Warbird Information Exchange

Just to remind everyone that starting this Sunday on HBO the 14 part miniseries "The Pacific" starts! It should be good!

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

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Yeah Buddy!!!!!

There is a premiere in Mobile Sat evening. Sid Phillips,
some of the actors in the flick, etc. will be there. At
LEAST 60 Marines in their dress blues, WWII Marine
vets, the Mobile Marine Corps League, at least 40 USN
types, and my dumb ass. Can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And a signing of Phillips book on Sunday. I may well
overdose.......pray for me......

Unless I can find someone locally here to watch it with or record it for me, guess I'll have to wait for it to get over to regular cable...that may take a while. Enjoy it...just don't spoil the surprise ending for us without!

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Holedigger,
You are welcome to watch it here with me,
but its a mighty long walk North to near Beantown!

now...what part of the ending are you unclear about??

Holedigger,
on monday try going to www.surfthechannel.com and searching "Pacific" you ought to be able to find the show page. This site shows all the links to the episodes online. Use the Megavideo ones, they are safe to view. Sometimes not the best quality picture, but if you can' wait it's the next best thing! Try it out. Hope this helps.
T

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Taylor Stevenson

I don't have HBO..but I'll definitely be picking it up on DVD! If it's half as good as "Band of Brothers" it'll be more than worth it. From what I've seen, the filmmakers were pretty good about getting the details right. I was watching a "making of" documentary on YouTube that showed Marines taking a Japanese airfield. There was a C-47 carcass as background dressing, and they had actually modified it with extra cockpit windows to resemble an L2D "Tabby."

SN

I like the birthday song at the end tonight....

Lynn

I did like the ending Birthday song too!
I'd have to say that so far, the characters are not as clear cut and easy for the viewer to identify with yet. See what next week brings!
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Anyone else notice....
One of the first shots of the series showed a Mitsubishi G3M bomber when the narrator was discussing the Pearl Harbor attack.

Of course, land-based "Nells" weren't used in the attack...

A very minor point...the old stock footage error strikes again.
I guess we should be lucky that they didn't use the John Ford documentary film of Japanese painted SBDs....which manage to show up everywhere.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

I like what I have seen so far despite the obvious vintage footage errors. I didn't know the type but I surely knew that there were no twin engine bombers on the PH raid. Anyone else notice the Ki 51 Sonias that were shown during that voice over?

One thing that was interesting was seeing that E.B. Sledge's friend ended up in the same unit or at least the same place with Robert Leckie. Is that true to life or artistic license?

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"I can't understand it, I cut it twice and it's still too short!" Robert F. Dupre' 1923-2010 Go With God.

Sledge's friend Sid Phillips was in the same Company as Leckie but in a different Platoon. He said they knew each other well enough to say "Hi!" but weren't as friendly as that first episode of "The Pacific" made out.

I think that the series may end up being very well done, and very educational. maybe I am wrong, but I think that Band of Brothers really set the bar high. It was just the right group of veterans, the right group of actors, and I think that is going to be hard to match. I may be wrong due to the fact that Band of Brothers is so high up there for me.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I thought they wore Marine style haircuts back then and not what they had on the set? They started with Springfields off the boat then they had Garands???
The new parts will be every Sunday night???

Lynn

On the bad side, I agree with some others here that the character development, compared with BoB, suffers in this series so far. What I liked in BoB was we started out getting to know all of the players at boot camp. At 'Curahee' getting tortured by Cpt. Sobel, through training, on to England for more training, building anticipation of D-Day and finally off to war. I liked the scene that started the unwraveling of Sobel's command when the soldier immitates the Colonel (in perfect Dale Dye impression) across a field and convinces Sobel to have his men cut the fence resulting in the escape of live stock. Or when at the movie the night before D-Day Bill Guarneere discovers he is wearing the wrong jacket, but in the pocket was the letter about his brother being killed at Monte Casino. It was this slow build up that by the time of the drop you really felt you knew the guys and cared about what happened to them. I have a feeling in the Pacific they felt "Well everybody wants to see combat so how fast can we get them into the action?"

On the plus side I already see the attention to detail that made BoB famous. Case in point was during the nighttime fire fight when they were being flanked. The liqiud cooled 30 cal crew needed to move their position. The gunner grabs the hot barrel with his bare hand and drops it in pain. He then puts on the white asbestos glove that came with the units so the crews could hall it around after firing it. I thought that was neat. I doubt any other Hollywood director would bother with a detail like that.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the episodes in any case.

Pete