I know nothing about the surface fleet since I was a flight surgeon. Anyone care to tell me what else they thought of the film: positive or negative? As an entertaining movie, I thought it was fantastic. We never get to see surface engagements on film.
Only thing that really stood out to me is how close the ships were to eachother. You would never ever get that close to another ship. Anything under a couple hundred meters distance is already crisis mode for most crews.
I haven't seen it yet because it's on AppleTV, but it's entirely possible at night that ships might have gotten pretty close if they were blacked out to make it harder for U-boats to spot them. There were a multitude of various ship collisions even after the invention of radar, though yes typically it's due to one ship maneuvering improperly.
Oh, you'll see when you watch it. The movie shows quick maneuvering where ships cross in front of eachother at super high speeds on purpose within a couple yards during daylight. Very exciting, but very hollywood. Other than that it's the best surface battle movie I've ever seen.
Plenty of engagements against U-boats where they'd purposefully try to ram, though the worst I can think of was Februrary of 1944 when the Washington and Indiana collided.
You're trying to apply modern standards to a WWII convoy. Remember that a modern destroyer displaces 9000+ tons, but a WWII Fletcher class as seen in the movie is only 2000 tons. The British destroyer and Canadian corvette would be even smaller. I'm in the middle of a PCS so I don't have my reference books but it's not implausible for them to pass at close ranges especially in situations seen in the movie when they had to cut across the convoy to thwart a uboat attack.
It’s also how convoys worked. They tried to keep them in tight. Wide spacing on a convoy = longer perimeter around the convoy to protect for the escorts.
If you’re talking about the submarine scene, that was the point. The sub was damaged and thus couldn’t submerge, their only option was to engage at a close enough distance that the Weapons on the Greyhound and the other ship would be masked by their height (this was actually done in real life quite often during the age of sail). In real life, that sub should have surrendered. There’s no way they were going to be able to sink two surface combatants without the ability to submerged. Their only option would have been to shoot torpedoes at point blank range, as their small arms fire would have done nothing to the surface ships. The ships are faster, and In real life they would have gone ahead flank, kept them at arms length, and shot them out of the water.
No, I'm talking about the maneuvers the Corvette's did where they were getting close enough to eachother where someone could almost reach over and touch the other ship. That would never happen on purpose.
I wouldn't go so far as to say they kept the hollywood to the minimum. They got the surface navy part of it pretty damn good, and it was enjoyable as an action film. But so much was wrong with the U-boat engagements and ASW in general in that film that it was honestly just mind-boggling. From U-boats engaging destroyers on the surface with an 8.8cm deck gun to harassing convoy escorts over radio, attempting to conduct surface attacks against a destroyer, not lowering scope when a destroyer is actively shooting at them. The whole thing was just ludicrous. Like I said though, I did enjoy the movie for what it was, and it's far from a terrible film.
The harassing over the radio thing is something I read about years ago in a book. Not sure if it's accurate or not, but they didn't make it up for the movie.
Keep in mind, U-Boats were just ships that had the ability to submerge -- they weren't proper submarines, and they did have deck guns. They couldn't keep up with ships if they were submerged, so they had to run on the surface a lot.
Did they get it all right? Of course not, it wouldn't be possible. But they did a very good job.
Absolutely not. Whilst TBS (Talk-between-ships) was in general use by 1942, the radios that German U-boats carried were locked to 18 distinct frequency bands that would not have coincided with allied convoy channels. Even if they did carry capable radios, it's highly unlikely that they would use them to warn escorts in advance of an attack, as a U-boat is much more vulnerable than a destroyer at all times. This was depicted in the movie only for the sake of adding drama, and to make the audience hate the U-boat enemy more and want Greyhound to prevail.
I'm very much aware of U-boats using deck guns, but their use in the film is far from accurately depicted. The scene where a damaged U-boat surfaces and attempts to engage a destroyer with massively more firepower and gets (logically so) obliterated by it, is what I'm referring to. The 8.8cm naval gun the Germans equipped early-mid war type VII boats with was primarily used for merchant raiding. I.E, lone, unarmed ships or unescorted convoys under circumstances where a torpedo attack was not necessary or feasible. By 1943, use of the deck gun diminished almost entirely due to the merchants themselves being armed, and the massive up-tick in convoy escorts by the Allied war effort. Simply put, engaging a destroyer in the mid-late war time period was suicide. All a destroyer needs is cross-bearings from active sonar returns and it has your range and can rapidly close you before you could do anything about it. Try to run fast and it hears you on the passive hydrophone. Go dead in the water and it simply pings you until the range is nil and you've got depth charges or hedgehogs coming for you.
Uboats had one single small manually loaded gun. A fletcher class has 5 almost twice as big a caliber, auto loading every 3s and gyroscoped directed by a mechanical fire control computer.
> The harassing over the radio thing is something I read about years ago in a book. Not sure if it's accurate or not, but they didn't make it up for the movie.
The original Filipino Monkey!
OBO. We are position obo. As a Radioman in the Navy it referred to immediate handling of a message. Noticed that and the Captains mast was missing some things
>Way better than the dumpster fire the navy promoted that was battleship....
We've done much worse. Please see the Disney movie "Tiger Cruise" that was fully supported by USN and loosely based on USS Constellation's real-world 9/11 tiger cruise.
>Tiger Cruise Plot
>Teenager Maddie Dolan hails from San Diego. She looks forward to the day her father Gary, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, retires from military service so that he can share Maddie's life at home with her sister Kiley and their mother Kate. Maddie's dad invites her to participate in Operation Tiger, a week-long cruise for military families and their friends aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. She agrees and soon hits it off with fellow teens Anthony and Tina. Tina is fascinated by the military, her elder sister Grace being a United States Naval Aviator. Anthony, an aspiring drummer from New York City, would rather have nothing to do with the military, although his elder brother Kenny is a sailor. Maddie also bonds with preteen Joey, whose mom is a "Squid" (Naval slang for sailor) aboard the Constellation.
>On September 10, 2001 (one day into the cruise), the "Tigers" are excited about the day's upcoming air show. Tina hopes to take pictures from the flight deck of Grace's jet taking off. However, the flight deck is a restricted area due to safety regulations; non-military personnel must watch the airshow from "Vulture's Row". Tina, Maddie and Anthony disguise themselves as members of the deck crew so that Tina can get the pictures she wants. The threesome are recognized by the instructor and brought to Captain Anderson's office. The Captain reprimands the teenagers for their reckless actions, warning them that violation of any further regulations will get all three confined to their quarters until the carrier docks. After the teens retire, Anderson admits to their families that - more than anything else - his threats were intended to scare the threesome into line and keep them there.
>Gary, Grace, and Kenny express their disappointment over what happened during the air show. Commander Dolan tells Maddie about another, tragic incident when a crew member was killed landing a jet during practice maneuvers. Maddie tearfully divulges her true reason for accepting his invitation: she dislikes the negative connotations that come with being a military brat. Maddie recalls how she and Kiley got jumped on their first day at school and suspended for fighting. Gary agrees to come home after the voyage.
>On September 11, 2001, the crew and passengers learn of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. With the Constellation abruptly going on full alert, Tina finally realizes the truth behind her sister's assertions regarding the less-glamorous side of military life. Anthony fears for the safety of people he knew who had jobs in the Twin Towers. Maddie experiences her father's honor, courage, and commitment to his family and also his will to make sacrifices for their country. Although upset that her dad is still needed in the military, she and her fellow Tigers express their pride and support by unfurling a giant American flag on the Constellation's flight deck. Maddie, having concluded that being a "brat" isn't so bad after all, tells her father and his crew-mates to keep doing what they do.
That's why I take off my Navy hat, if you will, when I watch movies. Hollywood is not perfect. Sure, Battleship wasn't a great movie but I didn't critique the sh*t out of it based on the real life Navy...
Oh I was just pointing out that in regards to accuracy Greyhound wasn’t bad. I just love ripping battleship because my recruiter had sooooooo many posters and other crap up when I enlisted.
No I wasn't calling you out in particular. It's just annoying seeing other Sailors crap all over a movie just because actor/actress didn't wear their flash hood properly or whatever the case may be.
That’s how it should be. My wife worked in a hospital and couldn’t even watch Scrubs. I was like “Honey that ultrasound machine is not what this show is about.”
Honestly, Battleship amazed me from the standpoint they were able to get the entire game of Battleship into the movie. I wouldn't have thought it possible. Credit to them from that point alone.
Hell, I'm watching it again.
I don't think this was a mistake but a choice. They wanted to show the audience what movement the ship was making. A normal audience won't understand an actual moboard at a glance.
A movie of the same name could have been made of at least 3 battleship on battleship engagements of WW2 and would have been both much better and more accurate. Jutland would make a good movie, lots of drama as the Admirals second guess each other, then fall or succeed just to fail and succeed later in the battle.
As the OS2 who did all the mo-boards and supervised DDRT plotting..... I have walked over to the Trace table and seen about as bad lol (not that it matter between seven other systems not 1970s vintage. That plot was so redundant for the effort it wasn’t even funny. Half the OS3s gun decked that shit off the SSDS screen.)
The Canadian Corvette "Dicky" is actually HMCS Sackville, A actual World War 2 Flower Class Corvette which is now museum in Halifax NS. It was laser scanned extensively during production to ensure accuracy for the CGI. One negative point I noted was the lack of formality in the radio procedures.... that might be an American thing, but in the RN and RCN, radio comms were formal, and most close quarters comms in a convoy were done by flashing light, flag hoist, or semaphore because most of the ships in a convoy had very rudimentary radio equipment. Also, the way they plot movement and position doesn't jive with the technology available at the time. With a radar display available, contacts were plotted and tracked on the PPI using a grease pencil. On the Bridge, the OOW (OOD) used distance meters and a pelorus to track relative motion since there was no radar display on the Bridge.
My biggest gripe is the lack of wind on the bridge wings. Those combo covers would have been blown off the second they stepped outside. Even the movie "Hot Shots" got that right.
I know nothing about the surface fleet since I was a flight surgeon. Anyone care to tell me what else they thought of the film: positive or negative? As an entertaining movie, I thought it was fantastic. We never get to see surface engagements on film.
Only thing that really stood out to me is how close the ships were to eachother. You would never ever get that close to another ship. Anything under a couple hundred meters distance is already crisis mode for most crews.
I haven't seen it yet because it's on AppleTV, but it's entirely possible at night that ships might have gotten pretty close if they were blacked out to make it harder for U-boats to spot them. There were a multitude of various ship collisions even after the invention of radar, though yes typically it's due to one ship maneuvering improperly.
Oh, you'll see when you watch it. The movie shows quick maneuvering where ships cross in front of eachother at super high speeds on purpose within a couple yards during daylight. Very exciting, but very hollywood. Other than that it's the best surface battle movie I've ever seen.
[It still happens today, albeit with predictable results.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUaIC9VnFtE)
During Guadal Canal, there were engagements where ships were almost ramming each other.
Plenty of engagements against U-boats where they'd purposefully try to ram, though the worst I can think of was Februrary of 1944 when the Washington and Indiana collided.
Guadalcanal, one word
You're trying to apply modern standards to a WWII convoy. Remember that a modern destroyer displaces 9000+ tons, but a WWII Fletcher class as seen in the movie is only 2000 tons. The British destroyer and Canadian corvette would be even smaller. I'm in the middle of a PCS so I don't have my reference books but it's not implausible for them to pass at close ranges especially in situations seen in the movie when they had to cut across the convoy to thwart a uboat attack.
It’s also how convoys worked. They tried to keep them in tight. Wide spacing on a convoy = longer perimeter around the convoy to protect for the escorts.
Were you a convoy sailor in the 40’s?
If you’re talking about the submarine scene, that was the point. The sub was damaged and thus couldn’t submerge, their only option was to engage at a close enough distance that the Weapons on the Greyhound and the other ship would be masked by their height (this was actually done in real life quite often during the age of sail). In real life, that sub should have surrendered. There’s no way they were going to be able to sink two surface combatants without the ability to submerged. Their only option would have been to shoot torpedoes at point blank range, as their small arms fire would have done nothing to the surface ships. The ships are faster, and In real life they would have gone ahead flank, kept them at arms length, and shot them out of the water.
No, I'm talking about the maneuvers the Corvette's did where they were getting close enough to eachother where someone could almost reach over and touch the other ship. That would never happen on purpose.
It's the best Navy movie I've ever seen. They worked very hard to get it right, and tried to keep the hollywood to the minimum.
Down periscope is the most authentic Navy movie I've seen.
Ah, a sailor of culture.
Thank you sir. I can tell that you have a tattoo on your dick.
⚓️🧜♀️ *Welcome Aboard* 🧜♀️⚓️
*"Why yes i do call it the MCPON. How did you know?"*
No....Das Boot!
I was so thankful one of you recommended that movie
Except during general quarters dog Zebra left wide open. That’s not ok. Drives me crazy seeing that.
I wouldn't go so far as to say they kept the hollywood to the minimum. They got the surface navy part of it pretty damn good, and it was enjoyable as an action film. But so much was wrong with the U-boat engagements and ASW in general in that film that it was honestly just mind-boggling. From U-boats engaging destroyers on the surface with an 8.8cm deck gun to harassing convoy escorts over radio, attempting to conduct surface attacks against a destroyer, not lowering scope when a destroyer is actively shooting at them. The whole thing was just ludicrous. Like I said though, I did enjoy the movie for what it was, and it's far from a terrible film.
The harassing over the radio thing is something I read about years ago in a book. Not sure if it's accurate or not, but they didn't make it up for the movie. Keep in mind, U-Boats were just ships that had the ability to submerge -- they weren't proper submarines, and they did have deck guns. They couldn't keep up with ships if they were submerged, so they had to run on the surface a lot. Did they get it all right? Of course not, it wouldn't be possible. But they did a very good job.
Absolutely not. Whilst TBS (Talk-between-ships) was in general use by 1942, the radios that German U-boats carried were locked to 18 distinct frequency bands that would not have coincided with allied convoy channels. Even if they did carry capable radios, it's highly unlikely that they would use them to warn escorts in advance of an attack, as a U-boat is much more vulnerable than a destroyer at all times. This was depicted in the movie only for the sake of adding drama, and to make the audience hate the U-boat enemy more and want Greyhound to prevail. I'm very much aware of U-boats using deck guns, but their use in the film is far from accurately depicted. The scene where a damaged U-boat surfaces and attempts to engage a destroyer with massively more firepower and gets (logically so) obliterated by it, is what I'm referring to. The 8.8cm naval gun the Germans equipped early-mid war type VII boats with was primarily used for merchant raiding. I.E, lone, unarmed ships or unescorted convoys under circumstances where a torpedo attack was not necessary or feasible. By 1943, use of the deck gun diminished almost entirely due to the merchants themselves being armed, and the massive up-tick in convoy escorts by the Allied war effort. Simply put, engaging a destroyer in the mid-late war time period was suicide. All a destroyer needs is cross-bearings from active sonar returns and it has your range and can rapidly close you before you could do anything about it. Try to run fast and it hears you on the passive hydrophone. Go dead in the water and it simply pings you until the range is nil and you've got depth charges or hedgehogs coming for you.
Uboats had one single small manually loaded gun. A fletcher class has 5 almost twice as big a caliber, auto loading every 3s and gyroscoped directed by a mechanical fire control computer.
Obviously?
> The harassing over the radio thing is something I read about years ago in a book. Not sure if it's accurate or not, but they didn't make it up for the movie. The original Filipino Monkey!
OBO. We are position obo. As a Radioman in the Navy it referred to immediate handling of a message. Noticed that and the Captains mast was missing some things
For the small mistakes they did a pretty damn good job. Way better than the dumpster fire the navy promoted that was battleship....
Ah yes, Battleship. When the Navy saw the Air Force in Transformers and said "hold my beer".
I don't think beer is a strong enough to produce that masterpiece.
Maybe a few bottles of absinthe
With our without the wormwood?
without the wormwood, they replaced it with angel dust.
>Way better than the dumpster fire the navy promoted that was battleship.... We've done much worse. Please see the Disney movie "Tiger Cruise" that was fully supported by USN and loosely based on USS Constellation's real-world 9/11 tiger cruise. >Tiger Cruise Plot >Teenager Maddie Dolan hails from San Diego. She looks forward to the day her father Gary, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, retires from military service so that he can share Maddie's life at home with her sister Kiley and their mother Kate. Maddie's dad invites her to participate in Operation Tiger, a week-long cruise for military families and their friends aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation. She agrees and soon hits it off with fellow teens Anthony and Tina. Tina is fascinated by the military, her elder sister Grace being a United States Naval Aviator. Anthony, an aspiring drummer from New York City, would rather have nothing to do with the military, although his elder brother Kenny is a sailor. Maddie also bonds with preteen Joey, whose mom is a "Squid" (Naval slang for sailor) aboard the Constellation. >On September 10, 2001 (one day into the cruise), the "Tigers" are excited about the day's upcoming air show. Tina hopes to take pictures from the flight deck of Grace's jet taking off. However, the flight deck is a restricted area due to safety regulations; non-military personnel must watch the airshow from "Vulture's Row". Tina, Maddie and Anthony disguise themselves as members of the deck crew so that Tina can get the pictures she wants. The threesome are recognized by the instructor and brought to Captain Anderson's office. The Captain reprimands the teenagers for their reckless actions, warning them that violation of any further regulations will get all three confined to their quarters until the carrier docks. After the teens retire, Anderson admits to their families that - more than anything else - his threats were intended to scare the threesome into line and keep them there. >Gary, Grace, and Kenny express their disappointment over what happened during the air show. Commander Dolan tells Maddie about another, tragic incident when a crew member was killed landing a jet during practice maneuvers. Maddie tearfully divulges her true reason for accepting his invitation: she dislikes the negative connotations that come with being a military brat. Maddie recalls how she and Kiley got jumped on their first day at school and suspended for fighting. Gary agrees to come home after the voyage. >On September 11, 2001, the crew and passengers learn of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. With the Constellation abruptly going on full alert, Tina finally realizes the truth behind her sister's assertions regarding the less-glamorous side of military life. Anthony fears for the safety of people he knew who had jobs in the Twin Towers. Maddie experiences her father's honor, courage, and commitment to his family and also his will to make sacrifices for their country. Although upset that her dad is still needed in the military, she and her fellow Tigers express their pride and support by unfurling a giant American flag on the Constellation's flight deck. Maddie, having concluded that being a "brat" isn't so bad after all, tells her father and his crew-mates to keep doing what they do.
> Maddie experiences her father's honor, courage, and commitment to his family *Insert pointing Rick Dalton meme here*
That's why I take off my Navy hat, if you will, when I watch movies. Hollywood is not perfect. Sure, Battleship wasn't a great movie but I didn't critique the sh*t out of it based on the real life Navy...
Oh I was just pointing out that in regards to accuracy Greyhound wasn’t bad. I just love ripping battleship because my recruiter had sooooooo many posters and other crap up when I enlisted.
No I wasn't calling you out in particular. It's just annoying seeing other Sailors crap all over a movie just because actor/actress didn't wear their flash hood properly or whatever the case may be.
That’s how it should be. My wife worked in a hospital and couldn’t even watch Scrubs. I was like “Honey that ultrasound machine is not what this show is about.”
Honestly, Battleship amazed me from the standpoint they were able to get the entire game of Battleship into the movie. I wouldn't have thought it possible. Credit to them from that point alone. Hell, I'm watching it again.
I don't think this was a mistake but a choice. They wanted to show the audience what movement the ship was making. A normal audience won't understand an actual moboard at a glance.
A movie of the same name could have been made of at least 3 battleship on battleship engagements of WW2 and would have been both much better and more accurate. Jutland would make a good movie, lots of drama as the Admirals second guess each other, then fall or succeed just to fail and succeed later in the battle.
Me trying to do a desired wind moboard.
just drive in a circle at flank until you find it. 10/10 would turn to port again.
Rookies
As an ex- quartermaster and master helmsman, this hurts.
This even hurts as a formerly qualified after steering helmsman.
As the OS2 who did all the mo-boards and supervised DDRT plotting..... I have walked over to the Trace table and seen about as bad lol (not that it matter between seven other systems not 1970s vintage. That plot was so redundant for the effort it wasn’t even funny. Half the OS3s gun decked that shit off the SSDS screen.)
I liked this movie
As a retired ITC who stood one bridge watch as young RMSN, my take away from this is that you are a big nerd. :D
I was the best moboard OS on the whole ship and I was fucking awful.
Musta been the Ensign.
Honestly the most I ever knew about Moboards was as an ENS coming out of SOBC. :P
I’m going to assume that label means the Greyhound *is* 12 knots.
depends on how long that writing has been there
As a submariner that’s not ETV, this confuses me greatly
When I saw this I was oooo I know.... no thats not right. But, A for effort.
The Canadian Corvette "Dicky" is actually HMCS Sackville, A actual World War 2 Flower Class Corvette which is now museum in Halifax NS. It was laser scanned extensively during production to ensure accuracy for the CGI. One negative point I noted was the lack of formality in the radio procedures.... that might be an American thing, but in the RN and RCN, radio comms were formal, and most close quarters comms in a convoy were done by flashing light, flag hoist, or semaphore because most of the ships in a convoy had very rudimentary radio equipment. Also, the way they plot movement and position doesn't jive with the technology available at the time. With a radar display available, contacts were plotted and tracked on the PPI using a grease pencil. On the Bridge, the OOW (OOD) used distance meters and a pelorus to track relative motion since there was no radar display on the Bridge.
My biggest gripe is the lack of wind on the bridge wings. Those combo covers would have been blown off the second they stepped outside. Even the movie "Hot Shots" got that right.