Operation Pacific (1951) on Netflix
Second-in-command Duke E. Gifford serves aboard the USS Thunderfish, whose torpedoes fail to explode. Ashore he finds his ex-wife, Navy nurse Mary Stuart, involved with a pilot.
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Trailer
Plot summary
The submarine USS Thunderfish, commanded by John T. "Pop" Perry, runs supplies into the Philippines and carries out nuns and children, among them a newborn the crew calls Butch. When a Japanese aircraft carrier is sighted, the boat's torpedoes explode halfway to the target, and the crew escapes the escorting destroyers. At Pearl Harbor, Duke E. Gifford, the executive officer, visits Butch in the base hospital and meets Mary Stuart, a Navy nurse and his ex-wife. Mary is involved with Bob Perry, a Navy pilot and the commander's younger brother. Duke courts her anyway, but the Thunderfish is sent to sea again before anything between them is settled.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Operation Pacific (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Wayne and Patricia Neal had an acrimonious relationship while making Operation Pacific; nearly 14 years later, on In Harm's Way, Neal noticed a change in his demeanor, possibly because he was seriously ill with lung cancer.
- The film's torpedo failures were real: the depicted event was based on USS Tinosa's attack on the Japanese ship Tonan Maru No. 3 on October 5-6, 1943, when 13 of the 15 torpedoes fired failed to detonate on impact.
SPOILER
Commander Perry's death scene combines two incidents involving Commander Howard W. Gilmore, who was mortally wounded on the bridge, gave the order "Take her down!" to save his submarine and crew, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor; the ramming in the film came in the same action.- Composer Max Steiner reused dramatic music from his King Kong score in the film, and Warner Bros. recycled his Fighter Squadron theme "We Watch the Skyways", which had already served as the main title for the 1941 film Dive Bomber.
- The film's opening mission of running war supplies into the Philippines and evacuating civilians was historically accurate: by the 1944 invasion those runs had let American and Philippine officers who refused to surrender build an organization the size of an army corps.
