During World War II, the submarine USS Thunderfish, under the command of Commander John T. "Pop" Perry, while on a special mission to the Philippines, is charged with rescuing a group of nuns and children, including a newborn infant nicknamed "Butch", and transporting them to Pearl Harbor. On their way, the sub sights a Japanese aircraft carrier and attacks, but its torpedoes malfunction, exploding halfway to the target. Attacked and pursued by the carrier's escorting destroyers, Thunderfish manages to escape.
While in Pearl Harbor, the ship's Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Duke E. Gifford goes to visit Butch at the base hospital, and runs into his ex-wife, Lieutenant (j.g.) Mary Stuart, a Navy nurse, and they kiss passionately. Unfortunately, Mary is now romantically involved with Navy pilot Lieutenant (j.g.) Bob Perry, Pop's younger brother. Duke pursues Mary anyway, but is sent to sea again before anything is settled.
As the sub returns from the patrol, they spot a Japanese freighter, but again their torpedoes fail to explode. The enemy ship raises the white flag, and Thunderfish surfaces and approaches. The freighter turns out to be a heavily armed Q-ship that opens fire on the sub. Mortally wounded, Commander Perry orders the boat to crash dive, knowing that he will not be able to get below before she submerges.
Duke, now in command, orders a "battle surface" behind the ship. On surfacing, Gifford orders the boat's deck guns and anti-aircraft guns, as well as numerous portable light and mountable heavy machine guns operated by the deck crew, to fire at will. After the Q-ship's bridge is disabled and the ship set afire, Duke orders flank speed, ramming the sub into the Japanese ship, holing and sinking the Q-ship.
Thunderfish limps home for repairs to her damaged bow. Back at Pearl Harbor, Bob Perry believes that Duke's order to dive the boat killed his brother, and he refuses to listen to Duke's explanation. Mary tries to comfort Duke, but he rejects her attempts, declaring he only did his duty and feels no regret.
Working with the sub base's torpedo specialists, Duke and the crew of the Thunderfish investigate why the torpedoes are not exploding. When they finally discover the answer, Duke goes to Mary to celebrate, but she rejects him. Since he would not let her into his life when he was at his lowest, she feels that they cannot have a real relationship. Her superior, Commander Steele, overhears the conversation and castigates Mary for throwing away her chance for happiness with Duke.
Once again Thunderfish heads to sea, this time as part of a scouting line searching for a Japanese fleet heading for Leyte to attack the American invasion force there. Thunderfish finds the enemy. Even though it will reveal their presence, Duke broadcasts the fleet's position. Once Pearl Harbor acknowledges the message, Duke salvoes his torpedoes and makes a run for it, throwing the attacking Japanese warships into chaos. Despite enduring a battering from Japanese depth charges, Thunderfish manages to sink a Japanese aircraft carrier.
In the next phase of the battle, American carrier aircraft arrive and attack the Japanese fleet. Thunderfish, now assigned to lifeguard duty, helps to rescue shot down American flyers, and does so while under attack from Japanese fighters. While rescuing the wounded Bob Perry, the Chief of the Boat and Junior, a seaman from a Navy family, are killed and Duke is wounded by a strafing Japanese Zero.
When the Thunderfish returns to Pearl Harbor after the patrol, Mary is waiting for Duke. The two, reconciled, head to the hospital, intending to adopt Butch.
John Wayne and Patricia Neal did not get along during filming. Nearly fourteen years later, however, they worked together on In Harm's Way (1965) where she noted that he had mellowed a lot, possibly because he was seriously ill with lung cancer at the time.
The film's opening foreword and dedication states: "When the Pacific Fleet was destroyed by the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, it remained for the submarines to carry the war to the enemy. In the four years that followed, our undersea craft sank six million tons of Japanese shipping including some of the proudest ships of the Imperial Navy. Fifty-two of our submarines and thirty-five hundred officers and men were lost. It is to these men and the entire Silent Service that this picture is humbly dedicated."
The special mission shown at the beginning of the movie, in which Navy submarines ran war supplies into the Philippines and evacuated civilians, while idealized is a matter of historic record. By the time of the invasion of the Philippines in 1944, these supply runs had enabled American and Philippine Army officers who had refused to surrender to build a military organization in the islands that was the size of an army corps.[3]
The numerous problems with the Mark 14 torpedo and its Mark VI exploder depicted in the film are accurate. A poorly designed and tested firing pin could malfunction on a good hit (that is, a torpedo striking within about 45 degrees of perpendicular to the side of the target). Poor hits (at a very sharp angle to the side of the ship) could often produce more reliable explosions. Diagnosing the problem actually did occur in a similar manner after 20 months of repeated failures in combat. Submarine crews were involved in the testing, although not in the capacity shown in the film.
The scene where Commander Perry (Bond) is killed in a surface action is a combination of two incidents involving Commander Howard W. Gilmore, captain of USSGrowler(SS-215). Mortally wounded on the bridge, Gilmore gave the order "Take her down!", sacrificing himself to save his submarine and crew, for which he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The ramming and sinking of the armed freighter depicted in the scene occurred in the same action, just prior to Gilmore's death.
During Operation Pacific's action sequences, for the film's music score composer Max Steiner incorporated dramatic music stances from his classic score for RKO's King Kong. Warner Brothers also recycled Steiner's main theme music from the 1948 movie Fighter Squadron, "We Watch The Skyways," as the main theme for Operation Pacific. This march was first used as the main title for the 1941 movie Dive Bomber. It would be heard again in the 1959 submarine movie Up Periscope, and even in a Daffy Duck cartoon, Yankee Doodle Daffy, in 1943.
Two previous Warner Brothers features are cited within this film: George Washington Slept Here (1942) is traded to another submarine in exchange for Destination Tokyo (1943), of which a few seconds of footage is seen as the crewmen watch it.
Although Ward Bond's character is presented as several years older than John Wayne's, in reality Bond was only four years older than Wayne. Longtime friends, this was the 12th film they had done together.
The submarine Corveena was an actual submarine, albeit spelled slightly differently. USSCorvina(SS-226) was commissioned on August 6, 1943, and was torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I-176 on her first war patrol south of Truk Atoll on November 16, 1943. I-176 outlived her victim by exactly six months, being depth-charged and sunk off Buka Island in the Solomon Islands on May 16, 1944.
Box office performance
According to Warner Bros' accounts the film earned $2,563,000 domestically and $1,300,000 in foreign countries.[1]
Tora! Tora! Tora! is a 1970 epic war film that dramatizes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The film was produced by Elmo Williams and directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, and stars an ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, So Yamamura, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takahiro Tamura, Wesley Addy, and Jason Robards. It was Masuda and Fukasaku's first English-language film, and first international co-production. The tora of the title, although literally meaning "tiger", is actually an abbreviation of a two-syllable codeword, used to indicate that complete surprise had been achieved.
The United States Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT) is a theater-level component command of the United States Navy, located in the Pacific Ocean. It provides naval forces to the Indo-Pacific Command. Fleet headquarters is at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, Hawaii, with large secondary facilities at Naval Air Station North Island, California.
Husband Edward Kimmel was a United States Navy Two-star admiral who was the commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT) during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was removed from that command after the attack, in December 1941, and was reverted to his permanent two-star rank of rear admiral due to no longer holding a four-star assignment. He retired from the Navy in early 1942. The United States Senate voted to restore Kimmel's permanent rank to four stars in 1999, but President Clinton did not act on the resolution, and neither have any of his successors.
USS Yorktown (CV-5) was an aircraft carrier that served in the United States Navy during World War II. Named after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, she was commissioned in 1937. Yorktown was the lead ship of the Yorktown class, which was designed on the basis of lessons learned from operations with the converted battlecruisers of the Lexington class and the smaller purpose-built USS Ranger.
USS Enterprise (CV-6) was a Yorktown-class carrier built for the United States Navy during the 1930s. She was the seventh U.S. Navy vessel of that name. Colloquially called "The Big E", she was the sixth aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. Launched in 1936, she was one of only three American carriers commissioned before World War II to survive the war. She participated in more major actions of the war against Japan than any other United States ship. These actions included the attack on Pearl Harbor — 18 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers of her air group arrived over the harbor during the attack; seven were shot down with eight airmen killed and two wounded, making her the only American aircraft carrier with men at Pearl Harbor during the attack and the first to sustain casualties during the Pacific War — the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, various other air-sea engagements during the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Enterprise earned 20 battle stars, the most for any U.S. warship in World War II, and was the most decorated U.S. ship of World War II. She was also the first American ship to sink a full-sized enemy warship after the Pacific War had been declared when her aircraft sank the Japanese submarine I-70 on 10 December 1941. On three occasions during the war, the Japanese announced that she had been sunk in battle, inspiring her nickname "The Grey Ghost". By the end of the war, her planes and guns had downed 911 enemy planes, sunk 71 ships, and damaged or destroyed 192 more.
USS Lexington (CV/CVA/CVS/CVT/AVT-16) is an Essex-class aircraft carrier built during World War II for the United States Navy. Originally intended to be named Cabot, the new aircraft carrier was renamed while under construction to commemorate the recently-lost USS Lexington(CV-2), becoming the sixth U.S. Navy ship to bear the name in honor of the Battle of Lexington.
USS Corvina (SS-226), a Gato-class submarine, was the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for the corvina.
USS Northampton (CL/CA-26) was the lead ship in Northampton-class cruiser, in service with the United States Navy. She was commissioned in 1930, originally classified a light cruiser because of her thin armor but later reclassified a heavy cruiser because of her 8-inch guns. During World War II she served in the Pacific and was sunk by Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942. She was named after the city of Northampton, Massachusetts, the home of former President Calvin Coolidge.
USS Skipjack (SS-184), a Salmon-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named after the skipjack tuna. She earned multiple battle stars during World War II and then was sunk, remarkably, by an atomic bomb during post-World War II testing in Operation Crossroads. Among the most "thoroughly sunk" ships, she was refloated and then sunk a second time as a target ship two years later.
USS Archerfish (SS/AGSS-311) was a Balao-class submarine. She was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the archerfish. Archerfish is best known for sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shinano in November 1944, the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine. For this achievement, she received a Presidential Unit Citation after World War II.
USS Flying Fish (SS/AGSS-229), a Gato-class submarine, was the first submarine and second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the flying fish. Flying Fish is credited with having sunk a total of 58,306 tons of Japanese shipping and received 12 battle stars for World War II service.
USS Haddock (SS-231), a Gato-class submarine, was the second submarine of the United States Navy to be named for the haddock, a small edible Atlantic fish related to the cod. A previous submarine had been named Haddock (SS-32), but was renamed K-1 prior to her launching, so Haddock (SS-231) was the first to actually bear the name.
USS Tinosa (SS-283), a Gato-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the tinosa.
Charles Andrews Lockwood was a vice-admiral and flag officer of the United States Navy. He is known in submarine history as the commander of Submarine Force Pacific Fleet during World War II. He devised tactics for the effective use of submarines, making the members and elements of "silent service" key players in the Pacific victory.
Task Force is a 1949 war film filmed in black-and-white with some Technicolor sequences about the development of U.S. aircraft carriers from USS Langley(CV-1) to USS Franklin(CV-13). Although Robert Montgomery was originally considered for the leading role, the film stars Gary Cooper, Jane Wyatt, Walter Brennan, Wayne Morris, Julie London and Jack Holt. Task Force was the only film Gary Cooper and Jane Wyatt made together, and was the last of the eight films Cooper and Walter Brennan made together. The U.S. Navy provided complete support in not only lending naval vessels and facilities, but also allowed the use of archival footage of the development of naval air power.
USS Lansdowne (DD-486), a Gleaves-class destroyer, is the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne.
Howard Walter Gilmore was a submarine commander in the United States Navy who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his self-sacrifice during World War II.
Torpedo Run is a 1958 American war film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Glenn Ford as a World War II submarine commander in the Pacific who is obsessed with sinking a particular Japanese aircraft carrier. The film's working title was Hell Below. It was filmed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor.
Destroyer is a 1943 American war film directed by William A. Seiter and starring Edward G. Robinson.
References
1 2 3 Warner Bros financial information in The William Shaefer Ledger. See Appendix 1, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (1995) 15:sup1, 1-31 p 31 DOI: 10.1080/01439689508604551
↑ 'The Top Box Office Hits of 1951', Variety, January 2, 1952
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