Movie " Midway "

My Grandson and I went to the movies and saw Midway . Good movie and good history that I didn't know about .

Already a pretty detailed Midway thread going on here: http://eaaforums.org/showthread.php?...ay-quot-Poster

I'd be a little reticent to adopt as "fact" anything you learned from these "dramatizations"
If you want to learn about the battle, there's some good YouTube videos on it. My favorite (I wish he would finish it) is Montemayor's explanation as told from the Japanese side:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX7...LSvqbVQ/videos

I'll leave my discussions of the special effects on the other thread.

I didn't expect to like the new "Midway," but I did. There are lot of aspects I thought they did real well, from uniforms to sets to the acting. Felt the writing was pretty good, too.

I felt it stretched itself too thin...covering Pearl Harbor, the Marshalls raid, the Battle of the Coral Sea, Dolittle's raid, AND the Battle of Midway itself, in a 140-minute running time.

What got lost, I think, is the heroic defense of the US Fleet during the Japanese counterattack. There was one heck of a battle there, and the movie missed it. I would guess the casualties on the surface fleet at least matched the losses in aircrews.

The ironic thing is, much is made of the emergency repairs to Yorktown after Coral Sea that let it join in the victory at Midway (and well deserved). But after it joins the fleet, we see one brief far-off glimpse of Yorktown in flames, and that's it for the defensive battle. Don't even remember seeing a Wildcat.

Two of my favorite scenes: Early on, there's a Japanese attack on Enterprise. One plane is badly damaged, and circles back to attempt to crash into the carrier. The American sailors look at each other, wondering "what the heck?"

During the early part of the Battle of Midway, a B-26 gets damaged in the same way...and ALSO arcs towards one of the Japanese carriers. Accidental? Deliberate? We don't know.

The Japanese admiral tells his bridge staff, "The Americans are not that brave."

... and the JUNIOR officers just LOOK at each other. They aren't convinced, and are figuring out the war is not going to be the walkover they expected it to be.

Ron Wanttaja

Found the following.....
Three 38th BG B-26Bs were detached to Midway Island in the buildup to that battle, and two of them, along with two B-26s detached from the 22nd BG, carried out torpedo attacks against the Japanese Fleet on 4 June 1942. Two were shot down and the other two were so badly damaged that they were written off after the mission. Their torpedoes failed to hit any Japanese ships, although they did shoot down one Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter and killed two seamen aboard the aircraft carrier Akagi with machine-gun fire. Notably, one of them, Susie Q, after dropping its single torpedo and searching for a safer escape route, flew directly down the length of the Akagi while being chased by interceptors and anti-aircraft fire, which had to hold their fire to avoid hitting their own flagship.

I thought the movie was quite entertaining, One outstanding error was the mountains on the island of Roi. The highest place on Roi-Namur (the Japanese connected Roi with its neighbor Namur with a causeway) is about six feet unless you count palm trees and radar dishes. The same with the bomber base that they discover. That would be Kwajalein Island and it's about four feet above sea level and 70 miles from Roi.

Vince Homer

Sort of like the old cowboy movies when you would see a jet trail in the sky.