OKINAWA 1952This lower end budget war film was put out by the B unit at Columbia Pictures. The film is about a gun crew on a U.S. Navy Destroyer Escort at the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. The invasion was the first of the Japanese home islands. Needless to say the Japanese were not going to go softly. They launched masses of Kamikaze suicide aircraft at the invasion fleet.The film follows the crew of one of the 5inch gun turrets on the U.S.S. Blake. The men are, Cameron Mitchell, Richard Benedict, James Dobson and Rhys Williams. The officers in charge of the ship are played by, Pat O'Brien as the Captain and Richard Denning as the XO.The ship starts as part of the fleet bombarding the shore as the landing takes place. Then they are transferred out to be part of the radar picket line. The picket line is to give early warning of any Japanese aircraft. The carriers can then direct fighters to intercept the enemy before they reach the transports etc.The Japanese however do not always play according to plan. They sometimes decide to take out the radar pickets. The ships are alone without the fire support of other ships. (36 ships including 12 destroyers were lost with 120 ships damaged) The kamikazes piled on and the action became heated.The gun crews become exhausted with barely any time off alert. Gunner Mitchell is the gambler of the group, and has been spending his time winning everyone's beer ration. Also in the crew is Benedict the ladies man, Dobson the smart one and the old man of the group, Rhys Willaims. Any free time is spent sleeping or taking about what to do after the war.The Japanese keep coming and the ship is damaged after a hit by a kamikaze. The ship is lucky that the aircraft's bomb did not explode. The Captain, O'Brien manhandles the unwanted gift to the side and pushes it over into the drink. The list of dead and injured grows as the ship fights off repeated attacks. Gunner Dobson badly burns his hands during one of the raids and is replaced by galley hand, Rudy Robles. The attacks finally end but not before Rhys Williams is killed.There is a running gag through the film about what gunner Mitchell plans to do with all the beer rations he has won. Unfortunately for him the entire lot is destroyed during one of the kamikaze attacks.Taken as the low budget film that it is, it makes for a decent time-waster. The film uses quite a lot of stock battle footage which for the most part is edited into the narrative rather well. (The British pom-poms shown being a minor glitch) The film has a runtime of only 67 minutes and fills the time at a nice pace.The director here was long time B-Film helmsman, Leigh Jason.

My Father, LCDR Frank Bernard Quady, USN, was killed aboard the USS Bunker Hill by a double kamikaze attack. For my Father, I say this movie was so bad I quit about half an hour into it.The guy who played the sailor with the cap pulled down ridiculously was absolutely disgusting. No sailor would wear his cap on like that except possibly at home cleaning out the gutters.Note: This guy was the "star" of the film – the part that I watched. I couldn't force myself to watch any more.I grew up in the '50s in Coronado, CA and this movie never played there, as far as I know. I never heard of this flick.I'll have to rent it sometime and watch only the official U.S. Navy footage, fast forwarding past the stupid sailor, whoever he is or was.I didn't see any U.S. Naval personnel listed as advisers. They surely would have nixed it.One more thing about the stupid sailor. He was a disgrace to all sailors. Sailors are the heart of the Navy.

Wow- This is the first time I have ever seen this movie and I've seen nearly every war movie made. Why did they even bother - this whole movie totally sucks - the acting is wooden and 3rd rate - the action totally blows - with the exception of actual war scenes and this was a total waste of film. Please find the film and burn it - it is the biggest waste of time and money ever. And here I thought that Ed Wood created stupid movies - this one is the worst. What was anyone thinking when they wrote this much less filmed it.I consider it one of the worst war movies ever - and that is saying something.

I don't get the hate for this movie. It's not cheap, it's deliberately small, focused and about as emotionally involved as you can get with a small crew of men acting in a 1940s way. I almost wish we hadn't had the bridge scenes with the command crew, and had to entirely take it from the point of view of the gun crew. That's how history happens; people go about their little part, and get these rare little views of the big action. I was unusually not disturbed by the cookie cutter characters. We rarely see how they really are, but instead get their public face, to their crewmen while at war. People fall into bravado and storytelling just like this. There were moments of doubt and fear that showed this off I think, very well. Stock footage, sure. But only rarely did I notice the grain mismatching, and they spent an awful lot of effort to make it blend into the narrative. My favorite of these is about 50 minutes in when one of the characters grabs onto a fitting on the gun to lean out and look at a heavily damaged passing ship. They did this because in the foreground of the stock footage is a sailor doing just that. It brought the stock into the story, and is such unseen stock of such specific damage you could never have simulated it with new footage, especially in the 50s. I was especially pleased with the sets. I guess they are sets due to lighting and so on, but the interior of the gun mount looks absolutely perfect and realistic, and absolutely unexpectedly so. It really helped with the verisimilitude of the whole endeavor.