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00:01:44 Far aloft over the Atlantic seaboard, one fine morning in 1943,
00:01:50 an imposing force of American naval air power proceeds to an important rendezvous.
00:01:56 This force is the aircraft complement of a new carrier, fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers.
00:02:04 With the air group commander leading everyone, they are flying out to sea to join the ship
00:02:08 which will be their floating home and fighting base.
00:02:12 It is one of many carriers which the American people have built since Pearl Harbor
00:02:16 to destroy the enemy in his own part of the world, far away.
00:02:20 [Music]
00:02:24 And there now is our base, powerful and serene.
00:02:30 In honor of all American aircraft carriers, let us call her the fighting lady.
00:02:36 [Music]
00:02:50 Against a good solid wind with their tail hooks down, our planes come into the broad flight deck of their new home.
00:02:56 [Music]
00:03:00 In case the plane's hook fails to catch the arresting gear, there's a series of stout wire barriers.
00:03:07 Number one man on the flight deck just now is the LSO, the landing signal officer, always a flyer himself.
00:03:14 Like all aviators, he'd much rather be flying.
00:03:17 [Music]
00:03:21 Come on in and sit down.
00:03:23 [Music]
00:03:26 The plane is out of the groove and he waves it off.
00:03:29 Come around another time, pilot, and we'll take you aboard.
00:03:32 [Music]
00:03:44 When the planes land, they taxi quickly forward out of the way.
00:03:48 Later they'll have to be shifted to the stern and rearranged in proper position for takeoff.
00:03:53 This is called respotting the deck.
00:03:55 [Music]
00:03:58 Here is our skipper, Jocko, a veteran Navy flyer, Annapolis, 1917.
00:04:05 He is not impressed by our earnest efforts, nor the flight deck control officers.
00:04:11 He calls all hands together and gives us a piece of his mind.
00:04:15 We'll never be ready for combat unless you flight deck crews learn right now to work as a team.
00:04:21 Don't you men realize that before long we'll be in dangerous waters?
00:04:26 That's too slow! Bear a hand!
00:04:28 [Engine noise]
00:04:34 Watch out! Keep that wing clear!
00:04:37 [Splashing]
00:04:41 Get it over to starboard! Way over to starboard!
00:04:45 Come on, get the lead out of your pants!
00:04:48 [Splashing]
00:04:50 Now this is the way your deck should look when you're ready for action.
00:04:54 [Music]
00:04:56 Our ship, our fighting lady, is enormous, wonderful, and strange to us.
00:05:02 From stem to stern, the entire ship is a honeycomb of watertight and flame-proof compartments.
00:05:08 Far below the waterline are engine rooms, fire rooms, fuel tanks,
00:05:13 magazines packed with enough assorted high explosives to blow us all to kingdom come.
00:05:20 The hangar deck is like a gigantic tunnel, nearly two city blocks long,
00:05:24 and wide enough to house four freight trains abreast.
00:05:27 [Music]
00:05:36 It'll take us a week, a month maybe, to learn our way around.
00:05:40 These new surroundings are as mysterious to us as they are cold and impersonal.
00:05:46 Our fighting lady is like a huge floating cave, noisy and uncomfortable.
00:05:51 [Music]
00:05:56 Elevators as big as a tennis court carry us topside to the flight deck.
00:06:01 The great superstructure rising amid ships is called the island.
00:06:06 This is truly the ship's nerve center, its fighting brain.
00:06:11 Eighty-five percent of us who make up the fighting lady's family are volunteers in this war
00:06:16 and have never been to sea before.
00:06:19 We learned our jobs theoretically in intensive training ashore.
00:06:24 A short while ago, we were high school boys and college kids,
00:06:27 or bank clerks or farmhands or factory workers.
00:06:32 Now we are Blue Jackets and Marines, all members of a naval combat team nearly 3,000 strong.
00:06:39 In our multitude of new tasks and duties as a team, we're very green,
00:06:44 but curiosity and comradeship and the instinct of self-preservation are great teachers.
00:06:51 [Music]
00:07:07 Some of us have to master the delicate and complicated instruments
00:07:10 which control the fire of our five-inch batteries,
00:07:13 the guns that must defend the fighting lady when enemy dive bombers and torpedo planes attack.
00:07:19 [Explosions]
00:07:32 We train and train to learn our stuff and earn our E for efficiency.
00:07:37 [Music]
00:07:42 The fighting lady's destination is still a closely guarded secret,
00:07:45 but no one can hide the fact that we are entering tropical waters.
00:07:50 Our ship seems more friendly and comfortable now.
00:07:53 We Greenhorns feel that a suntan will at least make us look like fighting sailors.
00:07:58 Even our mascot, Scrappy, has been at sea longer than most of us.
00:08:02 [Dog barking]
00:08:07 [Music]
00:08:09 Some of the mystery that has been hanging over us is lifted when we enter the Panama Canal.
00:08:14 There is a lot of unprofessional nervousness about whether or not we're too big to get through the locks.
00:08:19 By using lines instead of fenders, we do get through.
00:08:22 As the naval constructors knew all along, we would.
00:08:25 Come on, hop aboard. We're going places.
00:08:27 For two cents I would. Do you know anybody who wants to swap?
00:08:30 [Music]
00:08:35 Now we stand out into the Pacific and life aboard settles down into monotony.
00:08:40 Here are our aircraft pilots, officers all.
00:08:43 Ship's company call them the glamour boys.
00:08:46 They are the men who fly and fight our planes.
00:08:49 All the efforts of all the rest of us are concentrated on putting these people into the air and getting them back again.
00:08:56 Most of us are hiding a certain amount of nervousness and anxiety.
00:09:00 For many of us are Johnny-come-latelys,
00:09:02 reserve officers who only recently learned to fly at Corpus Christi in Jacksonville.
00:09:07 Others among us are specialists who trained at Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
00:09:12 Reserves are called by the regulars in a friendly way, 90-day wonders.
00:09:18 In return, the Annapolis regulars are called the trade school boys.
00:09:22 But whether Quonset or Annapolis, all are bound together in the fraternity,
00:09:27 the close fellowship of Navy men.
00:09:30 [Music]
00:09:38 Among the ship's non-commissioned personnel, almost 3,000 blue jackets and 100 Marines,
00:09:44 the hottest shots are the air crewmen, aerial gunners and radio men.
00:09:49 These boys and the plane captains are the partners of the glamour boys in the air.
00:09:55 By non-flying blue jackets, they are called zoom pigeons or air dales.
00:10:00 Because they receive 50% extra pay for flying, they are sometimes referred to as the bankroll boys.
00:10:07 [Music]
00:10:13 Everybody aboard ship backs up the flying group.
00:10:16 This requires the efforts of all manner of people.
00:10:19 Many of the jobs are far from glamorous.
00:10:23 All the little tasks and services you find along Main Street
00:10:26 must be performed by some members of our carrier's crew.
00:10:31 For though the fighting lady is a powerful ship of war, she is also a sizable American community.
00:10:37 Population must be supplied with all the necessities and some of the comforts of home.
00:10:42 [Music]
00:10:45 [Sound of radio static]
00:10:51 Doc Sorensen, the pharmacist's mate, is just like a village druggist.
00:10:56 Next door is our hospital called Sick Bay.
00:10:59 It has only a few patients now, but soon it is to be filled with our wounded.
00:11:05 Men like these who perform the humble jobs that make life aboard a fighting carrier more bearable,
00:11:10 the barbers and the cobblers are seldom mentioned in communiques.
00:11:15 They all have a place in our fighting team.
00:11:18 [Music]
00:11:21 Weeks pass.
00:11:23 Now we are far out into the Pacific, which is a very considerable body of water.
00:11:30 Monotony shuts down on us between our duties.
00:11:33 Guessing where we're bound is still our chief pastime.
00:11:37 Will we put in to Pearl?
00:11:39 Are we going to Iron Bottom Bay?
00:11:41 Or maybe even to the Aleutians?
00:11:44 All such gossip and rumor are called scuttlebutt or drinking fountain conversation.
00:11:49 [Music]
00:12:04 Throughout the ship, men get together in little groups to take refuge
00:12:08 from the heavy burden of waiting for something to happen.
00:12:11 [Music]
00:12:17 And then one day out of nowhere comes a fast fleet tanker and we are refueled at sea.
00:12:22 This tells us something.
00:12:24 This tells us that we are not going to Pearl or any other land base for a long, long time.
00:12:29 [Music]
00:12:38 Besides our skipper, we have an admiral aboard, a sea dog who's been a naval flyer for nearly 20 years.
00:12:44 Until now, only these officers have known where we are to go.
00:12:48 [Music]
00:12:51 But now Jocko, our captain, confers with the air group commander and reveals the plan.
00:12:56 A fighting lady has been ordered to make a strike.
00:12:59 She will pass through waters where no carrier task force has ventured since the bloody Battle of Midway.
00:13:05 Remember, this is 1943, long before we took the Marshall Islands.
00:13:09 [Music]
00:13:12 Weather studies are made and though this is a daily routine,
00:13:15 somehow the whole ship senses that something is about to happen.
00:13:20 Even before the news is broadcast to all of us, there's a new tension and atmosphere of expectancy.
00:13:27 And then we are told we have traveled more than 7,000 miles from Panama
00:13:32 and tomorrow, August 30th, 1943, we can strike the Jap base at Marcus Island,
00:13:38 deep within the enemy's ring of defenses.
00:13:45 The evening before our first strike, the air group commander briefs all his pilots with maps and the model of our target.
00:13:52 We are sticking out our necks to within a thousand miles of Tokyo
00:13:55 to divert the Japs' attention from other American activities far south and east of Marcus.
00:14:01 Those of us who have never before been in battle, that's most of us,
00:14:06 ask a lot of questions of those who have seen action.
00:14:09 Don't break off until you're practically on the same course and right astern of the enemy.
00:14:13 Then push over fast.
00:14:15 Outwardly, we try to seem composed and cheerful, but a lot's going on inside our minds.
00:14:21 We question our most inner selves.
00:14:24 What will it be like?
00:14:26 Somehow we take it, but we do all right.
00:14:32 This is the night when a lot of boys write one more letter home.
00:14:41 Among those playing Acey Deucey in the ward room is a chubby 23-year-old from Eureka Springs, Arkansas,
00:14:47 Lieutenant E.T. Stover, nicknamed Smokey.
00:14:51 That's he sitting on the far right.
00:14:54 After having flown 50 missions at Guadalcanal, Smokey has been ordered to take a rest.
00:14:59 He'd much rather be flying.
00:15:04 Before dark on the eve of battle, our planes are loaded with bombs and gas.
00:15:08 So that each plane will be in its precise position for a speedy takeoff, we spot and re-spot our deck.
00:15:19 All is perfect. We will strike at dawn.
00:15:26 And now GQ, General Quarters.
00:15:43 Every man on the ship goes to his battle station, a special place on the fighting team.
00:15:48 George, the barber, will pass ammunition.
00:15:51 Leo, the baker, will be a sky lookout.
00:15:54 Frank, the tailor, is assigned to a first aid station.
00:15:59 Pilots are in their ready rooms.
00:16:01 Each squadron, fighter, bomber, torpedo bomber, assemble separately.
00:16:07 The fliers get into their flight gear and receive last-minute data and instructions.
00:16:23 On the flight deck, our first battle dawn awaits us.
00:16:28 Our whole ship is on hair trigger.
00:16:31 The fighting lady is hardly 100 miles from the first target of her career.
00:16:36 These last few minutes before the order for our first action are the toughest time of all.
00:16:49 A wise man once said, "War is mostly waiting."
00:16:54 We learn now what that can mean.
00:16:58 At last the word comes.
00:16:59 Pilots, man your planes.
00:17:00 Ready room three, roger.
00:17:03 Pilots, man your planes.
00:17:06 [Music]
00:17:35 [Music]
00:17:46 The fighters take off first to form cover aloft for the other squadrons.
00:17:50 Then the bombers, heavy laden with destruction.
00:18:06 The sun has risen now and our escorts are alert for enemy submarines.
00:18:11 But the fighting lady steams boldly toward our target to lessen the distance for our planes when they return.
00:18:28 The radio plotting room is the electric eye and ear by which the fighting lady detects and keeps tab on all planes and ships for miles around us.
00:18:37 Smokey, the fighting ace from Arkansas, has been put in charge of this room for our big day.
00:18:44 Hunched among his assistants, Smokey is like a super quarterback on a super football team.
00:18:50 He is in constant touch with our entire air group.
00:18:59 As our first fighters race in toward Marcus Island, they stay low, hoping to escape detection by the enemy's radar.
00:19:09 Then they climb suddenly and dive in a surprise strafing attack on the enemy's airstrips.
00:19:16 These red balls floating up at us so lazily are anti-aircraft fire.
00:19:21 There is three times as much of it coming up at us as we can see because only one shell in three is a tracer.
00:19:28 What look like fiery polywogs are tracers from our own wing guns.
00:19:32 The Ack-Ack is much heavier than expected, but through it we go to knock out enemy bombers on the ground.
00:19:40 All through these battle pictures realize that we are looking straight down our own gun barrels.
00:19:45 These pictures are taken automatically by the same mechanism that operates the guns.
00:19:50 Pictures even shake with the guns recoiled.
00:19:53 The eye is now the very eye of our fighting airplane.
00:20:06 The enemy's picket boats and supply ships offshore are thoroughly strafed.
00:20:10 No longer will these traps bring rice and sake and munitions to Marcus.
00:20:29 Our bombers flying higher see the island beginning to burn.
00:20:33 A moment ago it looked like a little jade trinket in a cobalt sea.
00:20:43 As the fighters and bombers swing victoriously away from Marcus Island,
00:20:48 towering columns of smoke show the thorough job our boys have done.
00:20:55 Back aboard ship, Smokey is tracking the flyers with care to be sure that none is missing
00:21:00 and that no enemy planes are trying to follow them out to our fighting lady.
00:21:21 As our planes come aboard, there begins an operation almost as exciting as the attack itself.
00:21:27 A valet after battle with the plane directors as dancing masters.
00:21:32 The whirling propellers fill this scene with danger, but now our crews are trained in adept.
00:21:52 The landing signal officer performs an eloquent adagio on the fighting lady's stern.
00:21:59 A warning to the rest of the cast to stay off stage until a limping member can be let out of the way.
00:22:28 The pilots go below to report to their combat intelligence officers.
00:22:35 They have hot news, good news.
00:22:38 They tell what they saw and did.
00:22:40 How many rounds of ammunition they fired.
00:22:42 How many bombs they dropped.
00:22:44 What they hit.
00:22:46 What they noticed at the target that was new and different or that may need hitting again.
00:22:51 As the reports are added up and our combat photographers develop their pictures,
00:22:56 the story becomes better and better.
00:22:59 Every single Jap bomber on Marcus has been destroyed.
00:23:03 80% of the shore installations blasted or set afire.
00:23:07 Hangars, radio stations, gas dumps, ammunition dumps.
00:23:11 Marcus is now a lovely mess.
00:23:15 In the radio plot, Smokey is worried.
00:23:18 There are planes still up there and he's wondering about them.
00:23:21 They are ours though, delayed by battle damage.
00:23:27 Landing a shot up plane on the carrier is a crucial test of how well trained, how alert, steady a naval flyer is.
00:23:35 [Music]
00:23:53 The fighting lady now has met her enemy.
00:23:56 In the wardroom, the pilots who this morning felt new and nervous now talk like veterans.
00:24:02 We have been baptized by fire and have survived nicely.
00:24:06 We of the fighting lady are growing up.
00:24:09 [Music]
00:24:13 The Admiral of our task force knows the overall strategy of the whole Pacific campaign.
00:24:18 To smash straight through Japan's outer network of islands, to recapture the Philippines and land on the mainland of Asia.
00:24:24 Thus we will deny Japan supplies from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies and leave her far-flung island garrisons maroon.
00:24:32 Then we will reach out and really help our ally China.
00:24:37 Months after Marcus, this campaign is well started.
00:24:40 Our carrier task forces have been in many battles.
00:24:44 And now, early in 1944, the fighting lady's target is Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.
00:24:52 These are Jap zeros.
00:24:54 Fighter screen being pierced by our planes and planes from eight other carriers.
00:24:59 Preparatory to scraping Kwajalein and bombing it apart.
00:25:04 Our fighter pilots have improved with practice, with the confidence that comes from experience.
00:25:11 They estimate their range by watching their tracers.
00:25:15 They hold their fire until our wing gun bullets converge at 300 yards.
00:25:22 They shoot in bursts instead of in steady streams, which heat up the guns and spend ammunition.
00:25:28 (Explosions)
00:25:57 (Explosions)
00:26:13 We soon have Kwajalein burning very satisfactorily.
00:26:21 After our bombing attacks and heavy shelling by our surface ships, assault craft filled with Marines and Army hit the beaches.
00:26:29 And very soon after that, Kwajalein is ours.
00:26:32 (Explosions)
00:26:48 Right after Kwajalein, word comes to our Admiral that at Truk, Japan's huge and secret naval fortress 1,400 miles to the west,
00:26:56 there apparently are some heavy units of the Japanese battle fleet.
00:27:00 Perhaps we can surprise them.
00:27:04 Again, the fighting lady's squadron and squadrons from other carriers take off for combat.
00:27:10 A lot of mouths are dry at the thought that our target is mighty Truk.
00:27:18 The rear seat gunners look back at the fighting lady, wondering when and if they will ever return to her.
00:27:33 All that we know about Truk, we know from a few photographs taken by some nervy Marines on reconnaissance just 18 days ago.
00:27:41 We hear that it is a complex of heavily fortified islands surrounded by airstrips, with naval anchorages at certain spots among the islands.
00:27:52 For the next two days, more than 1,000 of our carrier-based planes are going to sweep in on Truk in relays.
00:28:00 The planes appear to flow gently off our bow.
00:28:04 Actually, their airspeed is a good 70 knots.
00:28:08 Diving in on Truk, we again turn on our guns and their synchronized cameras.
00:28:12 Truk's defenders are aloft and we smack them hard.
00:28:30 [Planes flying]
00:28:44 The hearts that were in men's mouths before this strike began now settle back into place and are singing once more.
00:28:52 Is there something really grand, something historic about diving in here on this place which Japan has been building and guarding jealously from all the Japanese eyes for 20 years?
00:29:03 We dive right in low and take a good look at fighter strips, bomber bases, seaplane ramps.
00:29:19 In the most vertical dive, the pilot may black out or go blind for a moment when he pulls up and out at the bottom, but the camera won't black out.
00:29:28 It cannot see the landing of our own bomb, for we'll be up and away before that reaches the target.
00:29:34 The camera records the hits of other planes ahead of us.
00:30:02 [Planes flying]
00:30:16 We'd hoped to find the Jap fleet here, but most of it's gone.
00:30:21 Some lingering ships, including some of their vast fleet tankers, we find hiding in sheltered coves.
00:30:28 The vessels which we are now strafing are other fleet auxiliaries, rice boats, transports, and ammunition ships.
00:30:41 With bursts of .50 caliber incendiaries and armor-piercing slugs, we set them on fire, rip them open, often wide enough to sink.
00:31:08 [Planes flying]
00:31:30 Carrying ships filled with TNT is not very healthy for pilots who dive too low, but it's hard to tell who's carrying what until the big bang comes.
00:31:54 Returning to the deck at 130 miles an hour with a flap shot away, all a pilot can hope to save is his own skin.
00:32:02 Here comes our new air group commander. He's had a bit of trouble.
00:32:07 His windshield is blotted with blood and he has to feel his way aboard.
00:32:11 Strafing at low altitude, he took a 40 millimeter anti-aircraft burst right in the face.
00:32:17 More than 200 wounds and his plane a sail. But he'll live to fly again.
00:32:25 Some planes will not return, but others come back and land somehow, anyhow.
00:32:32 Considering the toughness of truck, our losses are astonishingly light.
00:32:37 No time is lost getting casualties below.
00:32:49 It's a long way from truck to our secret rendezvous in the Marshall Islands.
00:32:53 Someday it can be told just where this is.
00:32:57 Actually, it is a magnificent new fleet anchorage, an advanced naval base, which we have taken from the Japs and made secure.
00:33:06 Now for the first time, we who have been operating as separate, relatively small task forces,
00:33:12 see assemble the enormous mass of naval power.
00:33:15 Over one million tons of American fighting steel.
00:33:19 New carriers, new battleships, new cruisers and fleet auxiliaries in an amount which Japan could never conceive, let alone produce.
00:33:33 That we are able to maintain supply lines over the vast distances of the Pacific is one of the miracles of this war.
00:33:40 In the comforting presence of so much power, we relax and refresh our battle-strained nerves.
00:34:02 Our ship's post office now does really big business.
00:34:07 Letters for us at last from home.
00:34:10 Letters from us to friends and families.
00:34:13 Our sensors know our collective mood, our central hopes and thoughts.
00:34:21 The stuff is really getting out here now.
00:34:26 I can't tell you much about it, but oh boy.
00:34:30 And the more we get, well, the sooner I'll be seeing you.
00:34:37 All hands are called together.
00:34:40 Our old skipper, Jocko, has been promoted admiral.
00:34:43 Our new one's name is Dixie.
00:34:46 Men, as soon as I finish talking, we are getting underway.
00:34:50 Our fighting lady is now part of what is designated Task Force 58.
00:34:55 As you know, our final destination is a place called Tokyo.
00:35:00 We'll have to fight hard to get there, but when we drop our hook at Yokohama, I'm going to throw a party.
00:35:06 All hands are cordially invited.
00:35:08 [Cheers]
00:35:14 [Music]
00:35:33 Our task forces are built compactly now around carriers like ourselves,
00:35:37 with speedy new battle wagons at our side.
00:35:41 A carrier skipper never leaves the bridge at sea,
00:35:44 because carriers and their planes are the first to strike the enemy or to be struck by him.
00:35:51 Our aircraft pilots are constantly on call,
00:35:54 for despite the massive power spread out around us, these are still dangerous waters.
00:36:00 Our pilots know this all too well, but it doesn't worry them now for their season.
00:36:05 They know how.
00:36:07 There are a lot of new faces among us, but most of these men too have been in action.
00:36:12 At places like Hollandia, Millie, Jollywood, Palau, Rabaul, Wake, Mailoilap.
00:36:21 Our rear seat gunners and radio men are old hands now.
00:36:25 Some of their faces are different too, because there have been replacements.
00:36:29 A lot of them have been made commissioned officers.
00:36:36 There's a saying in the Navy that you never learn to love a carrier until she gets hurt.
00:36:41 Well, perhaps we don't really love our fighting lady, but we've become mighty fond of her,
00:36:47 and almost comfortable, almost at home.
00:36:56 Occasionally our shipboard movies bring us that one thing we crave the most,
00:36:59 one touch of something utterly American, one deep breath of home.
00:37:18 Like Jocko, our new skipper Dixie is an old hell diving Navy pilot.
00:37:23 In their battle camps, he and Admiral Mitcher look like big league baseball managers.
00:37:32 Northwest we steam, and never before in history has an ocean borne such a weight of naval power.
00:37:38 Not a Jutland, not a Japan's proud boast Tsushima was there anywhere near the force
00:37:43 with which we now assert that this is our ocean, this is our air.
00:37:49 We're seeking the Japanese battle fleet to prove it.
00:38:02 With our cruisers and our biggest new battle wagons present, we are strong enough to hope,
00:38:08 really to hope, that we may provoke the Japanese fleet into accepting a fight.
00:38:22 We're joined by plotting Coast Guard and Navy transports.
00:38:26 The Marines again.
00:38:28 So another amphibious assault is cooking.
00:38:37 Our patrols have spotted an enemy search plane and are after her.
00:38:40 She's a big bird.
00:38:44 A 20 ton, four motored Kawanishi seaplane, the kind we call Emily's.
00:39:00 Miss Emily's a tough old girl.
00:39:03 Right now she's screaming for help and telling Tokyo by radio where we are.
00:39:09 Hellcats are closing in on her.
00:39:24 So long, Emily.
00:39:37 Now that the enemy knows where we are and we know he knows,
00:39:41 our brass hats get together on final arrangements for what may turn into another midway.
00:39:48 The first of many in our drive through to the Philippines and China will be the Marianas.
00:39:56 In battles just ahead of us, we are to make good use of a multitude of weapons,
00:40:00 special devices and techniques which have been evolved through the 30 years
00:40:04 since the U.S. Navy first took to the air.
00:40:13 Not only did our naval flyers create the aircraft carrier itself,
00:40:18 but it was they who devised the torpedo plane and invented and perfected dive bombing.
00:40:35 Disposed about our flight deck so that planes can be quickly armed are all manner of death dealing objects.
00:40:41 500, 1,000 and 2,000 pound bombs.
00:40:46 We have torpedoes and incendiaries and the kind of anti-personnel bombs we call daisy cutters.
00:41:02 Some of our bombs are armor piercing, some for fragmentation.
00:41:06 Others have delayed action fuses to prolong the effect of our bombardment for hours after we have delivered it.
00:41:14 Here are the new rockets which pack the same wallop as a three inch shell.
00:41:19 They weigh little and because there isn't much recoil, they can be fired from planes.
00:41:24 On the eve of battle, we are told to scrub up to lessen the danger of infection in case we're wounded.
00:41:43 As well as our bodies, most of us prepare our souls.
00:41:55 Always on the eve of battle, divine services are held in relays
00:42:00 so that every one of our fighting ladies 3,000 sons has a chance to attend.
00:42:22 As the eve before battle lengthens, there is the usual waiting.
00:42:26 Again, we're reminded that war is mostly waiting.
00:42:43 Because all cooks and bakers must soon be at their battle stations,
00:42:46 they work all night long preparing a hearty meal of steak and eggs for our 3 a.m. battle breakfast.
00:43:00 [alarm sounds]
00:43:04 We are being attacked.
00:43:10 We are being attacked by Japanese torpedo planes skimming in after us wing to water.
00:43:23 All they want is one hit on our flight deck.
00:43:26 We have nearly 90 planes fueled and loaded with bombs ready for the takeoff.
00:43:44 Each patch of flame is a burning jap.
00:44:03 In this surprise attack, 19 japs are polished off by our ship's batteries.
00:44:08 Not a single carrier is hit.
00:44:11 We have been fortunate.
00:44:14 So now commences another major moment in the fighting lady's career, flight quarter sounds.
00:44:21 In this modern warfare, the young plane captains are to their pilots what squires were to armored knights of old.
00:44:31 In this operation, typical of many more to come, a lot of other fighting ladies will be involved.
00:44:38 Nearly 2,000 carrier-based planes, all of them attacking in air groups like our own.
00:45:00 From now on, we tighten our belts and steady our hands as our Navy makes progressively bigger attacks
00:45:06 nearer and nearer the heart of Japan.
00:45:19 At his post and radio plot, tracking down enemy planes and cursing the luck that keeps him out of the air,
00:45:25 Smokey chafes at being grounded on a day like this, especially when targets are juicy ones.
00:45:32 All the Jap air bases and military installations in the Marianas and a special prize package, Guam,
00:45:41 the island which we did not fortify, but the Japs did.
00:45:46 Now comes word that the Japs have sent strong air reinforcements to Tinian, which flanks Guam.
00:45:55 Again, our synchronized cameras record, as no human eye and memory could record,
00:46:02 just what our guns and bombs do to the enemy.
00:46:09 These pictures enable our air combat intelligence officers to assess the damage as we swoop down upon Tinian.
00:46:16 (gunfire)
00:46:45 (explosion)
00:47:14 (plane engine)
00:47:36 While our planes return for more fuel and ammunition, the surface vessels take over.
00:47:41 A prodigious naval barrage to prepare the beaches our assault forces are going to hit.
00:47:48 Not only our newest, but some of our oldest and proudest battleships are here.
00:47:53 The Colorado, the Tennessee, and the USS Pennsylvania, flagship of World War I.
00:48:08 Winging home to the fighting ladies, several of our planes, crippled, make a game attempt to land.
00:48:17 Now is when the landing signal officer must judge not only the speed,
00:48:21 but estimate the battle damage of planes like these.
00:48:35 And flight deck emergency crews, firefighters, rescue details, and medical corpsmen,
00:48:40 exhibit almost incredible courage.
00:49:03 The pilot of a torpedo plane has been unable to release his load of incendiaries.
00:49:08 Burning thermite is spilling out at incandescent heat.
00:49:11 In the plane's tanks remain about 75 gallons of high octane gas.
00:49:17 The men who brave this danger to save pilot and crew deserve every citation they get.
00:49:36 In the ready rooms, intelligence officers question battle-weary pilots.
00:49:41 What did you see?
00:49:43 Any Jap carriers in sight?
00:49:46 Are you sure they were carrier-based planes?
00:49:51 Then from radio plot comes uncomfortable news.
00:49:54 Torpedo planes and dive bombers from enemy aircraft carriers are approaching.
00:49:59 All hands, man your battle stations.
00:50:04 Our engine room go orders for flank speed, which is a few knots faster than full speed,
00:50:08 in case we need to take evasive action.
00:50:13 All boilers are lighted to let the fighting lady outdo herself if necessary.
00:50:18 The engine room people turn on the heat, and the propeller shafts churn like fate in their alleys.
00:50:32 The fighting lady leaps through the sea on her guard.
00:50:41 Skipper Dixie gears himself for action, and so does wise old Scrappy.
00:50:51 And now, here they come.
00:51:17 [explosions]
00:51:45 That Jill, torpedo bomber, miraculously keeps coming through our wall of flak.
00:51:50 She's approaching us fast with a life that must be charmed.
00:51:54 Our gunners throw everything they've got, but still she comes.
00:51:59 If he ever releases that torpedo...
00:52:09 He missed us. Either the pilot was already dead, or his release gear jammed.
00:52:22 When Smokey, the pride of Arkansas, hears about that one, he almost takes off.
00:52:29 Now our reconnaissance has spotted the Japanese task forces.
00:52:32 This is the moment we've been fighting and praying for.
00:52:37 There's a plane that can fly, and every qualified pilot is ordered into the air.
00:52:41 At last, Smokey gets his chance to fly again.
00:52:45 Pilots, man your planes. Pilots, man your planes.
00:52:51 [plane engines]
00:53:15 Philippine trade wind is tearing down our flight deck.
00:53:19 Our planes strain forward to rise into it.
00:53:22 Our entire air group thunders out behind the group commander.
00:53:30 Now our fighters run into a smooth Jap fighters, mostly Zeros,
00:53:34 sent up to intercept our attack on the Japanese fleet.
00:53:37 A mad aerial scramble begins, which the boys to this day still call the Marianas' turkey shoot.
00:53:45 369 Jap planes are shot down in this single day, to our loss of 22.
00:53:55 Japanese plane makers have sacrificed strength and firepower for agility.
00:54:00 Their planes disintegrate quickly when you hit them.
00:54:03 They have no armor plate, as ours have, nor are their gas tanks self-sealing.
00:54:14 These little monkeys are fancy flyers.
00:54:17 They think aerobatics can win dogfights, whereas we believe in smooth flying and careful shooting.
00:54:27 [plane engines]
00:54:55 [gunfire]
00:55:24 [plane engines]
00:55:37 And now, at last, through a late afternoon haze from high altitude,
00:55:42 our air combat group sights the Imperial Japanese battle fleet.
00:55:47 These are the first pictures ever taken of a great enemy naval formation like this.
00:55:59 There it is, that Imperial fleet, crawling around below us in violent, evasive action.
00:56:06 Us looking down on them in the seas they think they own.
00:56:13 Some of these Japanese ships are scampering away at better than 40 knots.
00:56:18 When you bore straight down on them, they twist, squirm.
00:56:23 [plane engines]
00:56:44 We engage a big destroyer at the bow, hoping to shoot out his bridge, and he shoots back plenty.
00:56:56 Let's go down after that cruiser.
00:56:58 He answers us emphatically from a forward turret.
00:57:26 Now a 25,000 ton Jap carrier of the Hayataka class is going to get it.
00:57:30 Watch five o'clock in the camera, the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
00:57:34 This big flat top gets it where the turkey got the ax.
00:57:58 When you touch off some of these babies, just watch this one.
00:58:06 And now we come home from the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
00:58:10 Seventeen Jap warships have been sunk or severely damaged.
00:58:15 Several of our returning planes have been badly shot up.
00:58:22 A dive bomber comes in out of gas.
00:58:24 He pulls off to starboard, but knows it's over because his wheels are down.
00:58:44 This pilot has 73 holes in his plane, and his leg almost shot away.
00:58:57 To clear the deck for other planes, number 30, badly damaged, is jettisoned, given the deep six.
00:59:08 Watch carefully. This man's controls are all but shot away.
00:59:25 He steps out of it smartly.
00:59:31 And now it is time to paint up the scores.
00:59:35 On this fine morning, just a year after being commissioned,
00:59:39 the fighting lady is beginning to look like a stamp album.
00:59:45 She has done her share, amassing Task Force 58's grand total of 757 Jap aircraft destroyed in a two-week turkey shoot.
01:00:04 But there's another score to add up, our own casualties.
01:00:10 Quite a few faces are no longer with us on the fighting lady.
01:00:14 Among them, Commander Upson, skipper of our torpedo squadron.
01:00:20 Lieutenant Pappy Condit.
01:00:23 Lieutenant John Meehan.
01:00:27 And that fighting is gentleman, Lieutenant Smokey Stover.
01:00:33 Yes, Smokey's missing too.
01:00:41 Salute them under their country's flag.
01:00:46 For they were brave. They were gallant.
01:00:49 Others will come forward to take their places.
01:00:53 For the battles we have fought on the seas and in the sky are only the beginning.
01:01:00 Still hungry for battle will steam our carrier.
01:01:03 Serene, powerful, unafraid.
01:01:08 She and her planes will come home again someday, God grant.
01:01:13 But not until the bitter, glorious end.
01:01:17 For she is, and we salute her, the fighting lady.
01:01:22 [Music]