World War II at the Movies by Virginia Lyman Lucas

Author:Virginia Lyman Lucas [Lucas, Virginia Lyman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II
ISBN: 9781646280292
Google: fu7CDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
Published: 2019-12-10T01:01:28+00:00

World War Two Pilot With Spitfire

Task Force

(1949)

Director:

Delmer Daves

Written:

Delmer Daves

Naval aviation and the development of the prominent use of the aircraft carrier as a viable weapon at sea is the subject matter addressed in the 1949 film Task Force. Gary Cooper’s fictional character, Jonathan L. (Scotty) Scott with the aid of his superior officer, Pete Richards (played by Walter Brennan), embodies the tireless energy and perseverance it took in establishing the US naval aviation as a major military force, and this indispensable film shows how slow the wheels of progress can turn within our government bureaucracy.

On the day of his retirement, Rear Admiral Jonathan L. Scott reflects back upon his career to 1921 when he was stationed at North Island, San Diego.

With the military downsizing after World War I, and after the Disarmament Conference of 1922, Scott’s superior officer, Pete Richards, assembles his seaplane pilots and announces, “They’ve sunk the fleet, the Missouri, the South Dakota, the Maine, the Virginia, Nebraska, Georgia, thirty capital ships. More ships sunk with the stroke of a pen than have been sunk in our entire history.”

Scott and his fellow pilots, who had never even seen a flattop, would begin training on the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1), formerly the Proteus-class collier USS Jupiter (AC-3), a bulk cargo ship used to carry coal to keep other ships in fuel, which was deemed not dangerous and therefore not earmarked for destruction according to the Disarmament Conference.

The two main obstacles to overcome in establishing the strategic importance of the aircraft carrier in battle were the following: (1) the aircraft of the day, such as the Vought VE-7 “Bluebird” (the first airplane to be launched off the USS Langley) were not designed. As Scott put it, “To land on a sixty-five-foot-wide deck, pitching fore and aft, and rolling from port to starboard and moving out from under them, all at the same time,” and (2) the power of an influential publisher of a chain of newspapers hell-bent on opposing appropriations for funding a strong military and having the power to sway public opinion against a strong defense, deeming it unnecessary since, as the publisher says to a senator at a party, “We’re separated from Europe by 3,122 miles and Asia by 4,536. Try and dream up danger out of those figures, my dear senator.”

Task Force was shot in both black and white and technicolor to accommodate the archival footage of the USS Langley (black and white) and the archival footage in technicolor for the Battle of Midway, the Japanese attack on the USS Yorktown and a kamikaze attack on the USS Franklin.

Spanning two decades, Task Force follows Scott’s naval career from his transfer to a desk job at the Panama Canal for his outspoken behavior through his aggressive campaign for the adoption of his vision for naval aviation, and after years of lobbying, he attains the peak achievement of commanding his own aircraft carrier after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Aircraft Carrier History

The Proteus-class collier, USS Jupiter

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