Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona Memorial Closed Indefinitely Due to Structural Concerns

The USS Arizona Memorial is one of the most visited places for visitors going to Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, especially with the Memorial Day weekend in full swing, those visitors won’t be able to visit the battleship memorial for quite some time.

Access to the USS Arizona memorial will remain closed for an unknown period of time after the damage was deemed “more significant than originally anticipated,” Hawaii News Now reported.
Boat transportation to the site was suspended May 6 after one of the vessel operators noticed a crack in the supporting structure for the visitor loading ramp, and the Pearl Harbor official visitors website is noting the historic site’s change of plans until further notice.
The memorial marks the final resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the USS Arizona battleship during the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The attack was the opening salvo in the United States’ involvement in World War II.
Visitors with tickets to the area will be able to view a documentary, and participate in a narrated harbor tour surrounding the memorial, but will not be allowed to disembark.
Tourists were initially allowed to disembark at the memorial after crews completed interim repairs. But the cracks reappeared hours later, indicating a more serious issue.
“There is a brow or an edge where the visitor ramp meets the memorial, and at that point, there’s been some fissures located on the exterior,” said Jay Blount, a spokesman for the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument. “After further investigation on the interior, it was determined that the structure is not supporting the loading ramp the way that we need.”
Engineers are working to figure out possible long-term solutions.
“The amount of time needed to implement the repairs is unknown, but the (National Park Service) will continue to provide information to the public as our team of specialists works together to restore access as soon as possible,” memorial staff said Friday in a news release.

Access to other museums in Pearl Harbor, such as the Battleship Missouri Memorial, the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park, and the Pacific Aviation Museum will not be affected by the closure.

To read the entire article from Fox News, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Elvis Presley Helps the USS Arizona Memorial With a Benefit Concert

On March 25, 1961, Elvis Presley did a benefit concert for the Arizona Memorial which raised over $62,000 and helped to restart public funding for the war memorial that so many Americans visit every year.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States quickly rebuilt its facilities there and raised several of the ships that were sunk. One ship that was not touched was the battleship Arizona (BB-39), which had entombed 1177 of its crew when she sunk after bombs had exploded her magazine. The Navy had scrapped her superstructure which was above the waterline and removed the gun turrets but the ship lay as she sunk.

An effort was made to make the ship a shrine and a memorial project was launched. The Pacific War Memorial Commission was created in 1949 to build a permanent memorial in Hawaii. The Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Arthur Radford, began a tradition where, after he had installed a flagpole to the main mast of the ship, beginning in 1950, sailors would hoist and lower the flag.

Later in 1950, a temporary memorial was built above the remaining portion of the deckhouse. Radford requested funds for a national memorial in 1951 and 1952 but was denied because of budget constraints during the Korean War.

President Eisenhower authorized and approved the creation of a National Monument in 1958. However, the $500,000 needed to construct it had to be privately financed. The territory (not yet a state) of Hawaii donated $50,000 for the initial funds donated.

Later in the same year, another $95,000 was raised when a surviving member of Arizona’s crew Rear Admiral Samuel G. Fuqua, appeared on the television show, “This is Your Life”. Fuqua was awarded the Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor for his efforts to valiantly save crewmen on that day. After his appearance, the donations poured in for a short while but then they soon stopped.

More than two years later in December 1960, the fundraising had virtually ceased. Enter Presley and his manager Col. Tom Parker. Presley had just earlier in the year finished up a two-year hitch in the Army after being drafted.

Presley was going to Hawaii to film his next feature “Blue Hawaii” and he and Parker came up with an idea to have a benefit concert to raise funds for the Arizona Memorial. “Every penny of that taken in must go to the fund”, Parker said, “otherwise, we are not interested in doing the show.”

Presley and Parker set the goal for the one-night show at $50,000. Ringside seats were going to be $100. The rest, in the 4000 seat Bloch Arena, across from Arizona would vary from $3 to $10. All of the talent would perform for free and Presley offered to pay all the expenses for everyone to fly in for the show.

On March 25, Presley flew straight from the studios in LA where they were filming parts of his film, to Honolulu were crowds swamped him. He did a brief press conference in the afternoon and then prepared for the show that night.

The other performers on stage that night included, pianist Floyd Cramer, the Jordanaires (Presley’s backup singers), jazz saxophonist Boots Randolph, and comedienne Minnie Pearl. After a brief intermission, Rear Admiral Robert L. Campbell introduced Elvis.

The young women in the audience screamed for 2 ½ minutes as he was still at the height of his popularity then. Presley then performed for an hour. His song list, courtesy of RCA Records which released a copy of the concert in 1980 would include:

Heartbreak Hotel
All Shook Up
A Fool Such As I
I Got A Woman
Love Me
Such A Night
Reconsider Baby
I Need Your Love Tonight
That’s Alright Mama
Don’t Be Cruel
One Night
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
It’s Now Or Never
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Hound Dog

Presley wore his trademark gold lame jacket and thrilled the crowd with the gyrating moves that he was so known for in the mid-1950s that seem so tame today. But the crowd loved it and cheered long after he left the stage.

Ticket sales for the event topped $52,000 which was more than the original goal of $50,000. Additionally, all of the merchandising and concessions plus a $5000 check from Presley made the take on the night a total of $62,000 (over $512,000 in 2017 cash). But more importantly, it breathed fresh life into the Arizona Memorial Project.

Coincidentally, it would be the last time Presley would wear his trademark gold lame suit. And it was his last live performance for nearly eight years. He would continue making films until his “comeback” show in LA as part of his television Christmas special. He would then resume touring until his death in 1977.

The Arizona Memorial was officially dedicated on May 30, 1962. Today thousands of visitors flock to the site every year, especially around Pearl Harbor Day. It is now a U.S. Historical landmark.

It is a fitting monument to the men of the USS Arizona who are still silently on duty and will remain there for eternity. It is also a memorial for all of the brave sailors, Marines, and soldiers who gave their lives that day in 1941. But they owe a tip of the cap to the boy from Tupelo, Mississippi who helped raise the funds for the Memorial we see every year.

Photos: Wikipedia

The USS Ward Fired the First US Shots of WWII at Pearl Harbor

On this day, December 7, we remember the men of the US armed forces but mainly the men of the US Navy who gave their lives during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

We now know that the Japanese government intended to declare war on the United States and attack Pearl Harbor an hour later. But a snafu inside the Japanese Embassy on the weekend and an issue with the decoding and typing of the message delayed the message until after the attack was over.

The US fleet was caught unaware and unprepared and most of the ship’s fleet were asleep on a Sunday morning. By the time the Japanese warplanes withdrew, eight battleships, the pride of the Pacific fleet lay sunk or damaged, 18 ships in all were sunk or damaged. Over 200 planes were destroyed on the ground. And 2407 sailors, Marines and soldiers were killed on that day with 1247 others wounded.

But what many people don’t realize is that the Japanese didn’t fire the first shot in the war when they commenced bombing. The first shot was fired by the destroyer USS Ward, who fired on and sunk a Japanese midget submarine that was trying to sneak into the harbor. Unfortunately, the reports from the Ward were discounted and disbelieved by Navy brass. Something, they’d pay dearly for. The ship’s crew didn’t get confirmation that they’d sunk the submarine for over 60 years.

The only silver lining in the catastrophe at Pearl was the fact that the three American aircraft carriers, the primary target for the Japanese aircraft were at sea and untouched. That fact saved Pearl from the third wave of air attacks from the Japanese which may have severely damaged the infrastructure and oil facilities at Pearl Harbor. Six months later, those same American aircraft carriers would slam the Japanese on the attack at Midway. This time the Americans were ready and intercepted the Japanese coded messages and sunk four of Japan’s top of the line aircraft carriers. It would turn the war in the Pacific.

But during the early morning hours of that fateful December 7th, Intelligence reports were coming in as Navy and Army brass knew the Japanese were going to attack us, but no knew where.

If you’ve seen the excellent war film Tora, Tora, Tora, it breaks down the events as they unfolded with very good detail. The filmmakers touched on an incident that, had the US brass reacted to, may have radically changed how the battle unfolded.

The USS Ward was a destroyer, a mothballed and resurrected relic from World War I. She was a Wickes class destroyer, displacing 1250 tons. Ward was armed with four 4” 50 caliber and two 3” guns. She was launched and commissioned in 1918 and was decommissioned and placed in reserve in 1921. Recommissioned in January 1941 she was assigned to the 14th Naval District in Oahu. Therefore, she would just steam back and forth, east and west, within sight of the shore.

The Ward was commanded Lieutenant William Outerbridge, who had been in the Navy for only 14 years and had taken command of her less than 24 hours before. He was thrilled to be off of his previous ship and finally get a command of his own for the first time. She was part of an older squadron of destroyers assigned to Inshore Patrol Command along with USS Schley, USS Chew, and the USS Allen. Their mission was to protect the outer edges of the harbor against an enemy ships or submarines trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor.

The Ward’s crew, 84 men, were mainly Navy Reservists from St. Paul, Minnesota. Early in the morning of Dec. 7, the Ward was on patrol outside the channel entrance to Pearl Harbor. At 0400, a minesweeper signaled the Ward that it had sighted a submerged submarine in the area. A search was initiated but failed to detect anything.

At 0458 Pearl Harbor’s anti-torpedo net gate was opened to allow passage of a number of small ships including the Stores Ship USS Antares (AKS 14). Antares was towing a target back to base when at about 0635 a lookout on Ward noticed a wake following the auxiliary between her and her the raft.

Alerted, the crew called Outerbridge from his sleeping cot to the bridge. Outerbridge came to the bridge dressed in a kimono and took a look for himself. He spied the object and confirmed that it was a conning tower of a submarine. And it was a different one than on American subs. It was trying to draft in the wake between the Antares and her towed target.
Outerbridge didn’t hesitate at all, he called the crew to general quarters and ordered the ship to increase speed to 25 knots. He was approaching the oblivious sub and near ramming speed and then gave the order to “commence firing!” Less than 200 yards away the Ward opened up the shooting war for the Americans. A shell from the ship’s No. 1 gun missed, but now only 50 yards away, the nine-man crew of the No. 3 gun four-inch gun next fired a shot that hit the base of the conning tower. The sub shuddered, slowed and slowly disappeared beneath the waves. The Ward rolled four depth charges off the stern set for 100 feet and they exploded. Outerbridge reversed his course and found an oil slick, but sonar picked up nothing. World War II had begun for the United States, however, no one knew it yet.

The #3 gun of the USS Ward which sunk the Japanese midget sub at Pearl Harbor.

The Ward immediately notified Naval Command at Pearl Harbor that it had attacked and fired upon a submarine operating in the restricted area. To emphasize that this was a real emergency, Outerbridge sent another message at 0653 “Attacked, fired upon, depth bombed, and sunk submarine operating in the defensive sea area.”

If the Americans react, they have more than an hour to scramble aircraft and get their ships moving off their moorings. His report was met with skepticism and disbelief. The 14th Naval District’s Chief of Staff, Captain John B. Earle, had the impression “it was just another one of these false reports which had been coming in, off and on.” His boss, Admiral Claude Bloch dismissed it as well, asking if it was just another false report.

The message finally got to Admiral Kimmel, the Commander of Pearl Harbor at 0740. Kimmel too was unconvinced that the threat was real and issued no orders. Just a few minutes later, an orderly burst into the room to tell Kimmel, “There’s a message from the signal tower saying the Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor, and this is no drill.”

The time was 0755 and the Japanese had commenced their attack. Had Ward’s message been taken seriously at once, would the situation have turned out differently? It is difficult to say, battleships take time to get their steam up and get moving. At a minimum, the sky could have been full of American fighters and the antiaircraft guns would have been active. They at least would have made the Japanese victory much costlier than the 29 planes that they lost.

Outerbridge would leave the Ward in 1942. She would be converted to a fast transport and three years to the day of Pearl Harbor. The Ward was struck by a Betty bomber that was a kamikaze at Ormoc Bay in the Philippines. Struck at the starboard waterline, with fires blazing and no water pressure to fight the fires, the Ward abandoned ship. The destroyer O’Brien was tasked to move in and scuttle and sink the Ward with gunfire. The O’Brien sent the Ward to the bottom on December 7, 1944, three years to the day from Pearl Harbor. In a strange twist of fate, the Commander of the O’Brien was William Outerbridge.

For years, no one believed the crew of the Ward had actually fired upon and sunk a Japanese midget submarine. Finally, in 2002, a team of deep-sea researchers found a perfectly preserved Japanese midget sub, exactly where the Ward reported the contact. And sure enough, the conning tower had a hole where the #3 gun punched a hole in it. She still carried her two torpedoes which had never been fired. The Ward had indeed fired the first shots of World War II for the United States and had sunk an enemy vessel.

The conning tower of the Japanese midget submarine found at Pearl Harbor that was sunk by the USS Ward

After the war, the Ward’s crew members formed the “First Shot Naval Vets,” which held annual reunions on Dec. 7. The group arranged to have the No. 3 gun — which had been removed as part of the ship’s conversion and preserved by the Navy — moved to Minnesota for the state’s centennial in 1958.

Photos Courtesy: US Archives

Pearl Harbor Hero Finally Getting Award 76 Years Later

During the awful morning at Pearl Harbor in 1941, there were many acts of bravery that were noted by the military and the sailors were decorated for helping save many of their fellow sailor’s lives. Others were never acknowledged.

The Navy and the Pentagon is finally going to recognize the courage and bravery of boatswain’s mate second class Joe George and award him a Bronze Star medal for rescuing six badly burned sailors off the battleship Arizona. George, aboard the maintenance ship USS Vestal, was ordered to cast off lines to get his ship moving, on the morning that the Japanese attacked.

Joe George during his Navy career prior to Pearl Harbor.

George disregarded it. He saw men, he knew would drown in the oily water surrounding the Arizona and threw them a line. That saved their lives and they never forgot the unknown sailor who helped them although he was never recognized for it. George died in 1996. One of those sailors rescued, Donald Stratton was instrumental in getting George the recognition he so deserved.

In 1966, Donald Stratton returned to Pearl Harbor for the first time since the attack. He hadn’t talked about it much until then, but after that visit, he revealed more of what happened, of his rescue from the Arizona.
Stratton and five other crewmen were trapped on a burning tower as the battleship buckled beneath the Japanese assault. They were burned badly and thought they would die. Until they saw the sailor on the Vestal.
Randy Stratton would listen to his dad describe the heat, the flames, the pain, the terror of climbing hand-over-hand from the Arizona to the Vestal, the elation of rescue. He wondered about the Vestal sailor and searched until he learned the identity. When he discovered the sailor was never given a medal, he undertook the cause.
George will be recognized during the Pearl Harbor Day commemoration service Thursday morning on shore. The families will gather on the USS Arizona memorial for a private ceremony at 4:30 p.m. with Rear Adm. Matthew Carter, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Stratton has told the story of Joe George as often as he has told his own. He grows emotional when he recounts the rescue and almost angry when he talks about the Navy’s failure to award the young sailor a medal.
“He should have the Navy Cross,” Stratton said in a 2014 interview with The Republic. “He saved six people’s lives. Joe saved six lives and he didn’t get crap. He refused to cut the line no matter what. As far he was concerned he was saving lives.”
Pearl Harbor survivor Donald Stratton, meeting with President Trump in the White House earlier this summer.

Things finally changed in 1978 when conducting an oral history for North Texas State University, George told the emotional story of what happened that day, stating that he was the “unknown sailor” who helped the men of the Arizona.

The story was corroborated by the log book of the Vestal and George’s records which showed that George was commended by the commander for his actions in saving the sailors but never awarded anything from it.

To read the entire article from Arizona Central click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Taiwan’s President Arrives in Hawaii Amid Chinese Protests

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is on a trip to visit and strengthen its support among its allies its diplomatic allies in the Pacific, stopped over in Hawaii despite strong objections from China.

The Chinese considered Taiwan, part of their territory, despite the Taiwanese having a self-governed body ruling it. The Taiwanese have been in control of the island since the end of the 1949 Chinese Civil War when Mao Zedong’s communist forces drove out the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek. They frequently have mentioned using force to bring Taiwan under its control.

Tsai, who China believes is seeking formal independence for Taiwan, left on Saturday on a week-long trip to three Pacific allies – Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands – via Honolulu and the US territory of Guam.
For her part, Tsai has said she wants to maintain peace with Beijing but will defend Taiwan’s democracy and security.
Earlier this week, the US State Department said Tsai’s transits through American soil would be “private and unofficial” and were based on long-standing US practice consistent with “our unofficial relations with Taiwan”.
It noted there was “no change to the US one-China policy” which recognises that Beijing takes the view that there is only one China.

Tsai is on her second trip to the US in 2017, having stopped over on a trip to Latin America. She visited Pearl Harbor and laid a wreath at the memorial site for the Battleship Arizona.

To read the entire article from the South China Morning Post, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Worst War Movies Ever… Don’t Waste Your Time on These Stinkers

Back in May around Memorial Day, we listed some of our favorite War Films that are guaranteed to entertain and keep your interest. We could have easily added a couple of more as the genre always has some worthy additions by Hollywood’s filmmakers. This year’s blockbuster “Dunkirk” could easily make its way into that list.

But today’s list is going in the opposite direction. These are some of the worst war films, in our humble opinion out there. In every genre, especially one as chocked full of entries as the war film category, you’ll have plenty of lousy films, that are just groan worthy from military veterans and war film buffs alike.

So watch these following films…if you dare. But as a word to the wise. You may turn it off before it is over. As some of these films are just plain awful. Normally we’d say, drum roll, please. Instead, we’ll play a dirge. In no particular order here is your Wall of Shame of Worst War Films:

Battle of the Bulge (1965) – Despite a stellar All-Star cast of Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, Dana Andrews, George Montgomery and James MacArthur this one got nearly everything wrong. The uniforms, the tanks, the history was skewed horribly.

Less than a minute into the film, the narrator, William Conrad uttered this: “To the south lay Patton’s Third Army, to the North Montgomery’s Eighth”….What? Field Marshal Montgomery’s Eighth Army, for which he rose to fame in the desert, was in Italy, not the Northern edge of the Bulge. That should tell you right away that this stinker was not going to get things right.

The German Tiger Tanks were actually M-47 Patton tanks and the American Shermans were portrayed by M-24 Chaffee light tanks. Filmed entirely in Spain, the terrain resembled the wooded, hilly Ardennes, not at all.

The film wasted a good performance from Robert Shaw, as the fanatical SS officer Col. Hessler who was tasked to break through the Allied lines. Shaw’s Hessler was loosely based on SS Colonel Joachim Peiper. No mention is made of the counter-attack from Patton’s forces from the south, the 101st Airborne’s holding of the key road junction of Bastogne or the Allied air power, which after the skies cleared, decimated the Germans on the ground.

Instead, this film would have you believe that the only thing that stopped the Germans from reaching Antwerp was the lack of gas. The climactic tank battle at the end was another loosely based big tank battle at Celles. In the film, the Germans wipe out the American forces. In reality, it was the opposite. The 2nd Armored Division left 88 German tanks smoking in the hills. This film was so bad that General Eisenhower came out of retirement to excoriate it for its lack of historical accuracy.

Inchon (1979) – This stinker was produced by the religious leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the powerful Unification Church in the 1980s. He put up $30 million of his own cash to make this limp, tepid offering. The production costs ballooned up to $46 million, which would be near $150 million today. Sir Laurence Olivier was paid $1 million bucks to play General Douglas MacArthur and it is clear, he was there for the paycheck only.

Rev. Moon claimed that the spirit of MacArthur visited him during the filming giving his blessing to the project. OK…does anything else need to be added here?

The cast of Olivier, Ben Gazzara, and Jacqueline Bissett was wasted here with dialogue as dry as a buffalo fart. Olivier looked more like Emperor Palpatine than MacArthur in this one. And Moon threw in a little sex action between Gazzara and a Korean hottie while cheating on Bissett who was his wife at home to take away from the rest of this potboiler I guess to show that the war was the cause of marital infidelity. It was actually filmed in 1979 and Moon shopped for three years for a studio to release this turkey.

I didn’t make it thru the original release, falling asleep in the theater and guarantee if you are having sleep issues watch this and it will do the trick. This one was so bad that MGM didn’t even release it on video. You can find it on YouTube if you care to.

Pearl Harbor (2001) – Michael Bay took a 90-minute action film about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and squeezed it into a 3-hour 3-minute monstrosity that took severe creative license with the actual history. Starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale who are involved in a complicated love triangle during the and immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack that kicked the U.S. into World War II.

Pearl Harbor had a huge operating budget of $140 million but made a respectable $450 million at the box office. Some of it was filmed in the huge Baja Studio that James Cameron built for Titanic. And the ship scenes filmed there were still visible (the wreck of the Arizona) a few years later when I got to work on the beginning of a Narnia film there in 2009.

The numerous factual inaccuracies were pretty numerous, the Marlboro Lights in a sailor’s pocket…was inexcusable. A pretty amusing scene is where Affleck is talking to Colonel Doolittle in his office and behind the Colonel are his trophies for air racing. Look closely and there is an F-86 Saber jet from the Korean War. Affleck’s supposed action in the “Eagle Squadron” with the RAF is flawed. No American Army pilots were allowed to join. Only civilians. And what in the wide, wide world of sports is the intelligence officers and Beckinsale listening to during the Doolittle Raid? It certainly wasn’t radio chatter from the planes over Japan. They were on strict radio silence.

This one at least had some good action scenes during the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor which Bay did well although again inaccurately and had the always enchanting Beckinsale in the lead. A curious decision was the one to portray Mrs. Ben Affleck (Jennifer Garner) as a dowdy nurse, perhaps to take away from Beckinsale’s draw.

Redacted (2009) – If you’ve never heard of this one, don’t be alarmed, you aren’t missing anything. Normally I love the films of Brian De Palma but he swung for the fences with this one and missed. De Palma took a real incident about a rape of a young Iraqi girl and the murder of her family and tried to create an anti-war film about the U.S. involvement in Iraq. Surprisingly, some of the medium’s most well-known critics loved this film. Don’t waste your time, it was unmitigated trash, exploitation. He tried to shock the audience, right down to a slide show of gruesome pictures of Iraq’s war dead. We aren’t told who killed them, or who they are…it is just supposed to shock the viewer.

The message? here is that the war is making monsters out of American youth? I don’t know. It is kind of murky there but De Palma goes full-blown exploitive with the two Americans being the cartoonish, one-dimensional villains in the scene.The one perpetrator even wears a helmet mounted camera to catch the ugliness on film as the antithesis of the combat footage we’ve seen on screen during the war.

This was one of De Palma’s lesser efforts, the dialogue is atrocious and totally unbelievable for any grunts and sounds like a cliche machine.The way these guys interact with one another is a joke. Is this a unit that went to Iraq together or did they meet on the set just ten minutes before? It was just a crudely done, poorly defined film that even the “found camera footage” is unbelievable. It was a one-dimensional bit of schlock that is best left to the imagination.

Revolution (1985) – Ok, I know “The Patriot” also taking place in the Revolutionary War took tremendous liberties with the historical facts. But the cast at least made it entertaining. Revolution was one of the most horrible films I think I’ve ever been subjected to. A few years ago, I hadn’t even heard of it, and a friend of mine, said that I absolutely, positively had to watch it.

Well, I did and I agree with the original review published in 1985 with its release that it was quite probably the worst film of the year. The casting was absolutely ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I love Al Pacino. Some of his performances are legendary stuff, Scarface, Heat, the Godfather saga. But casting him as a trapper caught up in the Revolutionary War is a head scratcher. Where was he trapping? In Brooklyn? His accent is not American Revolution-esque unless we had a lot more Italian immigrants in the colonies than what has been reported.

Speaking of accents, Nastassja Kinski, who back in the day was quite the box office draw, has a completely different one from the actresses who play her mother and sisters. I guess we’re supposed it ignore it or assume that she was adopted.

The British characters led by Donald Sutherland, are the unequivocal bad guys here. And just in case you don’t see it first hand, the director makes sure that you do by making most of them kiddy-diddlers. Pederasty aside, it is still a horrible film that is just not worth your time. The director wasted some nicely filmed battle scenes in Yorktown by making a boring, yawner who…like the ones listed above, took great liberties with history.

There are several more we could have listed here but you get the idea. And please feel free to chime in with some of your own Hall of Shame War Films. So with Labor Day Weekend upcoming, if you’re not making one last run to the beach this summer and you’re content with sitting home and watching some of your favorite war films, do yourself a favor. Skip these five. You’ll be glad you did.

Photos courtesy: IMDB

Doolittle Raid 75 Years Ago Was the Best Psychological Operation of the War

Seventy-five years ago, 16 B-25 land-based bombers took off from the US CV-6, the aircraft carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. They did little material damage but the repercussions felt from their tiny pinprick against the Japanese homeland would have a far lasting impact later.

Shortly after the debacle at Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt gave the task to the military to bring the war to the Japanese and wanted their homeland bombed. The Japanese in the following months would sweep across the Pacific, taking the Philippines, Burma and were flush with victory.

Roosevelt’s order to bomb Japan was met with skepticism, how could the US launch an air attack when they had no bases close enough to launch. Roosevelt wanted a victory to stimulate the morale of the American people. The Doolittle Raid was born.

The plan was to launch land-based B-25 bombers off an aircraft carrier, something that had never been attempted. The fact that the Japanese would see B-25s over their skies would be confusing. The Chinese had no air force to speak of and the Japanese military would not expect the Americans to risk their few precious carriers to launch short-range carrier aircraft at Japanese targets so far from home.

LTC Jimmy Doolittle was picked to lead the raid. Doolittle had always been a maverick in the military, he was perhaps the only General never to have attained the rank of Captain or Colonel. When he left the active military after World War I, he was a 1LT, but when he was called back to duty, he was brought in as his reserve rank as a Major. After the raid, he was promoted to Brigadier General skipping over the Colonel rank.

Doolittle selected 24 aircrews from the 17^th Bombardment Group and immediately sent them to Eglin Field, Florida where they began practicing taking off a heavily laden bomber off a short runway that a carrier would provide.

The B-25 was the best choice for the job, but they had to lighten them up a bit. The tail machine gunner was removed, and black broomsticks were put in their place. Three auxiliary fuel tanks, a collapsible 360-gallon bladder and ten five-gallon gas cans were added. The bomb load was small, just three 500-pound bombs and one incendiary cluster bomb was the payload. The Norden bombsights were removed and a specially designed one for low-level bombing was installed. Called the “Mark Twain”, it was designed by CPT C.R. Greening, USAAF.

The pilots were not told what the targets were, only that it was a dangerous mission. The only hint was that they were being trained by US Navy Lieutenant Henry L. Miller; so, from this clue, the pilots concluded they were heading to the Pacific. Many assumed wrongly at the Philippines, while Doolittle told them to keep their mouths shut, with the secrecy of the mission taking precedence.

The plan was for the bombers to take off from the carriers, bomb Japan and then fly to China, and become the backbone of General Chiang Kai-Shek’s air force. A total distance of 1200 miles. But as all military operations, snags were hit.

On April 1, 16 B-25 bombers were lifted on board the Hornet and lashed to the flight deck. North of Midway, Admiral Halsey’s carrier the USS Enterprise joined the Hornet, as well as four cruisers, eight destroyers, and two oil tankers. The task force headed to Japan.

The pilots finally learned what their target was. “Our destination is Tokyo,” Doolittle said, “we’re going to bomb Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya.” The Army pilots cheered. “It’s going to be a pretty tight squeeze”, Doolittle said. “But it’s all been worked out the best possible way, he added.”

Because he had brought the eight reserve aircrews along, Doolittle asked if any of the men wished to back out of the mission now that they targets had been revealed; none did.

Doolittle’s plan was to sail within 450 miles of Japan, launch the aircraft, bomb Tokyo and then make the 650 miles to China. But on the morning of April 18, the task force was sighted by a Japanese picket ship, the Nitto Maru. Rather than risk the carriers so far from home, the order was given to launch the aircraft, 823 miles from Tokyo. This was a full ten hours before scheduled launch. Originally the raid was supposed to take place in hours of darkness. Instead, it was to take place around noon time.

The B-25s all managed to take off without incident and headed to their targets. Their surprise was complete. There were few Japanese interceptors in the sky and the anti-aircraft fire was light and ineffective. Only one bomber received damage from anti-aircraft fire.

Doolittle flew his plane at 100 feet AGL and once over his target, he climbed to 1500 feet and dropped his small bombload. Once his bombs were away, he again dove for the deck and sped south to confuse the Japanese where he came from and where he was going.

Despite having only 16 bombers and a light payload, Oil storage tanks, factory areas, military installations were bombed in Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, and Nagoya. One bomb slightly damaged the ship Ryuho which was in dry-dock and was being refitted as a carrier. Doolittle reported, “Damage far exceeded the most optimistic expectations.”

The Japanese tried to issue propaganda that the raid had lost nine planes had caused no damage other than hitting schools and hospitals but the word got out. It was a tremendous loss of face as the Japanese had tasted nothing but victory and now their capital had been bombed. The commanding officer in charge of Tokyo’s air defenses committed ritual suicide because he felt dishonored and ashamed by the American attack.

Argentinian commercial attaché to Japan Ramon Muniz Lavelle witnessed and documented the outcome of the raid and he had this to say dispelling the Japanese propaganda of little damage:

“I ran up to our roof and saw four American bombers flying in over the rooftops. They couldn’t have been more than 100 feet off the ground. I looked down the streets. All Tokyo seemed to be in panic…. I could see fires starting near the port…. That raid by Doolittle was one of the greatest psychological tricks ever used. It caught [the Japanese] by surprise. Their unbounded confidence began to crack.”

The pilots headed for China. One pilot flew northwest and landed at the Soviet island of Vladivostok. The plane was confiscated and the crew interned. The remainder headed for China. Aided by a strong tailwind they flew on thru the darkness, rain, and clouds until their tanks ran dry.

The Japanese captured eight crew members after two of the crew members drowned while ditching in the ocean. They were charged with war crimes and in October of 1942 three were executed. The remaining five spent the rest of the war in horrible conditions as POWs. One more died in captivity of disease. 50 more raiders bailed out over China, and 49 were rescued by the Chinese, one died in the parachute jump. The Chinese rescued another 10 more men that crashed landed near the coast.

The resultant morale boost for the American public was tremendous. But the effect the raid had on the Japanese was profound. They were shaken to their core and as a result changed their strategic plans.

They first sent additional troops into China and seized the airfields that the Americans were aiming to land on. They then took terrible reprisals against the Chinese people for helping the US pilots. Chinese estimates put the number of dead after being slaughtered is about 250,000. The amazing thing was that the Chinese people didn’t have hard feelings against the Americans for the reprisals suffered. They treated the pilots as heroes.

The Japanese thought the bombers came from Midway Island so they set out to take it with a diversionary attack in the Aleutian Islands. That took precious resources away from the attack on Port Moresby in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The resulting battle was a draw, but the Japanese navy withdrew.

The US had cracked the Japanese codes and because of this, knew what the operational plan was. The Battle of Midway was a crushing loss for Japan as they lost four of the top aircraft carriers but also all of the combat tested pilots as well.

Japan’s offensive power was crushed at Midway and they’d be forced to fight a strategic defensive battle from that point on.

All of the pilots on the mission received the Distinguished Flying Cross for their bravery. The few raiders that were captured also received a Purple Heart. Jimmy Doolittle was promoted to Brigadier General and was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt after returning home.

Richard Cole is the last surviving Doolittle Raider, as was their custom on the anniversary of the raid, he went and toasted the men as well as the raiders that passed away since the last reunion. At 101-years old, Doolittle’s co-pilot toasted his comrades with the 1896 Hennessey Cognac (the birth year of Doolittle) that has been the tradition.

During those dark days of World War II, the Doolittle Raiders gave the American people the morale boost that they so sorely needed. It remains one of the most daring raids that the US has ever carried out. And it set the tone for later in the war when the US would fill the sky with 500 bombers over Tokyo.

Just a year to the day after the raid, the US intercepted a Japanese message that Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor would be visiting the Solomon Islands on an inspection.

The US scrambled long range P-38 fighters and shot down Yamamoto’s Betty bomber killing him in the crash into the jungle.

Photo courtesy of Doolittle Raiders