I'll get your book Thomas, the hard bound version. I recently watched Midway (2019 version) and Grey Hound (2020). Out of curiously how closely does it hem to actual reality of what really happened ?
I'll get your book Thomas, the hard bound version. I recently watched Midway (2019 version) and Grey Hound (2020). Out of curiously how closely does it hem to actual reality of what really happened ?
The movie "Midway" has very little to do with the actual battle in terms of what really happened. The real character of Dick Best (my good friend the last 10 years of his life) is the polar opposite of the "Joisey boy rebel" created for the movie. In fact, my book is the movie you wanted to see (as a former screenwriter, my books are frequently reviewed as "reading a good movie"). To put it bluntly, the movie is crap, and I told Roland Emmerich as much when I had a meeting with him and heard what story he wanted to tell.
Greyhound is an adaptation of the C.S. Forrester novel "The Good Shepherd" (Forester is the novelist who did all the Horatio Hornblower tales of the Napoleonic naval wars). As such, it does not relate to any specific convoy event, but it is a very accurate presentation of what life would be like as a destroyer escorting a convoy. The one drawback, to me, is that the computerized effects look like computerized effects. If you want to see a more realistic take on a destroyer vs U-boat battle, I strongly recommend "The Enemy Below" (1957), written by my screenwriting mentor, the late Wendell Mayes. Wendell served in the Navy in combat in WW2, and it shows in the underlying realism and verisimilitude (also done on a real destroyer at sea, not one tied up to a dock). Greyhound is probably as good as a movie on that topic can be nowadays, since none of those ships can go to sea anymore and have to be done with computers.
If you want to see a movie that accurately shows what a naval surface battle of WW2 was really like, I hihgly recommend "The Battle of the River Plate" (1952) (which you can now find on YouTube) the story of three British cruisers up against the German pocket battleship "Graf Spee." Real warships are used, no special effects. One of the ships was actually one of the combatants in the real battle. It stars an unrecognizable Peter Finch in his first film role as the German Captain, Ludendorf. It's highly accurate historically and technically (as were most British war movies of the 1950s).
IтАЩm Naval Academy class of 1971 and Raymond Spruance was a friend of my father. I spent a wonderful day with the Admiral while on leave and he went through the genesis of the battle and itтАЩs planning. He was a military genius but understated unlike Halsey and Nimitz. The movie made him look like an errand boy. Disgusting.
If you read my other two books on the Pacific War, "Pacific Thunder" and "Tidal Wave," you will find I am a fellow "Spruance Man." His ability to keep the Big Picture in mind and keep his ego under control, was why he won Midway, where Halsey would have dashed on west that night and run right into Yamamoto's ambush. "The Battle of Bull's Run," where Halsey dropped the ball at Leyte and exposed the invasion to potential destruction to go sink the Japanese carriers (that were a sacrifice) demonstrates the difference. I always liked the story about the kamikaze hitting Spruance's flagship at Okinawa and he couldn't be found. The Flag Lieutenant looked everywhere and found him manning a hose line to fight the fires on the boat deck, just another crew member. I would have loved to be you and to have met him. Nimitz was pretty understated too - he had to be to negotiate all the egos at PacFleet HQ.
I'll get your book Thomas, the hard bound version. I recently watched Midway (2019 version) and Grey Hound (2020). Out of curiously how closely does it hem to actual reality of what really happened ?
The movie "Midway" has very little to do with the actual battle in terms of what really happened. The real character of Dick Best (my good friend the last 10 years of his life) is the polar opposite of the "Joisey boy rebel" created for the movie. In fact, my book is the movie you wanted to see (as a former screenwriter, my books are frequently reviewed as "reading a good movie"). To put it bluntly, the movie is crap, and I told Roland Emmerich as much when I had a meeting with him and heard what story he wanted to tell.
Greyhound is an adaptation of the C.S. Forrester novel "The Good Shepherd" (Forester is the novelist who did all the Horatio Hornblower tales of the Napoleonic naval wars). As such, it does not relate to any specific convoy event, but it is a very accurate presentation of what life would be like as a destroyer escorting a convoy. The one drawback, to me, is that the computerized effects look like computerized effects. If you want to see a more realistic take on a destroyer vs U-boat battle, I strongly recommend "The Enemy Below" (1957), written by my screenwriting mentor, the late Wendell Mayes. Wendell served in the Navy in combat in WW2, and it shows in the underlying realism and verisimilitude (also done on a real destroyer at sea, not one tied up to a dock). Greyhound is probably as good as a movie on that topic can be nowadays, since none of those ships can go to sea anymore and have to be done with computers.
If you want to see a movie that accurately shows what a naval surface battle of WW2 was really like, I hihgly recommend "The Battle of the River Plate" (1952) (which you can now find on YouTube) the story of three British cruisers up against the German pocket battleship "Graf Spee." Real warships are used, no special effects. One of the ships was actually one of the combatants in the real battle. It stars an unrecognizable Peter Finch in his first film role as the German Captain, Ludendorf. It's highly accurate historically and technically (as were most British war movies of the 1950s).
IтАЩm Naval Academy class of 1971 and Raymond Spruance was a friend of my father. I spent a wonderful day with the Admiral while on leave and he went through the genesis of the battle and itтАЩs planning. He was a military genius but understated unlike Halsey and Nimitz. The movie made him look like an errand boy. Disgusting.
If you read my other two books on the Pacific War, "Pacific Thunder" and "Tidal Wave," you will find I am a fellow "Spruance Man." His ability to keep the Big Picture in mind and keep his ego under control, was why he won Midway, where Halsey would have dashed on west that night and run right into Yamamoto's ambush. "The Battle of Bull's Run," where Halsey dropped the ball at Leyte and exposed the invasion to potential destruction to go sink the Japanese carriers (that were a sacrifice) demonstrates the difference. I always liked the story about the kamikaze hitting Spruance's flagship at Okinawa and he couldn't be found. The Flag Lieutenant looked everywhere and found him manning a hose line to fight the fires on the boat deck, just another crew member. I would have loved to be you and to have met him. Nimitz was pretty understated too - he had to be to negotiate all the egos at PacFleet HQ.