broken the Japanese code, so we knew they were coming. The Japanese also canceled the attack on Midway even though there was a decent chance they could have succeeded without their carriers. They were to do something similar at Leyte Gulf two years later. If Halsey, who was given to issuing orders like "Attack -- repeat -- attack," had been in charge at Midway instead of the more cautious Spruance things might have turned out differently.
But these sorts of twists, errors, and lack of subtleties were common in war movies at the time. It's a decent, watchable movie. It gives you a rather good feeling for what it was like to be a crew member of a TBF, where they were positioned with respect to one another -- that sort of thing. Its spirit is true to the times, so to speak.