A stricken Japanese bomber really did head straight for the USS Enterprise. Bruno Gaido really did leap into the back of a parked airplane on deck. He let loose accurate fire from the rear gunner's seat into the bomber's cockpit, causing it to veer, very likely by killing the pilot. The bomber's wingtip really did slice through the tail end of the plane Gaido was in. The bomber skimmed the carrier's deck before crashing into the ocean on the other side.
All that was no Hollywood flourish in the new movie Midway.
The Enterprise itself was not much different from sister ships Yorktown and Hornet. Brave, well-trained crews manned all those ships. But the Enterprise crew was led by officers who made her top-notch, training hard and spending more time at sea than other U.S. carriers just before the war.
Any moderately well informed Pacific War history nerd can cite a dozen Enterprise stories much like Gaido's. My favorite is about the landing signal officer who, against orders, brought in both the Enterprise's planes and the crippled Hornet's during the Battle of the Santa Cruz, long after the Battle of Midway.
The Enterprise survived the battle. No other American carrier in the Pacific did. Guadalcanal would fall without a carrier to ferry fighters to Henderson Field. One crash on deck would put the Enterprise out of action. Damaged planes landing on a crowded deck risked disaster. So hard reality dictated the Enterprise could land her own planes from the returning airstrike against the Japanese but the Hornet's planes had to ditch. The order went out. Many crew members on the Hornet's planes would die in watery crash landings. The wounded certainly would.
The landing signal officer stood on a little platform holding two tennis rackets with orange cloth instead of strings. He guides the planes in. This young man looked in the sky and said to a shipmate, "I bet I can bring them all in." He did, rapidly and flawlessly. The crew cleared the planes off the deck and into the hanger below at an almost superhuman rate. Everything clicked. An officer from the fleet saw what was happening. He ran up the ship tower's stairs to where the admiral in command of the task force sat in a swivel chair atop a metal frame bolted to the command deck. When the junior officer started to speak, the admiral spun about in his chair and said: "Leave the kid alone. He's hot."
Her crew made that ship what she was. They are why hundreds of years from now our descendents will name starships "Enterprise."
Critics who pan Midway have a point. At heart the film is a corny old World War II movie done over with excellent computer graphics. But the differences matter. An important difference is how the Japanese enemies and our Chinese allies are not racist caricatures. The Japanese in particular are skilled professionals -- marred by a warrior culture that allowed wanton cruelty, especially to prisoners.
Presentation of the history leading up to the battle is solid, although the script's lectures and summaries are too on-the-nose. Telling this story to a general audience requires it. In the combat scenes the targets are too close and clearly visible. I could prattle on about equipment and tactical errors, a Japanese battleship being the wrong place at the wrong time, how no one survives while standing so close to a magazine explosion and so on and so forth. But overall the liberties taken are slight compared to almost any war movie. What shows through is great attention to detail and an earnest though flawed attempt to get the visuals and history right.
Midway shows how vital teamwork was. The lone wolves had their uses, but everyone from repair crews to code-breakers to infantry firing rifles at Japanese Zeros did their duty. It is all there without taking anything away from the dive bombers who won the battle and the torpedo plane crews whose sacrifice made it possible. Most of all, the film showed how courage means more than flying through enemy fire. Breathing a bad batch of oxygen at high altitude, scorching your lungs because the men you lead are counting on you, is courage too. Finally, the film shows the cost. Wounded victors look upon the tally at the end. Those they lost were their friends.
Some will say the film glorifies war. No. It glorifies the people caught in it. They deserve it.
Commentary on 11/16/2019