World War II Historian Rates 9 More WWII Battles In Movies And TV | How Real Is It? | Insider
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00:00Oh boy, where to start?
00:05You're portraying tank battles.
00:07Maybe you ought to get your hands on some real World War II tanks.
00:10Hi, I'm John McManus.
00:11I am a professor of military history, have written 15 books, most of which have something
00:16to do with World War II, including three books about the Battle of Normandy and D-Day.
00:20Today we're going to look at World War II battles in movies and TV shows and judge how
00:25real they are.
00:35First of all, there's way too much flame.
00:37There are battleships, and yes, maybe they might have been part of the softening up of
00:41Hacksaw Ridge, but the way that's portrayed here I think is not quite authentic in the
00:46sense of these infantry soldiers all standing around out in the open watching the bombardment.
00:52They would have been spread out, undercover.
00:54Hacksaw Ridge itself is portrayed as being a little taller than it really was.
00:59It's true they use rope netting to get up there, but more commonly they just use ladders
01:04because it wasn't quite as high up as is portrayed in this film.
01:13One thing that's very realistic is the way they're portrayed going up on the rope.
01:17They're grabbing their hands vertically rather than horizontally as you might in order to
01:21stabilize yourself.
01:22You would never do the ladder because the guy near you might step on your hand.
01:26So you would always grasp the rope ladder to the sides like that, and that's really
01:31well done.
01:32So the problem with Hacksaw Ridge is there wasn't any other way to get around it like
01:35from behind because Hacksaw is just one of a network of these kinds of places right in
01:41the core of Okinawa that the Americans are trying to take and overwhelm.
01:45So you really kind of had to get up there in a frontal way as they convey.
01:51There certainly was hand-to-hand fighting.
01:58A lot of it happens at Hacksaw Ridge.
02:00Many Japanese who are sort of outflanked or find themselves among the Americans would
02:05have done exactly that.
02:07There's many instances in the Pacific War when you have Americans watching their buddies
02:12rolling around on the ground with a Japanese and saying, you know, get out of the way so
02:16I can shoot this guy.
02:24Vaughn wants to flank that pillbox because where he is and the other guys is right in
02:28its cone of fire.
02:30So what I've always thought he meant by a weapons team is the bazooka team that you
02:34see come into play in order to, you know, be their best weapon against that pillbox.
02:40But in any kind of small unit engagement, you want to flank your enemy because that's
02:44where he's going to be vulnerable.
02:45One of the things the Americans found out, among the many unpleasant surprises at Hacksaw
02:49Ridge, were just how many of these kind of pillbox-style fortifications there were.
02:54Now, many of them were like caves, almost like raised caves that barely had an aperture.
02:59So that one would have been pretty vulnerable, the way it's portrayed there.
03:11I don't know why you'd throw that against a pillbox.
03:15You really want to explode, you know, fragmentation grenade there.
03:18One thing that's dead on, you'll notice Vince Vaughn, the sergeant, when he sees one of
03:22his machine gunners go down, he immediately wants somebody back up on that machine gun
03:27because that's really your supporting firepower.
03:29You've got to keep that thing in action.
03:30And the way they portray the American .30 caliber machine gun and the way it was used
03:35with two guys, exactly the way you would have used it.
03:38I would rate it about an eight.
03:40Mixed emotions about this scene.
03:41I love the intensity of it.
03:49What he's looking through there is called the Norden bombsight, and it was said to be
03:52like the most cutting-edge bombsight technology in the world at that point.
03:56It was this apparently super-secret piece of technology that the Americans had and no
04:00one else.
04:01Well, as it turned out, the Germans knew all about it.
04:04But the Norden bombsight was still pretty cutting-edge.
04:06So any bombardier, like you see in the clip, would have been hunched over that Norden bombsight
04:11trying to line up exactly when he was supposed to drop the bombs.
04:15The bombardier in a typical B-17 during the actual bomb run did control the aircraft.
04:21You now have open bomb bay doors with armed bombs in your bomb bay, and the bombardier
04:27at any second flack can come up, perhaps get in your bomb bay if they're lucky, get the
04:33shot, and you're just gone.
04:37When they drop the bombs at that point, you'll notice that the other planes are taking the
04:49same cue and they drop the bombs at almost the same time.
04:53And I really like this clip because it really tracks with a lot of the photographic evidence.
04:58You see the time of sticks of bombs going all the way down to the target and then exploding,
05:02almost like bubbling up, as you see on the ground there.
05:06And that was this kind of suffocating effect of the bombs for a major raid like this.
05:16They hold their fire.
05:17And that was sort of the unspoken etiquette of the air war, which wasn't always adhered
05:22to, was that once a guy hit the silk, once he's out there in a parachute, you did not
05:27shoot at him when he's vulnerable.
05:29This was seen as really almost a war crime.
05:31But believe me, plenty of times it happened either by intention or not.
05:35In this case, it's portrayed that they're deliberately not shooting at him.
05:39After the war, it is established in the Geneva Convention, according to the rules and laws
05:44of warfare, you were not allowed to shoot at someone who had bailed out from a dying
05:51aircraft and was in this parachute.
05:53Overall, I think it's amazing.
05:55I would give it a 9 out of 10.
05:58I think this really portrays the sort of deadliness of those initial moments at Iwo Jima and how
06:10they show how vulnerable they are at the waterline.
06:13You see that that little gun team there that's trying to get their gun off the boat and they
06:17just end up in this machine gun positions kill zone.
06:21The way the machine guns are camouflaged, the way they are fortified in there, I think
06:26is dead on.
06:29Two Marines trying to push a jeep and it just looks miserable, doesn't it?
06:33That is directly taken from a photograph of the Battle of Iwo Jima.
06:38Volcanic ash soil and all this is really, really thick.
06:41So it's easy for a vehicle to get bogged down there.
06:50The volcanic ash soil of Iwo Jima.
06:52I don't know how they did this so well, but they did.
06:55Can you imagine trying to dig into that?
06:56The soil, the soil was so ashy that it was hard to keep it stable enough in order to
07:02have a foxhole the way it would if you're digging into clay or mud or whatever it would
07:07be or dirt.
07:08It would just sort of backfill in and you'd just be in this indentation there.
07:17Any aircraft that's strafing is probably using its main machine guns or sometimes in some
07:21cases rockets to come in on some kind of position they've identified and just annihilate it
07:27with that weaponry the best they can.
07:29Those two aircraft you see heading towards Mount Suribachi, they're not hanging around.
07:32You see the tracer rounds and all this.
07:34I mean, it's really well done.
07:37The smoke that obscures it for a while, I just think that's extremely well done.
07:47Guy drops the grenade and he rolls over on the other side in the other direction, sort
07:50of away from it.
07:52And that's exactly the way you would have been taught.
07:54Generally, the American grenades had about a three and a half to four and a half second
07:57fuse.
07:58You would have been taught to, you know, to arm the grenade, count off most of that, probably
08:03three seconds and, you know, and then toss it in and then get out of the way.
08:07I'm rating this one a 10 out of 10 because I just really like the feel and look of the
08:12position and what a bloodbath this whole thing is, I think is very well portrayed.
08:21Okay.
08:26You're getting a sense right there of some of the tension on the Japanese side between
08:30those who were sort of traditionalists who wanted to stop any American invasion at the
08:34waterline.
08:35He knows the Americans control the air and the sea.
08:38They're going to get ashore.
08:39And he knows really what he has to do is bleed them the best he can.
08:42So what he wants is for them to get ashore into his kill zone and then do maximum damage
08:49upon them at that point.
08:59The Japanese at this point in the war are just laying hands on any kind of guns they
09:03possibly can.
09:04There isn't too much rhyme or reason to it.
09:07It's whatever artillery pieces and small caliber guns they can bring into play.
09:12So you'll notice the heavier pieces tend to be a little bit more ensconced, like in the
09:17tunnels or some sort of dugout or bunker type position.
09:21Smaller pieces are more likely to be out in the open because it's been harder to build
09:25positions for them.
09:27But it also might make it easier to move them around, especially to shoot at tanks or landing
09:32craft or whatever else it be.
09:33You'd probably get more accurate fire.
09:35Reverse slope defense was very, very common at Iwo Jima and elsewhere at this point in
09:40the war.
09:41There's a tendency for the Americans here and elsewhere to think that once they get
09:44to some sort of peak or ridgeline or whatever, that they've captured the position.
09:49But what was very common is that the Japanese are really, with their tunnels and whatever
09:53else, very, very entrenched on the reverse slope.
09:57So you would be taking just as much fire.
10:04I do think that it is an accurate portrayal of their tunnels, especially the kind of fortified
10:09positions they had.
10:10The Japanese have 17 miles of tunnels all over this island.
10:14The issue during the Battle of Iwo Jima is the Americans having to constantly just sort
10:18of back-clear all these positions with tunnels and little bunkers and dugouts that are in
10:25places that you never spotted the first time you went through.
10:34You see the Japanese Nambu machine guns and they're exactly firing at the right pace.
10:40Snapping off a few rounds and then you'll see like a one or two second pause.
10:44And then snapping off more rounds, especially as you see targets.
10:47I think that part of the clip is extremely well done.
10:50So in one part of the clip, you see really bad fire discipline where the machine gunner
10:55is just leaning on the trigger and whatnot.
10:57You almost certainly wouldn't have done that as a machine gunner because you would just
11:03overheat your gun.
11:04As the Americans are fighting in these 1945 battles, one pattern you're seeing is the
11:10more and more of the use of flames.
11:12The actual flamethrower teams that you've got as portrayed here, all of that is a huge
11:18part of the battle.
11:19So I'm glad that they included that.
11:21There's so much footage from the Battle of Iwo Jima, and this is color footage that shows
11:26exactly that kind of scenario.
11:28I'm giving it a 9 out of 10.
11:29What makes Flags of Our Fathers and Letters of Iwo Jima kind of special is I don't know
11:34any other circumstance with a movie that sort of portrays both sides in two different films,
11:40that has this sort of companion piece, that you can watch both of them and you can really
11:44get a good sense of what that battle was from both points of view.
11:54What are called the LVTs, Landing Vehicle Tracked, which they really did use, they come
11:59out of these larger landing craft called LSTs, Landing Ship Tank, and you see they
12:04go down that ramp, and then they splash into the water, and the water comes up all over
12:09you as the crew, dead on, right?
12:18So what happens at Peleliu, there's a colonel there on the Japanese side named Nakagawa,
12:22who is the main commander, and he has this concept of a layered defense.
12:28He's going to resist to some extent at the waterline, but he's got all kinds of caves
12:34and excellent, really well-concealed, prepared-by-nature-type fighting positions for himself on Peleliu.
12:42So yes, his main objective is he's going to bleed the Americans once they get ashore,
12:47but he also has enough combat power to resist at the waterline as well.
12:51When there's that much firepower going around, anybody standing up is really vulnerable.
12:55So people tend to go to ground.
12:59Bang it!
13:00Fire!
13:02So that's a 60mm mortar, and you can see the mortar site, how important that is, how they
13:07would have carried that in a special box and then set it up, and then you can see the shells
13:12they put down the tube there, the mortar explosions.
13:15Not a lot of flames, nothing like that.
13:18It's exactly the kind of thing you would have had.
13:23Those grenade launchers were used a lot, especially in this kind of circumstance, where you've
13:27got this sort of observable target that you can't always get straight-line fire on it.
13:32You've got an M1 Garand rifle.
13:34You would take the clip out of the live ammo clip.
13:38You'd put a special dummy bullet in there.
13:40You would fix the sort of grenade at the end of your rifle that then would provide the charge
13:46for this grenade.
13:50Of course, you better remember to take the live rounds out of there, because if you don't,
13:54you're going to have a heck of an explosion right in front of you.
13:56I would rate these a 9 out of 10.
13:58I mean, it's really pretty amazing filmmaking.
14:01Bombs away!
14:08Okay, where to begin?
14:11This one's just so bad.
14:13I'm sorry.
14:15I mean, way too much destruction.
14:17The Doolittle Raiders, in total, dropped 16 tons of bombs on Japan.
14:21It was, relatively speaking, a pinprick.
14:23Not that it's pleasant to be under 16 tons of bombs, of course,
14:26but it didn't inflict anywhere near that much destruction.
14:35The B-25 was supposed to drop anywhere from 7,000 to 8,000-plus-whatever feet,
14:41and it looks like they're right down on the deck when they're dropping their bombs here.
14:44So in this raid, by the way, I don't think they're quite that low.
14:48You know, they're low enough to see what's below them
14:52and to drop on their targets and whatever,
14:55but I think not quite as low as is portrayed here.
15:04That's the kind of artillery or anti-aircraft artillery they would have had there,
15:08and they're manipulating it more or less the right way.
15:11You know, couple people on the crew trying to find targets up there,
15:14shoot at whatever they can.
15:15The problem is that the raid catches them mostly off guard.
15:17It's portrayed as being way too suffocating and way too accurate.
15:21The Japanese would have wished that their anti-aircraft fire was so effective
15:25against the Doolittle raid.
15:31It seemed to portray at the end of the clip that one of the planes gets shot down over Japan,
15:37which is just 100% inaccurate.
15:40All of them got across the water, most of them to China, one to the Soviet Union.
15:44Many of them, of course, were captured, of course, later by the Japanese.
15:47That's a different matter.
15:48What bothers me about it is that these are not hard things to find out.
15:51The Doolittle raid is really famous.
15:53Most of the veterans lived and told their accounts, and there's great books about it.
15:57It wouldn't have been hard for the filmmaker to really explore it
16:00and try and tell it a little bit more accurately.
16:05Unfortunately, that's not what happened here, and it kind of makes for neat action, I guess,
16:09but in terms of, is it history?
16:11Well, not so much.
16:13I'm giving this one a 4.
16:19Oh boy, where to start?
16:20You're portraying tank battles.
16:22Maybe you ought to get your hands on some real World War II tanks,
16:25rather than post-war and sort of end-of-war Chafees on the American side
16:31and M47 Pattons on the German side.
16:34It's so poorly portrayed.
16:36The way the tanks are moving, the way their formations are,
16:40are so linear and just wrong on so many levels.
16:51Lieutenant, keep those grenades coming.
16:53Well, they try to portray some of the terrain challenges here,
16:56the cold, the wet, the trees and forests and some of the mud,
17:01but even that doesn't quite look right.
17:03When you know the Ardennes Forest, where a lot of the Battle of the Bulge was fought,
17:07trees are spaced out a little too far rather than being fir forests,
17:11which would be quite limiting to vehicles.
17:13The infantry is really quite vulnerable in these sort of ditches that they're in.
17:22But a tank ramming, that's pretty rare,
17:25and for the Germans it really makes no sense
17:28because you don't want to be close to the Americans.
17:31You want to use your gunnery advantage and you want to nail them at distance
17:35because you've got heavier guns, more armor.
17:47You could hide from a tank because the line of vision from a tank
17:50was not very good for the driver.
17:52It's basically like a vision block that you've got in front of you,
17:55so you didn't have too much peripheral vision,
17:57so anything you had rolled past you probably weren't going to see.
18:00That's why it was really important to have a lot of infantry support on the ground
18:04who could act as your sort of eyes and ears.
18:06Why aren't there any German infantry with the tanks?
18:09I mean, there's that too.
18:11Then it looks so inauthentic.
18:13I'm going to give it a 3 out of 10.
18:15I'll admit, this movie is overall a really bad film,
18:18so maybe that colors my bias a little bit here.
18:26So the Battle of Mount Austin is the sort of climax of Guadalcanal
18:32and the 25th Infantry Division is assigned to take a lot of the high ground
18:36that looks over the airfield that's the key objective of the whole campaign.
18:40We want to make sure the Japanese don't control that high ground
18:42so they can lob artillery at the airfield.
18:44The stabbing you see at the beginning, that would have been pretty unusual.
18:52Bayonet woundings, especially against Americans, were really uncommon.
18:57You might have it under certain circumstances fixed to the end of your rifle.
19:01It's possible because if you expected that kind of close quarters fighting, maybe.
19:10The Japanese are more vulnerable here than they are elsewhere
19:13because they're not in fixed fortifications anymore
19:16because they've lost most of the key ridgelines and hills that comprise Mount Austin.
19:21So you're getting sort of the back end and sort of the Japanese rear areas here
19:25is what you're looking at in this particular clip
19:28because it's basically like a military camp.
19:31♪♪
19:36Guadalcanal had a lot of this kind of grass, kunai grass.
19:39It had these sharp edges.
19:41You'd be quite vulnerable to getting these almost like paper cuts, but it's grass cuts.
19:46And that could get infected, and it was just one of the many things
19:49that led to just a miserable environment to operate in.
19:54♪♪
20:00You've got something quite accurate in that you've got a fire support element
20:04with those guys firing their rifles at the sort of ridges in the distance,
20:08and then the other group led by that lieutenant is trying to maneuver forward.
20:11So that's fire and maneuver exactly as you would have had.
20:14What I think is a little questionable is that lieutenant has sent a couple of first scouts out,
20:19which exactly you would have done, but he's lost both of them,
20:22but he still decides to just go forward with this complete frontal attack.
20:27I think more likely you might have probed around to figure out where the Japanese were,
20:31where those riflemen were, before you sent your whole element forward.
20:34I'd give it a 9 out of 10.
20:36These two clips definitely represent what is a really good portrayal of the Army's role,
20:42especially in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which tends to get overlooked.
20:45♪♪
20:53Adam Beach is playing a Navajo code talker.
20:55They're using specific words from their language to represent military concepts or words,
21:04and that would have been relayed via the radio like you see there.
21:07They might have called in some fire that way.
21:09That was one of the many, many valuable aspects of the code talkers.
21:12They're portrayed here as being sort of like forward observers in some respects.
21:17That wasn't always the role these guys were playing.
21:20A lot of times it was just mundane communication,
21:22back and forth among headquarters in order to confuse the Japanese.
21:25♪♪
21:34I like that part of the clip where you have the Japanese interception experts really confounded by this.
21:42By this point in the war, Saipan, 1944, they were likely to have known if they were savvy
21:47and if they were Native Americans in this kind of role, speaking in their own languages that were not English,
21:54it didn't mean he could understand what they were saying.
21:56♪♪
21:59Target reference.
22:01Dog 2.
22:02♪♪
22:06They're designed to kill other ships, other battleships, other surface ships in an enemy Navy.
22:12That's really what they're there to do.
22:14But they have the capability of providing those of us on the ground with a lot of really intense fire support, too.
22:20In this case, Nicolas Cage and the other Marines are portrayed as being way too far forward.
22:26It's called danger close is that area in between.
22:29In other words, if you're too close to where the shells are supposed to be coming down,
22:33you're probably going to take some friendly fire casualties.
22:36I'll give it a 7 out of 10.
22:37I like that the clip shows the incredible contributions and what a force multiplier that the code talkers were.
22:45I think it's a hard thing to convey in film, and I think they've done reasonably well with it.
22:51This is like saying the Beatles are your favorite band, I guess.
22:53But my favorite World War II movie is Private Ryan.
22:57I think it really has been tremendously influential on subsequent war films.
23:04I think it tries to portray combat as hardcore realistically as you possibly can without being somehow over-the-top, gratuitous.
23:14Its heart is incredibly in the right place with wanting to get front and center
23:19and portray what combat was like for American soldiers in that place and that time.
23:27I think there's no other movie that can line up as well, arguably, in what its objective probably was than Saving Private Ryan.
23:35Thanks for watching.
23:36If you enjoyed this, why not click on the next video for more World War II movie breakdowns.