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Brian W
Atlanta
GA USA
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Posts: 1225
Joined: 2004
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Greyhound
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Looks good.

Quote:Tom Hanks in charge is always a good look.
The “Saving Private Ryan” star is back in save-the-day mode in the action-heavy first trailer for “Greyhound,” his upcoming World War II drama based on C.S. Forester’s 1955 novel “The Good Shepherd.”
In the early days of the war, Navy Capt. Ernest Krause (Hanks) is entrusted with his first command of a U.S. destroyer (code name: Greyhound) protecting an Allied convoy of 37 ships as it crosses the Atlantic. Things don’t go as planned, of course, and the Allies find themselves fending off packs of Nazi submarines in murky waters, while a stoic Hanks vows to “bring hell down from on high” on the attackers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyzxu26-Wqk [Read More]
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"Take it easy. But take it" - Tom Morello's mom.
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Michigan Dave
Muskegon
MI USA
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Posts: 8067
Joined: 2006
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Greyhound
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Hi Brian,
I was just about to post the trailer, & my endorsement, but you beat me to it!?
Count me in as a fan of this Hank's WWII Navy flick! MD
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"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
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Wazza
Sydney
Australia
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Posts: 797
Joined: 2005
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Greyhound
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I'll wait till it comes out before making any judgements or comments.............................................
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G David Bock
Lynden
WA USA
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Posts: 480
Joined: 2020
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Greyhound
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16 Jul 20, 14:20
This movie and subject of the USS Kidd and convoys are among articles in current issue of Naval History. Some can be accessed at the USNI website, but most require you be a member/subscriber. https://www.usni.org/
[Read More] https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2020/august/making-sure-we-were-authentic
God illustration/cut-away of a Fletcher class DD, but a bit large to reproduce here, so try this link; [Read More] https://www.usni.org/sites/default/files/Caiella-NH-MJ-20-illustration.jpg
[Read More] https://forums.armchairgeneral.com/forum/books-film-and-media/film-dvd-and-tv/5208031-now-showing-greyhound
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TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
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Wazza
Sydney
Australia
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Posts: 797
Joined: 2005
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Greyhound
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So it was alright as a Navy movie. Nice that it featured Commonwealth ships also doing escort duty and not just the US Navy as some of us feared..
Typical Hollywood Nazis, poor tactics and stupid decisions, and the taunting via radio???? Really!
Historically its a bit meh, but, as a war movie I give it a thumbs up.
Would have liked to see a little more of the ordinary ratings and their living conditions etc. Especially a couple of scenes on the Flower Class corvette. Nice that we do get to see it doing its thing!
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G David Bock
Lynden
WA USA
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Posts: 480
Joined: 2020
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Greyhound
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Part of a genre' that goes back to the movie, also based on a book, "The Enemy Below"; .... The Enemy Below is a 1957 DeLuxe Color war film in CinemaScope, which tells the story of the battle between an American destroyer escort and a German U-boat during World War II. The movie stars Robert Mitchum and Curt Jürgens as the American and German commanding officers, respectively, and was directed and produced by Dick Powell. The film was based on a novel by Denys Rayner, a British naval officer involved in anti-submarine warfare throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. .... [Read More] (movie) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_Below
The Enemy Below is a story of a battle at sea, written by Denys Rayner. It is fiction, but based on the author’s experiences during the Battle of the Atlantic. It was published in 1956.
It was filmed in 1957 with Robert Mitchum and Curd Jürgens, but the film made major changes to characters and action, including making the destroyer an American ship. .... [Read More] (novel) .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_Below_(novel) ............................
Followed about a decade later with a similar story/plot, but with a Cold War twist, especially the ending;
The Bedford Incident (aka Aux Postes De Combat) is a 1965 British-American Cold War film starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier and co-produced by Widmark. The cast also features Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam and Wally Cox, as well as early appearances by Donald Sutherland and Ed Bishop. The screenplay by James Poe is based on the 1963 book by Mark Rascovich, which borrowed from the plot of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; at one point in the film, the captain is advised he is "not chasing whales now".[1][2][3][4][5] The film was directed by James B. Harris, who, until then, had been best known as Stanley Kubrick's producer. ..... Actual Cold War incident
In October 1962, shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet submarine B-59 was pursued in the Atlantic Ocean by the U.S. Navy. When the Soviet vessel failed to surface, the destroyers began dropping training depth charges. Unlike in The Bedford Incident, the Americans were not aware that the B-59 was armed with a T-5 nuclear torpedo. The Soviet captain, believing that World War III might have started, wanted to launch the weapon but was over-ruled by his flotilla commander, Vasili Arkhipov, who, by coincidence, was using the boat as his command vessel. After an argument, it was agreed that the submarine would surface and await orders from Moscow. It was not until after the fall of the Soviet Union that the weapon's existence and how close the world came to nuclear conflict was made known. ..... [Read More] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedford_Incident
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TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
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G David Bock
Lynden
WA USA
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Posts: 480
Joined: 2020
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Greyhound
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EXCERPT/QUOTE: .... The Good Shepherd (1955) is a nautical and war novel by C. S. Forester. It illustrates the difficulties of the Atlantic war: the struggle against the sea, the enemy, and the exhaustion brought on by constant vigilance. It also details the problems of the early radar and ASDIC equipment available and the poor communications between the fleet and Admiralty using HF Radio & early manual cryptography. ....... Plot summary
The hero of The Good Shepherd is Commander Krause, the captain of the fictional US Navy Mahan-class destroyer USS Keeling in World War II. Krause is in overall command of an escort force protecting an Atlantic convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic, shepherding it through the Mid-Atlantic gap where no antisubmarine aircraft are able to defend convoys. He finds himself in a difficult position. The voyage in question occurs early in 1942, shortly after the United States's entry into the war. Although he is a career Navy officer, with many years of seniority, this is Krause's first wartime mission. The captains of the other vessels in the escort group are junior to him in rank, and much younger, but they have been at war for over two years.
The story covers 13 watches (52 hours) aboard the ship's bridge and is told in third person entirely from Krause's point of view as he fights to save his ship, detailing his mood swings from his intense and focused excitement and awareness during combat to his resulting fatigue, depression, and self-doubt as his self-perceived inferiority and inexperience to the other captains under his command troubles him (although as the story progresses he is shown to be quite capable). He broods over his career; his wife left him partly because of his strict devotion to duty. He is troubled when the press of duty forces him to neglect his prayers (unlike most of Forester's other heroes, Krause is devout). He is troubled by recollections that the Navy review board had twice passed him over for promotion, returning a judgement of fitted and retained due to little or no opportunity in the prewar Navy. His promotion to Commander only came when the United States entered the war, leading him to fear that he may be unsuited to his command.
The book also focuses on the intense combat between the Keeling and multiple U-boats, with the Keeling eventually racking up multiple kills, and on the ship's daring rescue missions as the convoy increasingly falls prey to the U-boats, all in a race against time to escape the undefended stretches of the Atlantic. The book is a rich, detailed accounting of Naval warfare, ship handling, and the inner logic of an experienced officer wrestling with the many minute judgments necessary to maintain rigid discipline during conditions of relentless tedium punctuated with extreme danger. ...... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Shepherd_(novel) [Read More]
.............. Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 – 2 April 1966), known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars. The Hornblower novels "A Ship of the Line" and "Flying Colours" were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1938. His other works include "The African Queen" (1935; turned into a 1951 film by John Huston) and "The Good Shepherd" (1955; turned into a 2020 film, Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks). ..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Forester [Read More]
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TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
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G David Bock
Lynden
WA USA
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Posts: 480
Joined: 2020
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Greyhound
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Originally posted by warmoviebuff View Post [Read More] https://forums.armchairgeneral.com/forum/books-film-and-media/film-dvd-and-tv/5208031-now-showing-greyhound?p=5212803#post5212803
I think they made it a Fletcher class in the movie because the Kidd was Fletcher class. They were much more likely to catch grief over calling it a Mahan class when visually it was not than from book fans objecting. FWIW, the Mahan class was several years earlier than the Fletcher's, and significantly different in design and armament; .... The Mahan-class destroyers of the United States Navy were a series of 18 destroyers of which the first 16 were laid down in 1934. The last two of the 18, Dunlap and Fanning (this pair laid down in 1935), are sometimes considered a separate ship class. All 18 were commissioned in 1936 and 1937. Mahan was the lead ship, named for Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, an influential historian and theorist on sea power.
The Mahans featured improvements over previous destroyers, with 12 torpedo tubes, superimposed gun shelters, and generators for emergency use. The Standard displacement increased from 1,365 tons to 1,500 tons. The class introduced a new steam propulsion system that combined increases in pressure and temperature with a new type of lightweight steam turbine, which proved simpler and more efficient than the Mahans' predecessors—so much so that it was used on many subsequent wartime US destroyers.
All 18 ships saw action in World War II, entirely in the Pacific Theater, which included the Guadalcanal Campaign, and the battles of the Santa Cruz Islands, Leyte Gulf, and Iwo Jima. Their participation in major and secondary campaigns included the bombardment of beachheads, amphibious landings, task force screening, convoy and patrol duty, and anti-aircraft and submarine warfare. Six ships were lost in combat and two were expended in the postwar Operation Crossroads nuclear tests. The remainder were decommissioned, sold, or scrapped after the war; none remain today. Collectively, the ships received 111 battle stars for their World War II service. ....

USS Mahan circa 1938 Name: Mahan class Builders:
United Shipyards, Inc. Bath Iron Works Federal Shipbuilding Boston Navy Yard Philadelphia Navy Yard Norfolk Navy Yard Puget Sound Navy Yard Mare Island Navy Yard
Operators: United States Navy Preceded by: Porter class Succeeded by: Gridley class Subclasses: Dunlap (DD-384 and DD-385) Built: 1934–37 In commission: 1936–46 Completed: 18 Lost: 6 Retired: 12 Type: Destroyer Displacement:
1,500 long tons (1,524 t) (standard) 1,725 long tons (1,753 t) (deep load) 2,103 long tons (2,137 t) (full load)
Length: 341' 3" ft (104.0 m) Beam: 35' 6" ft (10.8 m) Draft: 10 feet 7 inches (3.2 m) Installed power:
46,000 shp (34,000 kW) (trials) 4 Babcock & Wilcox or Foster Wheeler boilers
Propulsion: 2 General Electric steam turbines Speed: 37 knots (69 km/h) Range: 6,940 nmi (12,850 km; 7,990 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) Complement: 158 (peacetime) 250 (wartime) officers and enlisted men Armament:
As built: 5 × 5 inch/38 caliber (127 mm) guns in five Mark 21 DP pedestal mounts. Mounts 51 and 52 were partially enclosed, and mounts 53, 54, and 55 were open. 12 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (533 mm) (3 × 4). One tube mount was on the centerline between the stacks, and the other two were port and starboard just behind the aft stack. 4 × .50 caliber machine guns (12.7 mm). Two on a platform just forward and below the bridge, and two on a deck house just forward of 5" mount No. 54. 2 × Depth charge roll-off stern racks.
The Mahan-class destroyers of the United States Navy were a series of 18 destroyers of which the first 16 ...... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahan-class_destroyer [Read More]
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TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
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Brian Grafton
Victoria
BC Canada
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Posts: 4717
Joined: 2004
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Greyhound
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Just to sort things out a bit. It’s great to get some background on “Greyhound”, and to get references to other films. But the 1956 novel by Denys Raynor, Enemy Below, was a fictionalized account of HMS Hecate’s wartime encounter with a U-boat.
Likewise, C.S Forster’s Good Shepherd is based on RN actions. Forster wrote some good yarns about RN action in WW2, as well as his classic “Hornblower” series. One of my favourites is The Ship, concerning an RN vessel, light cruiser HMS Artemis on convoy duty to Malta in 1943. I first read it in the 1950s while in 8th Grade; well worth reading still, I would assume.
Like Trevor (see the thread on “Barbaren”), I don’t really expect historical accuracy in films, whether in narrative or equipment. But it seems to me that concern about authenticity should start with identifying the navy involved.
I have both a daughter and a clutch of friends in the film industry. Except when talking about documentaries (and even then, in some instances), they would say that what sells is drama, not history. You do what you must do to sell an expensive product to sufficient viewers that production costs can be vastly outstripped by box office. When you turn a British encounter into an American one, there is little point in arguing whether the ship used is accurately identified. At that point, it’s all fiction anyway.
Just some passing thoughts.
Cheers. And stay safe. bg
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"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Walt Kelly.
"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things" Bumper sticker.
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john hayward
Keene
NH USA
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Posts: 921
Joined: 2004
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Greyhound
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Brian Late to the dance. The film needed about 30 minutes of running time. The book was able to give some background into Hank's charactor and could have explained some of the other officers' reactions on the bridge. Especially when the order is given to turn away from the sub contact. The one officer looks at the con who appears to hesitate. Why? The book gives you some reason. Overall though I enjoyed the movie
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"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
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