WWII Movie "The Fighting Lady" - Docudrama

[DeepseekerADS]

For those of you unfamiliar with this archive site - there's a ton of stuff here.....

"The Fighting Lady," directed by William Wyler, provides a portrait of
life on a World War II aircraft carrier, a vessel that is "enormous,
wonderful, and strange to us." After profiling the various activities
of the soldiers' day and following the ship's voyage through the Panama
Canal, the film takes the audience through a litany of actual combat
engagements. The Fighting Lady participates in a strike on the Marcus
Islands, then defends itself against a surprise nighttime raid by
Japanese fighters. Some of the photography comes from cameras set up in
the cockpits of American planes, showing first hand what it's like to be
diving through enemy anti-aircraft fire. The film culminates in a major
confrontation with the Imperial Japanese Battle Fleet. In this massive
operation, later dubbed the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," American pilots
downed almost four hundred Japanese Zeros, while incurring only
twenty-two losses themselves.

[video]https://archive.org/details/FightingLady[/video]

 

[austin]

Isn't she the Lexington? On display now as a floating museum at Corpus Christi, Texas and ashamedly, I have never been there or to the Texas Aquarium next door...

 

[BosnMate]

Isn't she the Lexington? On display now as a floating museum at Corpus Christi, Texas and ashamedly, I have never been there or to the Texas Aquarium next door...

Unless there was another commissioned, the Lexington was sunk early in WWII. 1942, battle of Coral Sea I think, without looking it up. There is a famous picture of the ship listing and the sailors on the flight deck eating all the ice-cream, waiting to abandon ship. Don't know if that was true or not, but that was the story then, I remember it, probably from Life Magazine.

 

[BosnMate]

Looked it up, first Lexington CV2 was sunk 8 May 1942. She was badly damaged and had to be sunk by a US destroyer to keep from being captured by the enemy, so the ice-cream story is probably true. The second Lexington CVA 16 was commissioned in 1943, was refitted in the '50's and continued in service into the 60's, finally was decommissioned and made a museum ship in Corpus Christi, Texas.