User Reviews

The ONLY con to this movie is the sound engineering. Real footage and real people who were there make this documentary so good. The sadness of war and the raw determination of those involved is in full display. This should be shown in schools so we can continue to learn from history. The sailors in this documentary went through the pits of hades and there were some who miraculously survived. I highly recommend this documentary for anyone interested in history, WW2, naval history, or human history. This not only goes through the events of the battle but the grief they felt as they fought for their lives as they were so outnumbered. Highly recommend.

Most complete TV treatment of the obscure but remarkable story of "Taffy 3", the tiny toy fleet left behind by Bull Halsey's mighty task force when it fell for a decoy. They left nothing but tiny destroyers and even tinier destroyer escorts to slug it out to defend their defenseless escort carriers from annihilation from the largest Japanese fleet since Midway led by the formidable Yamato, the most powerful battleship in the world. Destroyer Johnston fearlessly and recklessly charged headfirst to launch a suicidal torpedo salvo against cruisers. The Samuel B Roberts went down as the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship slugging it out with a much larger cruiser for over an hour before being sunk by other cruisers. The Dogfights Death of the Japanese Navy has better effects but is a much shorter less complete account and both don't spend as much time on the pilots who probably contributed as much as the surface ships in harassing and driving off the superior force which in theory should have been able to steam right through them to destroy American landing forces instead of being driven off with serious wounds and leaving behind a number of sunk or damaged capital ships.

History asks how Yamato would have fared against American battleships, but it was effectively defeated by a light escort task force meant to defend cargo ships against aircraft and submarines, and demonstrated the difference between the philisophy of making a few very big ships and highly skilled pilots, and cranking out lots of inexpensive ships with inexpensive aircraft and lots of moderately trained pilots and sailors.