Opération dans le Pacifique

I love this movie for two reasons:

1) It causes me to relive my submarine war patrols in WWII. 2) It's a typical John Wayne movie.

It would probably not excite a viewer who does not care for John Wayne or war movies, but for anyone who participated in WWII in submarines, it's a must have.

For the current generation, it would be worthwhile just to get the feel of how things were in those days. For many of my vintage, watching this movie over and over, as I do, is a priceless reminder of those days when a few did so much for so many.

Duke E. Gifford (John Wayne) is second in command of the USS Thunderfish, a submarine which is firing off torpedoes that either explode too early or never explode at all. It's a dilemma that he'll eventually take up personally. Even more personal is his quest to win back his ex-wife (Patricia Neal), a nurse; but he'll have to win her back from a navy flier who also happens to be his commander's little brother.

We know this movie is going to be an eye-roller during the opening scene in which the Thunderfish is transporting two nuns, a baby and a group of orphans who go running past a ludicrously tolerant crew as they're trying to sink a Japanese ship. While the action scenes are good, nearly every human moment in this film is phony; and the few that aren't are thanks to the usual expert performance from Patricia Neal, not from writer-director George Waggner.

The special effects and production values in this submarine drama are okay, but occasionally we'll see a cable pulling a torpedo or a night-time sky that has a ceiling and a corner. Max Steiner's score underlines every banality in the script and then underlines it twice more. At one point a crew member laughs at the Hollywood hokum in the Cary Grant film, "Destination Tokyo." If only he could have been out in the audience for his own picture.

I was stationed on the submarine tender, "U.S.S. Howard W. Gilmore" during the Viet Nam War. It was there that I learned about Cdr. Howard W. Gilmore and the "U.S.S. Growler." The "Growler," under the command of Cdr. Gilmore, was on patrol in early 1942 when she came under attack by a Japanese gunboat. Gilmore was mortally wounded and as he lay on the bridge of the sub gave the command to "Take 'er down!" just as "Pop" did in "Operation Pacific" and thus saved the crew further casualties. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his action. Also the "Growler" rammed the gunboat and bent the bow of the sub just as depicted in "Operation Pacific." I would be interested in knowing if the film used the Gilmore/"Growler" incident as its basis for the scene depicted with Ward Bond, and if there were other facts in the film based on real incidents.

Thank you,

A very good WW2 movie. John Wayne is 'Duke' Gifford, an ultra devoted commander that leads his submarine crew up against the best the Japanese can put in the water or in the air.

Ward Bond plays 'Pop' Perry, Gifford's mentor and growing naval legend. A young Patricia Neal portrays the love interest. Fleshing out the cast is Cliff Clark, Philip Carey, Martin Milner and Jack Pennick.

If you love submarine movies, this is one of the better ones.

It's hard to decide which genre provided John Wayne the greater opportunity to showcase his talents - the "Western" or the "War Movie". Clearly, he excelled at both (and had more than a few opportunities to demonstrate it). Personally, I've always been a greater fan of his westerns, but when this film appeared on one of my favorite cable channels this afternoon, I found myself willingly drawn in. Although a lot of its elements are standard WWII fare, Operation Pacific still demonstrates why the genre has proven so successful to Hollywood.

This one includes all the cliches - the tragedy of lives lost for a just cause (in this case, the war in the Pacific), the heroism of the men who gave up their lives for that cause (here it's a submarine crew based out of "Pearl"), and the women forced to wait patiently while the men they loved went into harm's way.

Although a lot of this seems outdated and stereotyped some 50 years later, the movies that were made during and immediately following WWII nevertheless reflect the ideals and values that drove an entire nation (and generation) to act and feel as it did. My own father, who was a Navy man during the war, was a big fan of John Wayne. I have to believe that Wayne personified some of the very same values my father had come to embrace as a youth and during his time in the military. For me, this adds some validity and perspective.

I know this is not considered to be Wayne's best war film (and admit to not being an enthusiastic student of the genre), but I'm confident that it's a good example of why these films were (and remain) so popular.