a666333 This film seems to never go away. I am not sure why. Perhaps because of Sterling Hayden, perhaps because of the footage of WW2 vintage aircraft and ships. I am fan of both but there is just not much to this. Hayden is on a carrier near Korea and starts recalling his WW2 days and we go quickly to an extended flashback of that. From then on, we get predictable scenes on the carrier involving the various personal issues of the pilots interspersed with stock Navy footage edited into dogfights, formations flying, bombing runs, landings and takeoffs. That is it, don't hope for anything else. The aerial footage itself will not satisfy the purist unless you hope to entertain and flatter oneself with identifying all its inconsistencies. Pilots can take off in a Hellcat, fly in a Corsair, bomb in a Helldiver or Avenger and then land in a Hellcat even though they are supposed to be part of a 1944 Navy fighter squadron which should almost certainly be using Hellcats exclusively. It is really quite an impossible mishmash that would give a good chuckle to any pilot from the time.

Robert J. Maxwell Richard Carlson is the pilot who lands a green squadron aboard the USS Princeton, but before they can take a crack at those Japs they all must be whipped into shape by their tough commander, Sterling Hayden. The combat missions increase in difficulty and some losses are incurred but eventually they straighten up and fly right, thanks to Hayden's unyielding demands.Most of the combat footage is familiar from other films about the war in the Pacific. If I see that flaming Japanese fighter skimming the surface of the ocean and curving into the ocean one more time, I think I'll -- well, I don't know what I'll do. Write a love letter to Lindsay Lohan or something equally crazy.Some of the newsreel photos are fresher than that. In one case, we see from the bridge of a carrier the slow-motion bounce of a Corsair that brings the airplane and its monstrous propellor, the size of windmill blades, careering into the superstructure just below the camera placement. I can't imagine how the photographer escaped with his legs intact.At the same time, though, there is a reckless disregard for historical niceties and for continuity. We see the American aviators in the distinctive cockpits of Corsairs (the Japanese are seen in mock ups of canopies from later models of the F6F Hellcat) and the next we see from external shots that they are flying Hellcats or Helldivers or Douglas Dauntlesses. You don't really need to be an airplane aficionado to find this a little irritating. If you're anything but an underaged clod you'll find it annoying. It's like watching a movie of a man driving a speeding car on the freeway and in the next shot he's bent over a bicycle's handlebars on a country road.The plot is a version of the process that had already become cinematic fodder and was to continue serving the same purpose, a thread to hang other events and developments on. The new commander must take charge of a group that is either new to combat or disillusioned by it. Often, as here, he has a tender-minded executive officer who is too close to his men and seems to be coddling them. The commander must be cruel in order to be kind. It's his job to be tough on them because no matter how miserable he makes their lives, it's nothing compared to combat. I'll mention "Take the High Ground," "Patton," "Twelve O'Clock High," and "Flying Leathernecks" as other examples.But although the ultimate goal is lofty enough, the dynamics are really more interesting from a psychological point of view. One thing about military training, or any other preparation for a life-and-death enterprise, is that it provides an outlet for sadistic impulses of the commander. In the movies, the commander almost always ends up showing his humanitarian side. ("The Caine Mutiny" is an anomaly in this regard.) And we, the audience, watch with delight as the commander goes from man to man, ripping each subordinate a new sphincter. Sigmund Freud called it Schadenfreude, taking joy in seeing the pain inflicted on someone else who's shown weakness. And the caring quality of the commander that is revealed at the end, when his men understand him and his motives better, is a sop thrown to the audience so they don't have to feel guilty about having enjoyed all the pain they've just witnessed. I once had a skipper like that. On the surface he was kind of crusty and abrasive, but underneath that he was a sack of sentimental mush. And underneath THAT he was a real MEAN SOB.There's an interesting movie buried in this strictly routine genre film but no one has bothered to try digging it out. Certainly not the writers. ("We're going to hit them, and hit them hard.") I generally like war movies because war is in many ways the ultimate experience -- putting your life at risk because a stranger orders you to and without any hope of personal profit. But it's disappointing when they treat war as if it were something that only belongs in comic books or cartoons. The total social calamity that war represents is cheapened.

Werner This is a rather run-of-the-mill War movie on board an American flat top in the Pacific against the Japs. Definitely not in the class of "A wing and a prayer" or "Tora, Tora, Tora" and, without much background footage, even not up to the mediocre Midway. Education under fire with an as always impressing Sterling Hayden, not much else. Definitely a B-Movie under war movies issued during this area. Consumer commodity stuff not, if you want action, look at the above mentioned movies, if you want it along with history, choose Victory at Sea. Five out of Ten at best for the dogfight at the very end. Actually difficult to crunch out ten lines for this, isn't it.

yamato4745 I am into WW2 aircraft carriers and the Pacific War and I find this film to be a good one for its time. The editing is great and there is only a couple of war film segments that appear twice. Unlike Midway, they don't use modern carrier shots and even through it is not completely tied to a battle or campaign, every thing gets explained(In Midway, they didn't show the fact that the USS Yorktown CV5 sinks, or at least is supposed to sink). Over all, I'll give this film 3 1/2 stars out of five.