Produced by the Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
This film is a military documentary told from the point of view of the crew of the aircraft carrier the Fighting Lady — a pseudonym for the Yorktown.
Scenes highlight the functions and duties of The Fighting Lady and crew activities, and maps illustrate the movement of the Pacific fleet and its engagement with the Japanese in 1943 and 1944.
Footage shows the following: A-24 Dauntlesses, TBF Avengers, Hellcats and other aircrafts as they flew out to the carrier, and the August 30, 1943, strafing and bombing mission over Japanese – held Marcus Island — from preparation on the carrier to debriefing.
Later scenes cover 1944, when the U.S. forces took Kwajalein Island, the Marshall Islands, Truk Islands, and Caroline Islands through air assaults and troop landings. Mitsubishi Zero-Sens (Zekes) engaged the U.S. Navy assault force and the ship squadron returned to the Marshall Islands for repairs, munitions, and rest and recreation. En route to the battle area, the Fighting Lady encountered and downed a Japanese reconnaissance plane. On the eve of battle, sailors attended church services.
Prior to the U.S. assault, the Japanese attacked the U.S. squadron and U.S. planes took off for the Marianas and the Guam Islands where they successfully fought at the Tinian and Mariana Islands. The Japanese and U.S. task forces then fought in the Philippine Sea, where planes engaged in dogfights while ships performed evasive maneuvers. Final scenes show U.S. casualties buried at sea.
Made possible by a donation from Public.Resource.Org
This documentary was completely filmed and produced during the war, in color film. It shows a bombing mission over Nazi Germany from its start to end (B-17 raid over Wilhelmshaven)
Cold War Documentary Episode 1: Comrades (1917-1945)
Cold War is a twenty-four episode television documentary series about the Cold War that aired in 1998.It features interviews and footage of the events that shaped the tense relationships between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union drifted apart after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the Paris Peace Conference. Diplomatic and extensive trading relationships were established under Roosevelt, but relations soured following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and eastern Poland. After Hitler broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the Western powers worked closely with the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Distrust reemerged as Stalin’s plans for placing Eastern Europe in the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence became apparent towards the war’s end, and came to the fore at the Potsdam Conference, just before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interviewees include George F. Kennan, Zoya Zarubina, Hugh Lunghi and George Elsey. The pre-credits scene shows the US Congress nuclear bunker at The Greenbrier, and introduces the television series by explaining how for several decades the world was close to a nuclear holocaust.
Fight For The Sky – United States Air Force WW2 Documentary Film
United States Department of the Air Force documentary film that details the air war between Allied fighter pilots and the German Luftwaffe over Western Europe during 1945.
Scenes include:
activities of the 8th Air Force Fighter Command in Europe.
a base near East Anglia, England.
General Doolittle discusses a mission.
Pilots are briefed for an escort mission over Germany.
P-47’s are relieved in flight by P-51’s.
German pilots rush to intercept U.S. planes.
U.S. bombers and many German fighters are downed.
Fighters destroy enemy planes, transportation and communication.
Con el hundimiento del trasatlántico ATHENEA el día 3 de septiembre de 1939 por parte del U-30 alemán, da comienzo lo que Churchill denominó «La Batalla del Atlántico».
Desde el inicio de la contienda los aliados trataron de bloquear los puertos a través de los cuales se abastecía la Alemania nazi. Por su parte, Hitler utilizó contra el tráfico marítimo aliado con destino a Inglaterra toda la capacidad operativa de la Kriegsmarine, tanto de sus buques de superficie como fundamentalmente la de los submarinos (U-Boot) que componían la U-Bootwaffe.
Suspendido el Plan Z, el Almirante Raeder había reconocido la inferioridad de la flota alemana frente a la Royal Navy, pero ello no hizo que renunciara a la victoria en el mar. En primera línea, los submarinos alemanes, con sus ataques individuales o en manada de lobos contra los convoyes aliados, fueron capaces de estar muy cerca de la victoria final.
Sólo la tecnología superó a los feroces cazadores que al final se convirtieron en cazados.
Apoclipsis: II Guerra mundial. Episodio 4: El estallido
1942 – 1943. Tras el ataque sobre Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt declara la Guerra a Japón extendiendo el conflicto a nivel mundial. Pese a du determinante voluntad, las fuerzas aliadas son incapaces de detener el avance de los japoneses hacia el Sudeste asiático, e incluso la India y Australia están en peligro.
Los primeros signos de esperanza para los aliados llegarán tras la derrota niopona en Midway y el aterrizaje de los norteamericanos en Guadalcanal, pero todavía queda mucha guera por delante y los combates se recrudecen especialmente en las zonas más selváticas. Mientras, la Resitencia se organiza en Europa y en el Norte de Africa.
Los ataques aumentan y la RAF comienza a bombardear zonas de Alemania. Pese a todo, la fuerza de Hitler todavía parece imparable: Rommel ha llegado a la frontera egipcia y la esvástica ondea en Stalingrado. En este momento, los nazis deciden poner en marcha la «Solución final», el exterminio masivo de judíos en Europa.
History of China: The Roots of Madness – CIA Cold War Documentary Film (1967)
China: The Roots of Madness is a 1967 Cold War era, made-for-TV documentary film produced by David L. Wolper, written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Theodore H. White with production cost funded by a donation from John and Paige Curran. It won an Emmy Award in the documentary category.
The film attempts to analyze the Anti-Western sentiment in China from the official American’s perspective, covering 170 years of China’s political history, from Boxer Rebellion of the Qing Dynasty to Red Guards of Cultural Revolution. The film focuses on the power struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China, amid heavy political intervention from Moscow, with Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong playing the pivotal role at the center stage.
The documentary film was made for television in 1967 — during the Cold War era. It was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Theodore H. White, directed by Mel Stuart, edited by William T. Cartwright and produced by David L. Wolper. Production costs were funded by a donation from John and Paige Curran. The film has been released under Creative Commons license. White’s access to important political figures of the time allowed him to create some rare footage, which included the wedding of Chang Kai-shek and the funeral of Sun Yat-sen. The film won an Emmy Award in the documentary category.
As evidenced by his commentary throughout the films, White, Time magazine’s China correspondent during World War II, was scathing about the People’s Republic of China. Remarking that Chinese had been suffering in a 100-year tragedy, he added:
«There are 700 millions Chinese [in 1967], one quarter of humane kind, who are taught to hate, their growing power is the world’s greatest threat to peace enlightenment. 50 years of torment, bred madness…»
For 50 years, Americans have failed to help the Chinese to find «some entry to the modern world», as the Chinese have «been transformed from our greatest friend into our greatest enemy», as the Chinese have fallen into the vicious cycle of «from the tyranny of Confucius of the Manchu Emperor to the tyranny of communism and Mao».
White referred to Empress Dowager Cixi as «China’s evil spirit… a Manchu concubine…said to have poisoned her own son upon his throne, install her infant nephew as the emperor, killed his mother, and then imprisoned him in 1898″.
Pearl Buck on the Boxer Rebellion:»Empress Dowager had issued an decree that all white people are to be killed, and many have been killed, especially in the north of Shandong, men, women and children of the missionary.»
White’s impression on the downfall of Qing Dynasty: «…and then it vanished, simply vanished, the Manchu Dynasty disappeared overnight, nothing like that had ever happen in all the history, 2000 years of tradition, the whole structure of the imperial confucianism, political thought, dissolving to dust…»
White’s impression on post-Manchu Empire China:»…out of this turbulence, there appeared two types of Asian leaders, arch symbols, the the man of gun, and the man of idea, and these two types of gunman and the dreamer, have perplexed all our efforts in Asia for 50 years since, and they still perplexed and haunted all our policy, even today…»
White’s impression on Sun Yat-sen:»…was a man of dream, the dream of China, powerful, free of emperors and foreigners, made him from his youth a revolutionary…Slowly from the early 1920, Sun Yatsen had somehow built a government, a tiny southern foothold at Canton, ringed by hostile warlords. By 1924 the ageing revolutionary had learned, idea and gun must go together…in 1923 he tells the New York Times: We have lost hope of help from America, England, France, the only country that show any sign of helping us in the south is the Soviet government of Russia…»
White on Kuomingtang left wing: «[they] no longer trust their army leader at the front. Borodin is urging: ‘Get rid of Chiang Kaishek.’ In four short years, the communist had grown 60,000 members. To hear the left wing Nationalist: ‘No revolution is completed, until peasants own their land, and workers their factories.’ Chiang disagreed.»
While the film won an Emmy Award in the documentary category soon after its release, contemporary critics have criticised his «callous and condescending» portrayal of Chinese. Film Threat remarked that White never attempted to take on board the Chinese viewpoint, and points out there were unconfirmed rumours that the CIA was involved in the film’s making.
Apoclipsis: II Guerra mundial. Episodio 5: Grandes aterrizajes
6 de junio de 1944. Las tropas aliadas desembarcan en Normandía, punto estratégico de la Operación Overlord, largamente preparada por las fuerzas aliadas y dirigida por los generales Montgomery y Eisenhower, con la aquiescencia de Churchill, Roosevelt y Stalin.
El episodio ofrece imágenes descarnadas del desembarco, que se cobro miles de vidas aliadas y que sigue siendo hoy la invasión por mar más compleja, valiente y arriesgada de la historia.
La toma de las playas, en medio de una verdadera masacre, marca el comienzo del fin de la contienda, con los aliados dispuestos a avanzar y reconquistar los territorios ocupados por los nazis. Será cuestión de semanas que logren liberar Paris, el 25 de agosto.
De forma paralela, en el Pacífico tiene lugar el combate en la isla de Saipán, que se prolonga del 15 de junio al 9 de julio con victoria de los norteamericanos.
World Wars 1 & 2 