User Reviews

Although there is some memorable (as always) footage of fighting in the Pacific islands, the main focus here is the preparation for the greatest invasion of all time - D-Day, June 6, 1944.

We often see those familiar pictures of the soldiers storming the beaches and getting shot down at Normandy and Omaha, but first - as shown in this episode - bombers had the clear the way by making sure the German air force (the Luftwaffe) was not going to interfere. So, U.S. bombers, a few hundred of them, flew over Germany and bombed the crud out of them, to keep their attention away from the northern shores of France.

Footage of the bombers in action, and the German planes coming in then to attack them, is very dramatic and times along with the narration giving us the words of a man named Bert Stiles.

Back on Pacific, most memorable is seeing a big bomb go off. The Japanese set this off and killed hundreds of themselves, rather than surrendering. They show some of the bodies. I cannot imagine soldiers standing over and looking at these torn-apart bodies. The stench, they said, was overwhelming.

WWII in HD: Battle Stations (2009)

**** (out of 4)

The fourth film in the series is clearly a set up for the following episode but there's still plenty of great stuff here to enjoy. We start off as various U.S. bombers enter Germany to wipe out factories where they are making weapons. All of this is being done because the Allies are preparing to make their strongest siege and that's on D-Day, June 6, 1944. As I said, this episode is really setting us up for everything that's going to follow but the most entertaining stuff here is hearing from the pilot who flew over Germany. Hearing of what it was like doing the missions from the bitterly cold temperatures to the surprise attack they faced coming home, all of this is incredibly entertaining and really makes one wonder how anyone survived this mission. The second portion of the film centers on the preparations going on to get everyone ready for D-Day. This episode doesn't contain as much action but we still get some pretty good stuff. We get to see some truly breathtaking shots of the bombs hitting Germany as well as the German plans coming back for their attack. All of these sequences are full of nice suspense but you follow this with a rather shocking site of hundreds of Japanese men who blew themselves up so that they wouldn't have to surrender. The size of this explosion is caught on camera and it's certainly going to have jaws hitting the floor. Once again all the footage is in color and really makes you see some of this stuff in a different light.