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  • Roland Emmerich's Midway is a historical war movie that has audiences shaking their heads,

  • with plenty of things that just seem too insane to be true.

  • But sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction.

  • Here are the things in Midway you won't believe were true.

  • "This is actually what happened."

  • Most of Midway's characters are based on real people, including Nick Jonas's Bruno Gaido.

  • Remember that unlikely scene where the USS Enterprise is raided by Japanese bombers,

  • only to have them all miss... except for one, badly damaged, about to crash into the ship?

  • Gaido hops into a nearby dive bomber and starts shooting, only to send the bomber careening

  • away at the last minute, at the same time the plane he's in takes a direct hit.

  • Surely Hollywood drama, right?

  • It's absolutely true.

  • Gaido really did take a running leap into a parked plane, then opened fire on a Japanese

  • bomber intent on crashing into the Enterprise, just like the movie depicts.

  • The Japanese bomber really did clip Gaido's plane, slicing off the tail and sending it

  • skidding across the deck.

  • "Too much excitement for you?"

  • There is a tad bit of creative license that was taken.

  • In the aftermath of the real incident, Gaido extinguished a gasoline fire and then disappeared.

  • He had been afraid he was going to get reprimanded for leaving his watch position, but instead,

  • he was found, taken in front of Admiral Halsey, and promoted on the spot just like the film

  • shows.

  • Even the bravest military is going to fail without reliable weapons and equipment, and

  • that makes it all the more shocking that Midway suggests the Pacific front was fighting with

  • torpedoes that didn't exactly work.

  • The film makes several mentions of torpedoes not being tested or reliable, and even showing

  • one scoring a direct hit only to break apart and sink.

  • Unlikely-sounding?

  • Yes.

  • True?

  • Also yes.

  • In real life, the Mark 14 Torpedo was reportedly pretty much useless, with a tendency to just...

  • not explode after colliding with its target.

  • And the military knew it, sending the torpedoes into combat even though they had around a

  • 50 percent failure rate.

  • Just a few months after Pearl Harbor, that failure rate had increased to around 80 percent.

  • Midway is a visually stunning movie that puts audiences right in the cockpit of World War

  • II dive-bombers.

  • It seems insane that pilots would literally dive through a rain of fire to try and sink

  • massive ships but they did.

  • The Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber was the plane known as "Slow But Deadly."

  • They were flying at a time when aircraft were still pretty bare-bones, and in the mid-1930s,

  • both the Navy and the Marines were beginning to appreciate the death-defying practice of

  • dive-bombing as the best way to accurately aim, and they built aircraft suited to the

  • task.

  • The Dauntless had things like split flaps and dive brakes, and allowed pilots to dive

  • at an 80-degree angle at speeds nearing 300 mph.

  • They turned the tide at Midway, when taking advantage of a sky momentarily clear of Japanese

  • counter-attacks Commander Clarence McClusky led just a handful of dive-bombers against

  • the Japanese fleet, mortally damaging three of the four carriers in around five minutes.

  • The Doolittle Raid is treated as something of an aside in Midway, a daring mission happening

  • alongside the main action.

  • We see Jimmy Doolittle and his men heading out to launch some serious retaliation on

  • Tokyo, with no guarantees that they're carrying enough fuel to get them to safety.

  • Aaron Eckhart's Doolittle makes it into Japanese-held China and meets up with allies happy to see

  • the Americans who struck a blow to their oppressors.

  • Again, absolutely true.

  • The mission was reportedly so secret that President Franklin Roosevelt wasn't even initially

  • informed about it.

  • The plan was to take off around 300 miles from Japan's shores, but as in the film they

  • were forced to take off much earlier.

  • The fleet was spotted when they were 700 miles out, and the early launch may have saved the

  • mission.

  • Japanese commanders knew the short range of American fighters and weren't expecting a

  • long-range launch and weren't ready for it.

  • It's an odd little detail, at first.

  • Midway's Admiral Halsey, played by Dennis Quaid, complains of a rash that quickly gets

  • worse.Halsey is ordered to step down and head to the hospital.

  • Even those with a passing knowledge of World War II's Pacific Theater have heard of Rear

  • Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey, so... what gives?

  • Was he really sidelined by a rash?

  • Yes.

  • According to the US Naval Institute, it was just one of a handful of incidents where illness

  • impacted command.

  • That rash was a severe case of psoriasis, and it was so bad it was interfering with

  • his ability to make decisions.

  • The biggest change the movie made was making it a symptom of shingles, which is contagious,

  • maybe making his absence seem more justifiable to an audience.

  • Wouldn't want to put other people at risk on the battlefield, after all.

  • When audiences see the USS Yorktown after the Battle of Coral Sea, she's in a dismal

  • state.

  • She's in dry dock, gaping holes in her deck, with crews that are dwarfed by the sheer size

  • of the damage they're trying to fix.

  • But in the film, she's back on the water and sailing in to save the day just hours afterwards.

  • Unlikely?

  • Yes.

  • But also true.

  • According to the US Navy, the Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor with an open hull, leaking

  • oil, and sporting enough damage that it was estimated it would be 90 days before she was

  • operational again.

  • A 551-pound bomb had sliced through the deck and detonated 50 feet into the ship.

  • Her hull was cracked, elevators non-functional, and she had left 10 miles of oil and fuel

  • in her wake.

  • When she returned to Pearl Harbor, plans for Midway were already underway.

  • Admiral Nimitz gave them three days to get the Yorktown back in the water ... and they

  • did it.

  • Around 1,400 workers labored for 72 hours straight on repairs that were so intensive

  • the island was subjected to a series of blackouts to funnel electricity to the repair docks.

  • In Midway, American planes have a crucial advantage: time, chaos, and confusion stemming

  • from an armaments change-over by the Japanese military.

  • And that happened.

  • According to the Smithsonian, the Japanese air fleet was originally equipped with torpedoes,

  • geared for fighting American carriers.

  • Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo gave the order to have everything re-equipped for an attack

  • on Midway, and that meant swapping torpedoes for bombs.

  • The switch was in mid-completion when they got word American ships had been spotted by

  • scouts, and suddenly that meant they needed to swap back to torpedoes again.

  • What followed was more than chaos: Japanese aircraft were slow to get into the air, and

  • ordnance was left scattered across the decks of the carriers.

  • All that ordnance was highly explosive, and added fuel to the fire American dive-bombers

  • started dropping.

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Roland Emmerich's Midway is a historical war movie that has audiences shaking their heads,

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中途你可能不相信的事情是真的。 (Things In Midway You May Not Believe Were True)

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    zhuhe89 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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