finally a movie i will go see


I will watch it when it comes on cable, but I am skeptical of what kind of movie it can make. The sinking was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
 
I wanna see it with all the full sounds an screen
That a theater offers , then watch it on cable a million times
 
If they do make it, I hope the effects are outstanding, and I hope the storyline is more realistic than the original movie. I remember seeing it shortly after it first came out and still see it occasionally on cable. I also still remember the Johnny Horton song, "Sink the Bismark was the battlecry that shook the seven seas.

Edit; I also hope that it will be in color this time.
 
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I know the story very well. C.S. Forresters book (published during WWII) which the first movie followed was "flawed" Vain made no torpedo attack at night with his Destroyers, there were other problems but it was entertaining especially for over 50 years ago. I own it on DVD. Kennedys book from the early 70's was more accurate. A good movie can be done, but the British won't be pleased. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I'll pay to see it, something I can't do often.

I hope it's "CGI" because I'm not impressed with "stand in" ships. An Iowa class looks nothing like Bismark and as a matter of fact would have "eaten" Bismark alive. Bismark really had no chance for success she and Prinz Eugen couldn't expect to survive with the whole of the British Home Fleet with elements of Force H from the Med. running her down. Hood should have never been there to be engaged, she was just another failed British Battlecruiser, not a battleship.

I hope the movie is entertaining.
 
JimT said:
... Hood should have never been there to be engaged, she was just another failed British Battlecruiser, not a battleship.

I hope the movie is entertaining.
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I agree that the "Hood" never should have tried to shoot it out with it's thin deck armor, and another battleship, IIRC the Prince of Wales, which although it was a new battleship, it never had a "shakedown" cruise to find all the problems with a new ship. Again IIRC, although the PoW had some battle damage, most of her problems were caused by equipment failures, and not hits by the Bismark.
 
There's also the fact that POW never tried to re-engage, even at the end when KG-5 and Rodney closed in on the crippled Bismark. The British tried to hide that for decades. Kennedys book is really quite good. POW did OK to in the opening battle. Hitting and holing Bismark, opening a large fuel tank causing Bismark to eventually decide to go to France.
 
Bruette said:
I will watch it when it comes on cable, but I am skeptical of what kind of movie it can make. The sinking was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.
Click to expand...
I was thinking of the Tirpitz.


blackz28 said:
I wanna see it with all the full sounds an screen
That a theater offers , then watch it on cable a million times
Click to expand...
It would be cool to see in Imax

Wasn't the Bismarck's rudder crippled by an old Bi-plane? I think that was how the British Navy ran her down.
 
Yes that's correct. A torpedo hit the rudder, jamming it in a turn, and the Germans were unable to free it. I read somewhere that in the sea trials of the Bismark, one of the tests was the control of the ship if the rudder was damaged. The ship actually failed this test. It was supposed to go in for modifications but IIRC Grand Admiral Raider instead sent it out to raid the North Atlantic, basically against Hitler's wishes. The ship was already headed toward a Norwegian fjord before Schiklegrubber found out. He is supposedly to have said something like "On land, I have no fear, but on the ocean I am a coward."
 
First Bismark was slowed and damaged, a hole in a large fuel tank that trailed oil and made evasion nearly impossible by the Prince of Wales 14" gunnery... not bad for a brand new, untested, hardly trained ship and crew with construction men still aboard. Kudo's POW. Eventually Swordfish Bi-plane torpedo bombers hit Bismark in the rudder making it impossible for her to steer. Ironicly the Swordfish was so slow that the Bismarks Medium AA turrets, the 37 and 88 mm varieties could not train on the Swordfish automaticly. Machine guns alone could not stop the attacks.

Like most battles "luck" played a big part. Don't believe it? Study the battle of Midway Island, luck fell over and over again on the American side (thank goodness for that luck, a loss at Midway would have added at least a year, maybe two to the Pacific War).

Back to Bismark. Steaming in a wide circle it was not difficult for King George V (Sister to Prince of Wales) and the 16" gunned Rodney along with accompaning cruisers to shoot the Bismark to doll rags. Still Bismarks construction amazed. Although all guns were out of action Bismark obsorbed torpedos from the cruisers until her crew opened the shuttlecocks and abandoned ship. Due to the U-boat threat (?) less than 200 survivors were rescued. Truth was the British were still smarting from the loss of "The Mighty Hood" with all but two of her crew (magazine explosion) and their rescue efforts were very lackluster.
 
JimT said:
Like most battles "luck" played a big part. Don't believe it? Study the battle of Midway Island, luck fell over and over again on the American side (thank goodness for that luck, a loss at Midway would have added at least a year, maybe two to the Pacific War).
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It wasn't luck. It was divine providence.
 
If you're interested in reading about Midway, Gordon Prange's "Miracle at Midway", is an outstanding read. Prange was ordered by Gen. MacArthur at the end of the war, to interview as many of the Japanese survivors of Pearl Harbor as possible, to find out who planned out the attack. This led to him spending the next 40 years or so interviewing both American and Japanese participants as both sides showed him how closely linked Pearl Harbor and Midway actually were. His books are written in an almost minute by minute breakdown of what happened and when, starting a couple of years before the initial attack.

His work, and one other author, whom I can't remember, resulted in the movie, "Tora-Tora-Tora". His books were never published until after his death and had been finished by IIRC, by two naval officers. His work has been proclaimed as the penultimate on these two battles.

His other book on Pearl Harbor is "At Dawn We Slept"
 
That is much like what Cornelius Ryan did for D-Day, June 6 1944. He interviewed many of the participants on both sides, British, French, German, and American, to get their stories of what happened that day. The book that resulted was "The Longest Day", which was turned into a movie of the same name. I have read the book and seen the movie. The movie actually followed the book very closely, resulting in a film that pretty accurately portrays what actually took place, right down to Red Button's character playing dead while hanging by his parachute from a church steeple. Yup, actually happened.
 
JimT said:
Divine Providence? My belief as well however some don't share my faith.
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Jim I am with you, I believe it was Mother Mary herself that saved the world. Too many "if Germany had done this or Japan had done that" for it to be anything other then divine intervention.
 
As to Pearl Harbor and Midway, I recommend two other books, Rear Admiral Edward Layton's "And I Was There" and Col. Henry C. Clausen's "Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement". Bruce Lee was one of Prange's collaborators who helped finished his book series, and he also co-authored Clausen's book for another side of Pearl Harbor. You'll get a fuller idea of the controversy Pearl Harbor caused between these three books.

Clausen's view does not agree with Pranges's. Keep in mind when reading Prange that he was on MacArthur's staff during the war, which is how he got started on his Pearl Harbor quest.
 
flyboy2610 said:
It wasn't luck. It was divine providence.
Click to expand...

The winning side always thinks its deity has acted on its behalf, even when the losing side was praying to the same god. Every Nazi soldier in the wehrmacht had the words Gott Mit Uns on his belt buckle.

I'd love to see a new movie about the Bismark. Hopefully they won't feel the need to fictionalize much, if anything. And the limitions of the special effects in 1960 didn't make for very exciting battles. They typically relied on distant shots of models burning to hide those limitations. It reminds me of what James Cameron said about his reason for making Titanic. The old movies about the Titanic always shifted the action away from the ship and towards the lifeboats once the lifeboats were in the water. That's because it was too difficult to make large sets that could capture the look and feel of a sinking ship. By shifting the focus to the lifeboats, they could portray the Titanic with a model. He wanted to keep the action on the ship the entire time.

Steve S
 
As with every Hollywood war movie, there'll be 30 minutes of action and 90 minutes of lovey dovey....
That Pearl Harbor was/is a fiasco, correct me if I'm wrong please, but......don't they say that were never any dogfights as they portray them, over Pearl Harbor itself?
Why does Hollywood have to take liberties as much as they do, it was understandable back in the day, but not today when they have help of advanced computers....

.....right, that's me off the soap box, where do I put the 2 cents? ;):D
 
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