Puttering in the Study

Midway

Parker and I went to see Midway today, and really enjoyed it.  It was technically stunning - the Enterprise and its dive bombers were flawlessly executed, and for that matter I never saw any hardware (except the sinking Lexington) that wasn't technically correct as far as I knew.  That doesn't mean the camouflage on the ships and aircraft was always correct - the movie starts on December 7, and neither Enterprise, the dive bombers or the ships at Pearl Harbor are in the correct camo for that period - but it's close enough. (There's also one overhead shot of the B-25s over Tokyo where they - inexplicably - have 1943 markings - but it's still far and away the most period-accurate WW II naval combat movie I've ever seen).

Beginning with the Pearl Harbor scenes, though, it becomes clear that this is a dramatization of the action, not a strict retelling.  At Pearl Harbor the events of the attack are sequenced differently, and the ships are arranged a little differently around the harbor, but the action sequence is good, and unlike Pearl Harbor it's consistent.  It's essentially CGI or sets that match the historical ships in CGI, so I have no real complaints. You don't have the Missouri and a bunch of mothballed 1970's destroyers getting blown up.

Along these lines, the action scenes are dramatized as well. I don't think Roi or Namur had scenic mountains, carrier task forces didn't steam at 300 yard intervals, and the Lexington wasn't a Yorktown class ship.  I understand how for dramatic reasons Halsey's Enterprise does make it to the Coral Sea to join Yorktown, but too late to do anything but watch Lexington sink. And it is borderline adorable to have Yorktown and Enterprise watching Lexington sinking at the previously noted 300 yard spacing that looks just like three cows standing together in a meadow.  But - again - they used the same Yorktown class carrier for the sinking Lexington.  Bizarre.

Woody Harrelson does very, very well as Admiral Nimitz, and Etsushi Toyokawa does likewise as Yamamoto. In fact, the whole cast is good, and while I've heard others have issues with the script, neither the script itself nor the dialogue bothered me. Patrick Wilson is also really good as Nimitz' intelligence officer Edwin Layton.

The best thing about the movie to me was the constant parade of historically correct easter eggs that were used to propel the story along. It sounds like terrible writing to have Layton telling Nimitz the exact date, time and bearing of the Japanese attack, and Nimitz then complimenting him later for being "5 minutes, 5 miles and 5 degrees off" - but it's almost word for word what Rochefort and Nimitz actually said.  And Bruno Gaido saving the day at the Marshalls and getting the plane he was in cut in half by a Japanese bomber that nearly misses, and then he comes back later in the movie to play an important role is just over the top screenwriting - but that's exactly what happened. Gene Lindsay getting banged up landing his TBD, Wade McCluskey getting switched to dive bombers - all this stuff is in there. The way the "AF is short on water" story is told is original and funny.  Again, much of the story is dramatized - Halsey put himself in the hospital, but it plays better to have Nimitz have to order him off under protest.  Hirohito being hustled off to his bunker during the Doolittle Raid was a terrific touch.

The accuracy extends to the technical details of the attacks on Kaga and Akagi.  McCluskey mistakenly leads his squadron and almost all of Best's down on a single target, and misses - and so do others before the bombs start hitting home.  Then the most critical attack of the battle is portrayed pretty accurately. Best, accompanied by only his two wingmen, went after the Akagi, but were forced to attack from abeam, meaning they had hit to the ship from the side.  They're shown flying through massive AA fire when Best told us at a seminar in 1992 that there wasn't a gun on him during his run (see comments re: dramatization above) but the actual effects of the attack are shown accurately. His two wingmen both barely miss the ship (one jams the ship's rudder, which would later make salvage even less likely), but Best drops his amidships - and actually at the worst possible point where his bomb not only could damage the ship with its explosion and the secondary explosions - he also fatally damaged the water main system and because he hit around the elevator, the damage extended to both the hangars.  One bomb - one ship.

Oh, and then he came back four hours later and scored a hit on Hiryu as well.  Perhaps not in as dramatic fashion as the movie displays, where he lands his SBD on the Hiryu, engages Admiral Yamaguchi in hand to hand combat, and then takes off again, dropping his bomb through the hinomaru in the forward flight deck on his way off, but still.  (I am only exaggerating slightly).

It's a great war movie, and it's a great and largely accurate retelling of the first six months of the Pacific war - one where the Enterprise is depicted flawlessly (okay, other than not having Ms 1 camo on Dec. 7/8).  And they gave us Midway pins at the movie theater. What more could you ask for?  Oh yeah, a historically accurate Lexington. But other than that, not much.

Midway, Dick Best and Me

A very pleasant surprise about the new Midway movie is that the Enterprise's Bombing 6 skipper Dick Best is the lead. I met Mr. Best at a Nimitz (now Pacific War) Museum symposium in 1992, and for reasons that now escape me, I had packed up a framed R.S. Smith print of his run on the Akagi that my parents had given me for graduation in a pillow case and brought it with me, along with a few books for signatures.

At the time I honestly didn't realize his significance in the battle - I just recognized he was one of the Enterprise dive bomber pilots Walter Lord had written about.

After listening to his portion of the panel discussion I realized I should probably see if he'd sign my print. Oh boy, did he. When he handed it back to me, it said:

          Dick Best

C.O. Bombing Six

U.S.S. Enterprise

Midway, 4 June 42

As the seminar was about three months after I finished law school, I was still in the habit of taking copious notes, and in light of the movie, I thought a few might be worth putting here:

On Dive Bombing

He said he's often asked what it's like to be a dive bomber pilot. "It's like a rollercoaster," he said. "You come in at 20,000 feet, go 'over the top' and stand on your rudder pedals. At 3,500 adjust and drop at 2,500 - pull out at 1,000." He said the bump going over the top was the 'old hat' part of the dive. "The excitement is what you can do at the bottom."

Doolittle Raid

Left (I think he was referring to) on April 12 on Enterprise with a fast fleet oiler and were on heading of 335 degrees - a direct course to Tokyo, and they worried for two days. Launched at dawn (probably referring to a patrol he flew) and saw Hornet. But he said he couldn't make out her deck load - there were a lot of engines and jumble and deck tractors. He said he was envious of Doolittle that he got the "first shot at Japan."

Midway

Left for Midway on May 28 with Task Force 16. The next day Spruance met with them and laid out the plan. He said the details were incredible - they had divisions by numbers, and names of the carriers and battleships. he said he asked what if they were wrong and the Japanese did something different - was told "well, we just hope they won't." He wasn't told how they knew. (Alvin Kernan said the code breaking was common knowledge on Enterprise during the battle - if it was, Best didn't mention it during the panel).

On June 3 heard about the attack on the Aleutians - I wrote two quotes here which may be something he said or something he recounted someone else saying - "We're going to show them a surprise this time," and "behind the garden gate with a bat."

He remembers VB was back in the landing wires because were heavier, and was airborne by the time he reached the island. VS launched first - he noted the torpedo bombers apparently went first (as well). (This is garbled account and incomplete of who launched when, but I won't take time right now to complete the launch sequence using other sources - this is just what he recounted. And it's possible I wrote VS when I should have written VF).

His account of the attack is just about exactly as the movie relates except he said something about "never a gun on him." That might mean he was never hit, but I think it was that he was never fired on. He remembered seeing a Zero go through his gunsight as he dove - there were planes launching from the stern, and his bomb hit "in planes warming up." He described the flight deck as red-orange with a bright red ball, and later described the attack on the Hiryu as well - said his dive was steeper and his rear seat man said they got a hit. Said he's often asked how he recalls the details of the missions so well, and said it's easy because it was the last day he flew a plane, due to the caustic soda incident.

I can't help but think he'd have been a bit indignant at being portrayed as a cowboy who got promoted by Halsey, because he'd been a squadron leader for a while. But he'd have liked the way they redid the final bomb drop on Hiryu. Actually he probably would have just smiled and refrained from actually grumbling about how that wasn't the way it happened, and how several got hits.

 

 

War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 - Megargee, Geoffrey P.

This is another short book, but provides an excellent background on Barbarossa, as well as a concise explanation of the first year of the campaign.  It includes a phase by phase analysis of the Nazi plan and practice for genocide against the inhabitants of Soviet Russia.  

Some of what happened was planned, some wasn’t, but the next effect was that millions of the Soviet soldiers and civilians that found themselves behind German lines were dead before the next spring.  Some were killed in combat or because they were Jews or other groups that Germans intended to kill anyway, but most died from starvation and exposure as a result of the failure of the German high command to provide for their survival.  Nor was this mere negligence - Germany never intended to provide for the survival of POWs in large numbers, and deliberately took food and winter clothing from civilians to support its home front and the troops on the Eastern Front.

Horrible story, but efficiently told.

June 1941: Hitler and Stalin - Lukas, John

Just finished this short book about the relationship between the two dictators leading up the the German invasion of the Soviet Union.  It’s more of a talk than a book, and the citations are thin, but it’s an excellent study of how the two men related to each other, why Hitler did what he did, and what Staling refused to admit it was coming.

Dauntless: The Battle of Midway

Dauntless: The Battle of Midway is a “mockbuster” - a low budget film that’s intended to capitalize on the publicity surrounding a blockbuster movie by a large studio.  Even the trailer indicated that the special effects were not quite ready for the big screen, but since I’d go to Des Moines to see a community theater production about the drama involved in loading torpedoes, of course I was going to get the Blu-ray, which is the only release this howler will ever have.

The set consisted of three rooms, two aircraft fuselages, a pool and the ocean, and the speaking cast was 13 people.  (I counted both).  Astonishingly, most - maybe all - of the movie was filmed in the director’s back yard using green screen, and the extras show the director and three buddies building the SBD fuselage. I thought it looked pretty good until Parker noticed something that was pretty obviously a 2 x 4 cross-section.  Everything else - and I mean everything - was special effects.  Picture Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  It’s like that.

I’m not exaggerating, nor am I condemning.  When the live action is combined with the special effects, the result is pretty good.  The lighting is way off, which has a tendency to spoil the effect, but the detail in the CGI is remarkable.  The Enterprise, in particular is - until next month - by far the best screen representation of the ship, and it is quite accurate - although it mixes the ship’s appearance during different periods.  The Hornet is often seen sailing less than a thousand yards beside it, and although the camouflage scheme has the usual error - which I have yet to avoid - of not using Haze Gray above the flight deck, it’s still pretty good.  Until you see that the two carriers sport giant flight deck numbers - a black 6 on Enterprise and a white 8 on Hornet.  

That’s one of the disappointing things about the movie.  Low budget notwithstanding, it gets so much right, both in story and detail, then misses equally accessible details.  The SBDs have the correct markings, but the wrong propellor tips.  The captions accurately identify all the squadrons and events - then a pilot will refer to meeting up with “VB-6”, when I’m pretty sure they always referred to the squadrons as “Bombing 6”.  (At least that’s the caption Dick Best put on my Midway print in 1992 - he signed it “CO Bombing 6 USS Enterprise 4 June 1942” so I assume that’s what it was referred to at the time). And the aircraft are scattered on the deck, rather than in a tight deck pack prior to launch, which I found grating - and inexplicable. How could so much attention to detail go into the effects and then have easy errors like Mk 37 gun directors and a giant flight deck numeral 6 on  an Enterprise that is otherwise almost exactly accurate for June 1942. Literally the only other error I saw was a missing catwalk on the starboard side of the stack - which was a post-Midway change.

It’s also jarring when the dramatic launch of the SBDs from the Enterprise is accompanied by Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets.  The attack on an under detailed but accurate Kaga is accompanied by Mars before the music segues into something broadly similar, but which I didn’t recognize.  Not bad, but ... jarring.  But it is really fun to watch things happen during the flight that match up with the historical record, even when it doesn’t contribute anything to the movie.  

But if you watch it on a small enough screen that the effects don’t distract, it does tell a couple of good stories.  Judd Nelson as Admiral Raymond Spruance spars with C. Thomas Howell as Captain Miles Browning and they replay various generally accurate confrontations, mostly after the 4 June attack.  For example, the “turn the lights on” scene (Spruance did it at Midway two years before Mitscher at Philippine Sea) and the “I’ll do what you pilots want” scenes are accurate as long as you’re not checking precise dialogue. Nelson handles Spruance well, and he provides the narrative for the movie, explaining in a couple of sentences of dialogue what the tiny movie could never have shot (if only because the director’s back yard wasn’t big enough). At this level, the story is spot-on. 

The heart of the movie - which to its credit it makes hard to watch - is the ordeal faced by downed pilots who drifted in the ocean for days, and in some cases weeks waiting for rescue. The movie tells the story of two specific pilots from the Enterprise who ditched after bombing the Kaga, and long after I’ve forgotten the inaccurate effects or bad writing I’ll remember the insight it gives watchers into the special hell that must have been.

In the end, if you dream of seeing an almost perfectly accurate June 1942 Enterprise filmed cinematographically launching its strike on the morning of June 4 - this movie is for you.  But I’ll understand if you want to wait till next month.  I just couldn’t.

 

Revell angled deck Essex - bow "knuckle" & flight deck installation

One of the characteristics of the SCB-125 Essex class carriers was a prominent crease or "knuckle" at the bow which marks where the class' original open bow was plated in from the forecastle deck to the gallery deck. The knuckle disappears where it meets the hurricane bow, which was all-new construction, and this is approximately where the anchor is located.

On the modern carriers there is no crease - it's a smooth curve up to the flight deck - but on the modernized Essex class ships there is a distinct line.

The 1943 Essex model above shows the "lip" at the forecastle deck.  The lower edge is what would become the "knuckle" in the postwar refits.

Unfortunately, when I measured the kit's version of the knuckle - which is really just a bulge - it was significantly below where it needed to be.  The correct location is the upper pencil line, and the kit location was the lower.

So I sanded the existing knuckle down with the Dremel (ignoring the fact that as I've noted previously, the hull is a little wider than it should be here anyway), and glued strips of angled plastic.  That white strip will tell me where the curve changes, and provide a sharp line that will hopefully match that on the real ship.

I did a little more work on the gallery deck and port sponsons before realizing that it was time for the big step - reattaching the flight deck. I double checked that all the gallery deck sponsons were sanded down properly, and marked the parts that needed plastic cement and the ones that needed super glue (the resin hangar deck needs it where it attaches to plastic).
Next step is the one I've been looking forward to for a long, long time - puttying the bow into the gallery deck - now with an accurate "knuckle" to guide the sanding. The selfie at the top is the current status with two applications of putty (too thick and it won't dry properly) - with the lower (hull) section getting a sanding in between.  The upper (forecastle) part will need a couple more applications before I can start shaping it.

 

 

 

The Devil Rides Out - Dennis Wheatley

I don’t know how this happened. Some post somewhere suggested that this was a classic piece of horror fiction from the 1930’s, and it ended up being almost camp.

The summary of the 1950’s Hammer movie based on it (which tells you all you need to know) tells the story:

”When the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) arrive at a fashionable party thrown by de Richleau's protégé, Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult, led by the high priest Mocata (Charles Gray), that plans to initiate the beautiful Tanith (Nike Arrighi) that night. It's up to de Richleau and Van Ryn to defeat the devil-worshiping Mocata and save innocent young Tanith and the others from a terrible fate.”

That’s pretty much it.  The best part of the book was the 1930’s environment it was set in, complete with cars, manor houses and airplanes. It wasn’t bad at all - it was about like watching an old episode of MacGyver. Or, candidly, a dramatic version of a Scooby Doo episode.  That’s just true horror fiction though.  It wasn’t remotely scary or supernatural.

The Devil Rides Out - Dennis Wheatley

I don’t know how this happened. Some post somewhere suggested that this was a classic piece of horror fiction from the 1930’s, and it ended up being almost camp.

The summary of the 1950’s Hammer movie based on it (which tells you all you need to know) tells the story:

”When the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) arrive at a fashionable party thrown by de Richleau's protégé, Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult, led by the high priest Mocata (Charles Gray), that plans to initiate the beautiful Tanith (Nike Arrighi) that night. It's up to de Richleau and Van Ryn to defeat the devil-worshiping Mocata and save innocent young Tanith and the others from a terrible fate.”

That’s pretty much it.  The best part of the book was the 1930’s environment it was set in, complete with cars, manor houses and airplanes. It wasn’t bad at all - it was about like watching an old episode of MacGyver. Or, candidly, a dramatic version of a Scooby Doo episode.  That’s just true horror fiction though.  It wasn’t remotely scary or supernatural.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - E.B. Sledge

This is the first of several books that were required reading for my first WW II Studies course, and while only part was required - the portion on Okinawa, I read the entire thing since I was familiar with the author because he is one of the primary characters in the HBO miniseries The Pacific.

They were not wrong to focus on him.  Sledge had a distinguished career as a college professor and only wrote what was initially intended as a private memoir for his family late in life, but he - like Alvin Keenan, who I’ve written about previously - puts his academic skills for writing to good use here, narrating how Marines were trained and how they fought in two of the worst battles of the war - Peleliu and Okinawa.

The book is rightly considered one of the best military memoirs of all time, and we’re fortunate that someone stared at the horrors of close combat over a prolonged period of time, and had the ability to explain to the rest of us what he saw.

The Shadow Land - Elizabeth Kostova

I am an eternal follower of Kostova because I loved The Historian so much. That means I will (eventually) drag myself through even this book, which tells a lengthy story about political persecution in postwar Bulgaria.  

As always, it’s well-written, but it was mistake to get it on audiobook, where I had to sit (drive, actually) through the endless travails of the narrator, who discovers the story of a political prisoner in Bulgaria during its tenure at a communist satellite of the Soviet Union. I could have sped-read through much of it and gotten the story without marinating in the misery.  Yeah, that’s shallow of me, I know, but this is one I came really close to never finishing.