History Channel

polishshooter
Senior Chief Moderator Staff
Posts: 582
(5/21/01 11:05:25 pm)
Reply | Edit | Del All History Channel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey when my son kicked me off the 'puter I went into the other room to read and turned on the History Channel and they had on "The Codebreakers."

Pretty decent, but almost fell out of my chair when they got into the JN25 code and the Battle of Midway and I'll be damned if they didn't show short snippets of video in COLOR of SBU2 Vindicators(!) taking off side by side! TWICE!

Where in the heck did they get actual color footage of Wind-Indicators, and has ANYBODY ever seen the rest of this footage????

It was definitely an island with lots of sand and early WWII stuff around, think I saw some watercooled .50 AAs in the background but it went by quick. MUST have been actual Midway footage I've never seen before.

Want to see more!!!!!

Xracer
Moderator
Posts: 303
(5/22/01 7:59:40 am)
Reply | Edit | Del Re: History Channel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The amateur version of 8mm Kodachrome came out in 1938, and 16mm in 1939, so this could've been pre-war footage.....at Midway or Wake, or possibly at someplace in the Hawaiian Islands.

The one that really gets me though, is the shot of a couple of diving SBDs releasing their bombs that's usually sandwiched in among shots of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I would've thought the Japs did enough damage all by themselves, without additional help from the U.S. Navy.

polishshooter
Senior Chief Moderator Staff
Posts: 589
(5/22/01 9:37:43 am)
Reply | Edit | Del Re: History Channel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well we had 8 Marine Vindicators at Midway, so it could be actual pre-battle, heck maybe even THE one and only strike taking off. I think they all got shot down.

They had to "Glide Bomb" because the crews hadn't been adequately trained to dive bomb, and when they tried to practice, the fabric came off the wings.

You'd think we'd have found that out before then, like in '39 or '40 when we adopted them as DIVE-BOMBERS!