The Battle of Midway (1942)
Plays here · source: YouTube
John Ford's own color footage of the June 1942 naval battle, shot from the roof of Midway's power plant as Japanese bombs fell around him and the base scrambled to defend the atoll.
Ford and his cameraman were wounded filming the Japanese air raid firsthand, so the scorched, unsteady footage in The Battle of Midway is real combat rather than reenactment; Franklin Roosevelt reportedly ordered it into every theater in the country, and it won the first Academy Award ever given for Best Documentary Short.
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