Shooting War Page #2

---

Coming in was a V formation

of twin-engine bombers.

You could see the five-inch

anti-aircraft bursts up there.

They came in, went right overhead,

and one hit the fantail back here

and the rest was in a pattern

round the stern of the ship.

It continued on and never came back.

I got picked up right after that

by the 411 Anderson.

That final bombing run

was a coup de grce.

The Hornet's short,

brave life was ended

when American destroyers sank her.

Our ship had been in commission

for one year and six days.

But the carrier war

in the Pacific never ceased.

We didn't have motors

but you had to hand-crank.

When we did flight-deck operations,

we did not hand-crank at three turns

per second on the small crank.

We used the big crank

and would start going up to high speed

because we wanted

slow motion of the crash.

The pilot coming in for landing.

If you ever see the photographer

start that big crank,

look out, you bought the farm.

The footage taken on the flight decks

forms an eerie ballet of destruction

and of unlikely survival.

By late 1942, we were officially

training combat cameramen.

Standard army issue

was the 35mm Eyemo for movies

and the 4 x 5 Speed Graphic for stills.

Many cameramen had been

photographers in civilian life.

Hal Roach's Culver City studio was

a major production and training centre.

Naturally, the students took pictures

of themselves taking pictures.

Eventually, about 1500 men,

not a lot for a war this huge,

would become motion-picture

combat cameramen.

Many served in the air force.

On bombing raids over Europe,

they worked as bomb spotters,

recording damage

for intelligence analysts.

The oil fields at Ploieti in Romania

were vital to the Germans

and among the most

bombed targets of the war.

On August 1 st 1943,

these B-24s, based in Libya,

mounted the first major attack on them

at a daring 500 feet.

Then, as later, results were poor.

Ploieti was never knocked out.

Doug Morrell flew

higher-altitude missions over Ploieti.

This mission can be ten hours long,

but the combat part's only ten minutes.

Ten minutes is a long time.

Try holding your breath.

The Eyemo had a hand-crank wind on it.

When the most important

thing happened,

you're winding that thing,

trying to get it going.

I had to reload up at 20,000 feet.

Your fingers get a little cold.

When you come into the target,

they put up so much flak

that the enemy fighters

won't come in, they'll get hit.

Bomb spotting

is when the bombs release,

then you follow 'em

and pick up their hits.

When you get those hits,

intelligence can use those.

We were bombing Ploieti

and flak hit us.

We had to drop out of formation.

Then six ME-109s jumped us

when we got out of formation.

We were all by ourselves.

They set us on fire.

I opened up the bomb-bay door

to jump out, instead of out the back end.

There's this fire coming.

I raced over, grabbed

one of those little fire extinguishers.

I said, "I'd better leave!"

I went out the back end

and just as I left, it blew.

We average about five out.

When I baled out, I was the last one out.

The other five got killed in there.

Another cameraman who survived

the air war was Dan McGovern.

You were so busy,

you weren't thinking about the battle.

You were thinking about

helping others and shooting.

You couldn't become a spectator.

You had to shoot.

There's ten crew members

on a bomber.

You're the 11th man.

We had to prove ourselves.

As a matter of fact

- this is a true story, so help me God -

I photographed my own crash-landing.

The two engines on the right side: Out.

The third engine on the left side: Out.

One engine.

So I cut to the right, cut to the left,

look over the top.

The aeroplane's coming in

for a crash-landing.

You don't think about it.

You're so excited. You're not scared.

But you're scared after

when you come back. You're shaking.

We dropped two million tons of bombs

but never matched results promised

by air-power advocates.

This war would be won on the ground,

as Norman Hatch learned when

he made the Tarawa landing in 1943.

I was riding with Jim Crowe,

a battalion commander.

He wasn't happy having me there.

As he told me, he didn't want

any Hollywood marines.

I had to testify that I was

a regular marine, a shot expert,

that I could do something with a rifle.

He said, "All right,

but don't get in my way."

I was sitting alongside him

shooting what was going on.

He observed that his amtracs,

the first three waves,

were not maintaining their course.

There was a.50 calibre buried

in the sand, shooting at them

and they kept edging over to the right.

Crowe could see his front disappearing

because of this.

He told the coxswain to put the boat in.

We ran up on the reef,

the ramp wouldn't go down,

so we had to go up over the side,

which was difficult with so much gear.

We were exhausted

because you can't walk through water

without having a lot of resistance.

And loaded down with gear,

it just drained you.

It took us a couple of minutes

on the beach to get oriented.

Hatch was pinned down

with the invaders.

There was nothing to do but shoot:

Combat footage

with a previously unknown ferocity.

The Japanese emplacements

were fantastic.

They'd built a concrete bunker

and covered it with sand and logs,

and covered that with sand.

They were pretty impregnable.

The Pacific war

favoured the cameramen.

Spaces were confined,

the action within them tightly focused.

The brutal reality of war revealed itself

here as it rarely did elsewhere.

Hatch caught the marines and their

enemy in combat in the same shot.

That was luck. Somebody said,

"Here they come."

I turned and there it was,

and I just kept on shooting.

Had the Japanese mounted

a coordinated counter-attack,

they might have driven the marines

back into the sea.

But the fighting remained

as Hatch's film showed it:

Ferocious, yet disorganised.

Most of the Japanese

fought to the death.

The marines took only 17 prisoners.

The seas continued

to run against reinforcements.

Among them was

another cameraman, John Ercole.

We didn't even know

what was going on.

We were going nowhere. The propeller

and the tide didn't come together.

I was shooting whatever I could,

people in my boat and things like that.

19 hours later,

we finally made a landing.

What Ercole found to shoot

was mostly the dead and wounded.

Their evacuation was poorly handled.

Hatch credits a movie actor

with getting things organised.

Eddie Albert was there.

He was a navy JG at the time.

He was a boat director,

and he discovered early on

that there wasn't much coordination

on getting wounded out.

He stayed on the beach

during the worst part of the fighting

and directed boats bringing supplies in

to carry wounded back to the ships.

As the battle moved inland, the futility

of the naval bombardment was obvious.

Their pounding didn't do much good.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes