I like this movie. I know the ships in the final battle are incredibly cheesy, but I still like it. At the beginning, though, there is a US destroyer with the hull number 298 that breaks out during the attack on Pearl. I have looked online and only found and old WW1 four stacker with that hull number, the USS Percival. The ship in the movie looks to my fairly UNeducated eyes like a Fletcher class, but I can find no DD with that hull number. Can someone help, please? Thank you.
In not very familiar with US stuff but, aa far as cheesy scenes, thats why I never liked the fact tha Otto Preminger was the films Director. Now had it been directed by John Ford or even Louis Milestone---that movie IMO, would be so much better than it was. Also, I found it a bit overlong.
The real destroyer used in several scenes including steaming out of Pearl Harbor was USS Philip (DD-498). Wonder why they changed it? I like the movie, but some of the model work was really cheesy, like the signal flags going up on the destroyer. I've never understood why Kirk Douglas describes the Yamato as having twelve main guns when you can clearly see nine.
Thank you Carronade. How did you know it was the USS Philip? I looked at the site linked above and at IMDB (which is USELESS for anything accurately military in nature). Anyhow, /salute and thanks mate! Hummel aka Da Bee!
Philip and other ships were mentioned in the wikipedia article on the movie. Good eye recognizing her as a Fletcher since she was extensively modified from her WWII configuration!
If you look very carefully at the bow of the destroyer leaving Pearl, you can see that the original numbers have been painted out. This might be simply because the film makers had a limited number of ships for their use and didnt want the same numbers appearing....or perhaps some naval reason for obscuring the identity. You will also notice that this destroyer has a fake gun mount forward of the bridge. I read somewhere a long time ago that this was to cover what was then known as a 'Weapon Alpha (or Able)'. This was a distinctive looking antisub rocket launcher.
You will also notice that this destroyer has a fake gun mount forward of the bridge. I read somewhere a long time ago that this was to cover what was then known as a 'Weapon Alpha (or Able)'. I expect it was just to give the ship a more WWII look. There was no security reason to cover up Weapon Alfa; it normally sat out in the open. The change from Able to Alfa reflected a revision of the phonetic alphabet to words all the NATO countries pronounced the same way.
I too have wondered about that, especially since the supposed pov shot that Douglas has of the Yamato shows only the nine main guns. It might possibly have been the screenwriter? Around the time the movie was made, Aurora models had a kit out of the Yamato that was strange in that it had one of the waist turrets that was on the Yamato's sister ship Musashi. The Musashi had two waist turrets, one on each side and Aurora put the starboard one on their Yamato leaving the port side off. Maybe the screenwriter had the model and was using it as a reference and it confused him.
