Sea Power in the Pacific 1946 US Navy Training Film MN-6124; World War II

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the US Navy, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_World_War_II

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The United States Navy grew rapidly during World War II from 1941–45, and played a central role in the war against Japan. It also assisted the British Royal Navy in the naval war against Germany and Italy. The largest amphibious invasion of all time was the invasion of France in June 1944. The combatant warships were 79 percent British or Canadian, 17 percent American, and the remainder were from other allies.

The U.S. Navy grew slowly in the years prior to World War II, due in part to international limitations on naval operations in the 1920s. Battleship production restarted in 1937, commencing with the USS North Carolina (BB-55). The navy was able to add to its fleets during the early years of the war while the US was still neutral, increasing production of vessels both large and small, deploying a navy of nearly 350 major combatant ships by December 1941 and having an equal number under construction.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sought naval superiority in the Pacific by sinking the main American battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, which was tactically centered around its battleships. The December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor did knock out the battle fleet, but it did not affect the three U.S. aircraft carriers, which were not present at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack. These became the mainstay of the rebuilt fleet.

Naval doctrine had to be changed quickly. The United States Navy (like the IJN) had followed Alfred Thayer Mahan's emphasis on concentrated groups of battleships as the main offensive naval weapons. The loss of the battleships at Pearl Harbor forced Admiral Ernest J. King, the head of the Navy, to place a primary emphasis on the small number of aircraft carriers.

The U.S. Navy grew tremendously as the United States was faced with a two-front war on the seas. It achieved notable acclaim in the Pacific Theater, where it was instrumental to the Allies' successful "island hopping" campaign. The U.S. Navy fought six great battles with the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN): the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and the Battle of Okinawa.

By war's end in 1945, the United States Navy had added nearly 1,200 major combatant ships, including twenty-seven aircraft carriers, eight "fast" battleships, and ten prewar "old" battleships totaling over 70% of the world's total numbers and total tonnage of naval vessels of 1,000 tons or greater...