Battle 360°

2008

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP2 Vengeance at Midway Mar 07, 2008

8.3| 0h30m| en
Synopsis

Battle 360°, also written as Battle 360, is an American documentary television series that originally aired from February 29 to May 2, 2008 on History. The program focuses on the World War II-era aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.The series consists of ten episodes.

Director

Producted By

History

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Trailers & Clips

Reviews

Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant
Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
grantss A documentary series on one of the most famous ships in history - the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). The Enterprise fought in almost every major naval battle in the Pacific theatre of WW2, escaping serious damage on many occasions, often by the narrowest of margins. Through CGI and film footage, we see the Enterprise's action-filled WW2 history.Superb documentary series. Captures well USS Enterprise's legendary WW2 career: its close escapes and glories, its massive contribution to the Allied victory over Japan and its damage and losses. Good use of historic film footage as well as CGI.Stirring, action-filled series.
Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) Stumbled upon this series by coincidence; Had been reading up on the Battle of Santa Cruz and what the hey, gave the episode on it a try via the marvel of YouTube. It's hypnotic viewing with a compelling lead character in the WW2 era U.S.S. Enterprise, easily the greatest warship to prowl the seven seas. What's interesting and somewhat different is the high-octane barrage of busy action scenes visualized by computer animators who had seen "Return of the King". If you've ever wondered what it might have looked like to see 100 plane wave attacks from every possible angle here you go, with one of the most interesting aspects being the depiction of the anti-aircraft efforts flung into the air, something that still photos & grainy archival films from the era never make clear. Like, wow.Brings the harrowing nature of this form of combat to home, though all of the hyperactivity succeeds at the expense of subtlety. No shot in the series lasts for more than a second, with animation effects adding flourishes to the stream of layered visual information which never lets up. And after watching a couple three episodes one gets familiar with certain sequences used as stock footage (a cost saving measure for the then expensive GCI renderings). Every last moment is also orchestrated with booming music, giving WW2 a techno metal beat between outbursts of "Victory at Sea" type strings. I guess all this is a good thing however, since here for once is a living color version of WW2 that viewers raised in the electronic/digital age can watch both as a pop culture entertainment and historical document. The final ingredient being something to remind the attention deficit oriented viewers that the events, places & actions depicted were real, a job honorably seen through by the inclusion of veterans adding their color commentary, reflecting on what it was like to be there. It's engaging viewing, not sure how much memory retention of the facts presented will take place but that's why you hit the web after to read up a bit more. Or maybe even go find a book? Hey, you never know.
SipteaHighTea The episode about Guadacanel has a couple of errors. First of all, Saburo Sakai, the Japanese fighter ace was wounded; however, in his book Samurai, he stated that he was attacking a group of F4F Wildcats. However, he saw them bundle close together and when he came closer and closer to the formation, he saw that they were TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. The bombers tighten their formation so their ball turrets could throw up a wall of fire. Becauase he was going so fast, Saburo had to go right through the formation instead of evading it. The end result was he was wounded as stated in the show.Before the encountering the torpedo planes, Sakai did shoot down a Dauntless, and he engage in a dogfight with an F4F Wildcat piloted by James Pug Sutherland for several minutes before shooting him down. These facts were not shown in the show. There was nothing mention in Sakai's book about shooting another F4F Wildcat. The pilot who was shot up by Sakai look a lot younger than those other guys that were telling their stories. In the espisode about the Battle of Santa Cruz, they stated that Lt. Stanley Swede Vejtasa shot down 5 Val dive bombers and 2 Kate torpedo planes. Actually, he shot down 2 Val dive bombers and 5 Kate torpedo planes. I don't know why they can't get their facts straight. It makes you wonder how much they are distorting the facts in the war stories.
Bryce Rumbles The CGI isn't up to current standards, and they tend to flip and re-use many shots, but given that it's a History Channel production, and therefore doesn't have an HBO-sized budget, this is a very interesting and fun show.The CGI is good and more than adequate to the task (although a scene of the carrier Akagi taking a direct hit on a Japanese plane on the flight-deck shows the plane engulfed in flames but not blown to smithereens). My only real criticism is that the narration skips a lot of detail.Those of us who have read a lot on the Battle of Midway know Soryu was sunk a little after Kaga and Akagi, but that knowledge seems to be assumed by the writers -- of course, these first episodes focus almost entirely on USS Enterprise, CV-6, and not the battle as a whole, so maybe a "Battle 360" just on Midway would clear that up. That kind of omission is forgivable for viewers who know this stuff and just like to see things blow up (like me), but for neophytes, it may be confusing.