More on Battle 360 on the History Channel

From reader JS (used with permission):

As a carrier buff with particular interest in the USS Enterprise and Solomon campaigns, I was excited with the news of The History Channel’s Battle360 project and awaiting this expensive and multipart series with much anticipation. Indeed, Big E, a gallant ship and crew, served in every major campaign in the Pacific Theater. What an opportunity to at last properly portray The Carrier War as told via the most decorated ship in naval history. However, within minutes of the first episode I sadly realized that Battle360 was merely a lackluster “hack” production of poor graphics, distorted film techniques, and a sorely badly written and inaccurate history. What a missed opportunity. Indeed, during the first segment I fielded no less than a dozen calls from associates and friends complaining of the atrocious production style, thus confirming my own observations. As the series progressed every one of these callers - to a man - aborted the mission entirely, most having done so by the middle of episode two.

Admittedly, much of my criticism is based exclusively on my own production taste. The actual stock footage of the Pacific War, carrier war, and USS Enterprise (shot in 4×5 format), which included a substantial amount of footage filmed in beautiful Technicolor, was distorted to fit a wide screen format. While this technique is now standard, and perhaps considered unavoidable, it is hard to accept nonetheless when viewing actual film history of any given event as it distorts the historical record. This could have been corrected simply by using a Japanese flag representation (the fried egg) to one side of the screen with a Stars and Bars representation on the opposite. (Or perhaps any ship silhouette, i.e. Enterprise.) Ultimately, it would have been better to zoom on the existing frame to reduce the “fish eye” affect, even to suffer a loss percentage of the overall frame, than to have the film ruined in its entirety.

However, the time and effort to reduce the wide screen “fish eye” affect is a mute point regardless, especially when considering that most of the stock footage used was worthless because of style usage. Almost all (if not all) of the actual film footage used – the best record of the events themselves – was utterly obscured by what appears to be a rotating and hindering grid, or floating map of the world. Lord knows what it is actually. At this stage, this single “bells and whistles” affect has become the predominant view through the series. As near as I can determine this was done for the sake of eye candy only. In addition, it appears much of the actual film stock was intentionally altered with scratches and “wear lines” to provide a rustic or worn appearance. (This may be due to the distractions from the floating map in the background, I’m not certain.) Nonetheless as a historian I feel such techniques that deliberately alter the film record borders on sacrilege.

Moreover, the visual story of the Big E in Battle360 is loosely based upon substandard computer graphics (now standard for THC) in-lieu of actual film footage; a huge disappointment when one considers actual film footage is sometimes available for specific events. Poor computer graphics is not history. A film record of a bomb striking the flight deck of Enterprise during The Battle of the Eastern Solomons – is.

Perhaps worst of all is the production’s high degree of “music video” imagery, – i.e. fast action computer graphics coupled with altered stock footage, spliced together as millisecond film clips that leaves the viewer disconnected from the action, disoriented from the subject, and distracted from the storyline. It is nauseating and overwhelming to the synapses. Coincidently, this is the biggest complaint I’ve heard about the series as a whole. It made me reach for the Dramamine three minutes into the first segment. The result is utter pandemonium. I long for the days of spectacular documentaries such as Britain’s World at War.

The interviews with the Enterprise veterans, though, are nicely done. Yet they are limited to single and mostly insignificant sound bites owing to the producer’s focus on useless computer graphics more than actual eyewitness accounts. And while Parshall, K. Martin and other historians are informative and accurate (especially Martin), others come up way short. Instead of modern veterans explaining the attributes of a SBD bomber, carrier operations, or the history of World War II air combat and campaigns, other Enterprise or Pacific War historians on the caliber of Richard Franks and Barrett Tillman should have been used.

Lastly, the overall script as written is occasionally inaccurate with weak adjectives. At times it is just downright embarrassing.

I feel for the veterans of Enterprise and the thousands of our old heroes from the Pacific who had long waited for this series. To them they are owed our best. And Enterprise/Battle360 ain’t it. This series should set the standard on how documentaries should not be done.

Lawrence Beall-Smith

Scrolling through the archives of the Naval Historical Center, I revisited their collection of period artwork this evening. And it is, in a word, awesome. Many paintings of conflict are somberly painted, with good reason. But there are others, like this painting by Lawrence Beall-Smith, that show color in interesting ways. Having grown up watching shows like Victory at Sea, and viewing thousands of images from the period in black and white, I’m conditioned to look with nuances with that narrow color range.

But this! The blues of this painting are striking. Notice, too, the men at various stages of work: one pilot perhaps showing a recent engagement with his hands, the men in blue sitting on the ground talking, others “colors” at work on various aircraft. It’s an interesting mix.

The catalog of Smith’s work at the NHC is here. Be sure to check them out. The text from the page is copied below.

Task Force Hornets
Lawrence Beall-Smith #13
Oil on board, 1943
88-159-KA

The operations island is a grim gray redoubt against the sky as this aircraft carrier steams behind her task force screen with a swarm of fighters ready on the flight deck. Planes of a fighter squadron stand at Fly One, the take-off spot. Behind them, in order, will be the dive-bombers and the torpedo bombers. Meanwhile, as signal pennants snap from the truck, handling crews and pilots await the orders which will send these Grumman fighters snarling into the air.

ww2db.com Featured Image, #1

The ww2file is pleased to announce the ww2db.com Featured Image partnership. The idea behind this post (and the weekly posts to come) is to highlight ww2db.com’s collection of 3500 plus photos, many culled from the National Archives, Library of Congress, the US Naval Historical Center, and other research institutions.

Okay, so here we go. When I first saw this image (Hellcat Diver, Jan 1945) , it was in the middle of a fat picture book, highlighting the work of a naval photography unit. The strength of that book was that there was common thread among the photographs, not only of the equipment (like this aircraft) but also of the closeness of the men on those ships.

The photo itself…wow. Perhaps it was the scale in the book, maybe even the sharp turn the pilots are making, or maybe it’s the angle of decent toward the carrier. There is just something dramatic about it. Very often in war ariel photography, the lines are straight, either looking at other planes or ships in the distance. Here, everything is in one tight frame and the line of sight is bending down.

Back then, I was working at a job where one of my primary functions was to mess with photoshop, so I scanned this baby at the highest res I could get and just studied it. Magnifying the image beyond 100% revealed a good deal about those specs on the carrier’s deck and towers. It’s an exercise I suggest to anyone, if you have the time.