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  1. #1

    The Pacific (HBO series)

    Anyone planning to watch this series? I just watched the first one on on-demand and thought it was pretty good and seems really authentic. I'm not hooked, but will give it a few episodes to decide. It looks like a good show to carry me after the Duke hoops season...

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Southern Pines, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by Misunderestimated View Post
    Anyone planning to watch this series? I just watched the first one on on-demand and thought it was pretty good and seems really authentic. I'm not hooked, but will give it a few episodes to decide. It looks like a good show to carry me after the Duke hoops season...
    Not to worry. The Band of Brothers series also started off slow, but as the story progressed we got to know the characters, and to understand their plight a little bit. After that I was totally involved. I'm trusting that Hanks and Spielberg will do things the same way with this one. But remember, it was a different kind of war.

    Duke has a pretty strong connectionwith the war in the Pacific. A few months ago on the cover of Duke Magazine there was a photo of a large group of Marines in formation apparently ready for inspection. They were all Duke students who would soon graduate and find their way to the Pacific islands to help end that war.

    After the war, when I was a freshman at Duke, a Marine veteran of Iwo Jima lived right across the hall from me in House O. His name was Jack Lucas. Google him, and you can read all about his exploits that led to him being the youngest person ever to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor in the military. He had just turned 17 years old five days before he landed on Iwo. He only had the one year at Duke. He transferred to a smaller school in North Carolina. He passed away last year.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Nashville, TN
    Quote Originally Posted by Jarhead View Post
    Not to worry. The Band of Brothers series also started off slow, but as the story progressed we got to know the characters, and to understand their plight a little bit. After that I was totally involved. I'm trusting that Hanks and Spielberg will do things the same way with this one. But remember, it was a different kind of war.
    It is on Direct TV's TV101 this week so I plan on catching it.

    I wonder if it will take a bit for people to latch on to this series because of the source material? I read Band of Brothers so knew all of Easy Company and was sucked right in once the 1st episode started. I was also a Screaming Eagle when the series aired so it was quite a big deal on post.

    For The Pacific I believe they are using Sledge's book The Old Breed and another one. I read Sledge's book for a military history class in college and it is a great read but I don't think his book was as widely read as Ambrose's.

  4. #4

    the pacific

    I know a good deal about two of the three Marines they are going to focus upon and I think they made some good choices.

    "Manila John" Basilone is one of the true Marine heroes. He won his medal of honor on Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal, when he moved around in the dark and under fire to keep several crucial machine gun positions from being overrun.

    Robert Leckie, who later became a pretty successful writer and is the second of the three subjects of this series, was also on Bloody Ridge that night. I'll never forget his description of the crucial moment, when the Marines were about to be overrun ... "Then I heard an unfamilar sound," he said. "I later learned it was the sound of the Garand M-1 (a clip fed Army rifle that sounded much different than the Marines 1903 bolt-action Springfield). They saved our ^&%$."

    A bunch of National Guard troops from North Dakota, who had landed that very afternoon were led into position in the dark by a Naval Chaplain. Their intervention was just in time to stop the human wave assault that came closest to breaking through and taking Henderson Field.

    Looking forward to see how they handle that. After Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, I'm inclined to give Hanks and Spielberg the benefit of the doubt.

    I'll be watching.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Location
    New Jersey
    i am planning to watch, missed the first episode because of a power outage! Can anyone tell me when they are running re-runs?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Olympic Fan View Post
    I know a good deal about two of the three Marines they are going to focus upon and I think they made some good choices.

    "Manila John" Basilone is one of the true Marine heroes. He won his medal of honor on Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal, when he moved around in the dark and under fire to keep several crucial machine gun positions from being overrun.

    Robert Leckie, who later became a pretty successful writer and is the second of the three subjects of this series, was also on Bloody Ridge that night. I'll never forget his description of the crucial moment, when the Marines were about to be overrun ... "Then I heard an unfamilar sound," he said. "I later learned it was the sound of the Garand M-1 (a clip fed Army rifle that sounded much different than the Marines 1903 bolt-action Springfield). They saved our ^&%$."

    A bunch of National Guard troops from North Dakota, who had landed that very afternoon were led into position in the dark by a Naval Chaplain. Their intervention was just in time to stop the human wave assault that came closest to breaking through and taking Henderson Field.

    Looking forward to see how they handle that. After Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, I'm inclined to give Hanks and Spielberg the benefit of the doubt.

    I'll be watching.
    Slight correction: this was the Battle of Henderson Field (or Battle of Lunga Point); the Battle of Bloody Ridge was about a month earlier. I remember the story about the National Guard reinforcements though - I've heard that some of them had to be led by hand to their positions so they wouldn't get lost between the darkness, the jungle and the bad weather.

    I am glad to hear that the Guadalcanal is getting some publicity; I've always thought it is much less heralded than is deserved (although one could probably say this about almost any battle). In addition to the ground battles, it was one of the more brutal naval campaigns - attrition at Guadalcanal broke the back of the IJN in the Pacific. American losses were severe as well - at one point the US was down to a single operational aircraft carrier. It was also the site of of several battleship engagements fought at point blank range (in one, the destroyer USS Laffey came within feet of colliding with Japanese battleship Hiei; that particular battle involved a fleet including two Japanese battleships being stopped cold by a task force led by only two American cruisers).

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukeface88 View Post
    I am glad to hear that the Guadalcanal is getting some publicity; I've always thought it is much less heralded than is deserved (although one could probably say this about almost any battle). In addition to the ground battles, it was one of the more brutal naval campaigns - attrition at Guadalcanal broke the back of the IJN in the Pacific. American losses were severe as well - at one point the US was down to a single operational aircraft carrier. It was also the site of of several battleship engagements fought at point blank range (in one, the destroyer USS Laffey came within feet of colliding with Japanese battleship Hiei; that particular battle involved a fleet including two Japanese battleships being stopped cold by a task force led by only two American cruisers).
    I think you are talking about the night action of Friday the 13th (Nov. 1942).

    That was the crucial moment in the campaign. The Japanese had just sent a massive reinforcement convoy under Admiral Tanaka with almost a fresh division of veteran troops and their supplies. To protect this convoy from daylight air attack, they sent a bombardment force built around the BBs Hiei and Kirishima to plaster Henderson Field. A similar BB bombardment a month earlier had put the field out of action for days.

    Luckily, the Americans had reinforcements of their own arriving -- protected by a cruiser/destroyer force. The Americans had more that two cruisers -- they had the heavy cruiser (8-inch gun) San Francisco and Portland and the "light" cruiser Helena (although its main guns were 6-inch, its broadside was actually heavier than the heavies -- it was more modern and a better gun-ship), plus two anti-aircraft cruisers -- the Juneau and the Atlanta.

    The Americans were in a long line with a destroyer squadron leading the cruisers followed by another destroyer squadron. Unfortunetly, the two admirals in command -- the inexperienced Daniel Callaghan and the experienced Norman Scott -- make bad flagship choices -- Scott in the Atlanta and Callaghan in the San Francisco. One of them should have been in the Helena, the only cruiser with modern radar. As it was, the ignored Helena's warnings and blundered into the Japanese formation. As noted, the lead destroyer Laffey got so close to the Hiei that it almost collided ... they were so close that the battleship couldn't depress its guns low enough to fire at the destroyer.

    The battle was a blind brawl. The Americans clearly had the best of the gunnery duel, but the Japanese destroyers exacted a terrible toll with their Long Lance torpedoes. Atlanta was destroyed (hit by shells from San Francisco in the confusion), San Francisco took heavy damage (Scott and Callaghan both were killed), Portland took a torp in the stern and was immobilized. Juneau was hit by a torpedo ... several destroyers were sunk.

    The Japanese destroyers were hurt badly and the Hiei was immobiolized. But the main thing was that Scott and Callaghan's group prevented the bombardment of Henderson Field. The next morning Navy planes from the Hornet (which had been sunk) and Enterprise (which was being repaired) flew from Henderson Field and finished off the Hiei ... but as our ships retreated, a submarine put another torpedo into the damaged Juneau and she went down with all hands (including the five Sullivan brothers).

    American planes fron Henderson savaged Tanaka's convoy all that day. The next night, a couple of Japanese cruisers bombarded the field, but it did little to hamper the attacks that resumed the next day.

    The Japanese decided to send Kirishima, plus a cruiser force, in to wreck the field. This time Halsey gambled by sending in his only two battleships -- the Washington and South Dakota -- into Iron Bottom Sound to block the bombardment again.

    Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee (his Annapolis nickname) was, unlike Scott and Callaghan, a big believer in radar. Early in the battle, the South Dakota had a power failure and was targeted by the Japanese and took moderate (but non-threatening) damage. Lee, ranging far to the south, watching things unfold on radar, then opened up by radar control. Five salvos were enough to wreck the Kirishima.

    Henderson Field remained in operation and the next day, planes pounded the four (out of 13) transports that survived. Rather than a full, fresh, well-supplied division of troops, the Japanese landed a few hundred men with little equipment and supplies.

    That was the end of Japanese attempts to reconquer Guadalcanal. There were several more months of fighting (including one more embarrassing surface battle for the Americans), but after the three-day Battle of Guadalcanal essentially settled the issue.

    I've always thought a min-series about the Guadalcanal campaign would be great -- combining the ground actions, the long-running (and almost daily) aerial battles and the violent naval actions (two major carrier battles and five major surface actions).

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukeknights View Post
    i am planning to watch, missed the first episode because of a power outage! Can anyone tell me when they are running re-runs?
    Should be able to watch them on HBOGO online or on HBO VOD (both of these choices depend on what TV provider you have)

    I'm enjoying the series thus far, but it essentially has to live up to fantastic Band of Brothers. Thus far the characters don't seem to be as genuine as they were in BoB, but that maybe we need more time to relate to them.
    "Something in my vicinity is Carolina blue and this offends me." - HPR

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