History Film / Midway

** "They sacrifice themselves like samurai, these Americans."

* YouAreInCommandNow: Halsey is ill and recommends Spruance for command of his part of the fleet.

* MagicalNativeAmerican: Lampshaded. An American pilot says that his commander has a better chance of finding enemy ships by virtue of having Sioux ancestors.

** Waldron really did bring this up frequently. There may have been some truth to this, he broke formation and led his men straight to the Japanese Fleet (Torpedo 8 was the only Hornet squadron to find the enemy that morning). He and 28 of his men died in their attack.

** As Yamamoto says, "I am the only one who must apologize to his majesty"

* DeathFromAbove: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Dive Bombers]] were used by both sides, most family the American Dauntless dive bombers which devastated the Japanese carrier force due to showing up at exactly the worst time for the Japanese defenders.

* StockFootage: quite a bit of the attacks on US ships are taken from 1944-45 Kamikaze attacks. One plane returning to the ''Yorktown'' that crash lands and falls apart is a famous 1944 carrier landing on the ''Essex''
** Most of the combat footage you see is real, taken by Navy cameramen. Of course, very little if any is actually from the Midway air battle itself.
*** There's no known footage extant from the carriers of either side (though famously there is from Midway Island itself)[[note]]Filmed by Creator/JohnFord and his unit, that's right, John Ford was within 200 miles of the battle, but only got land footage (which still won an Oscar). WhatCouldHaveBeen[[/note]]. The Japanese carrier Akagi had a newsreel cameraman named Teiuchi Makishima onboard, but his footage of the attacks on the carrier Kaga and the vessel he was on were lost when he abandoned ship. There's perishingly few photographs of the Japanese ships from the battle at all, taken almost entirely from B-17s. Frustratingly, pictures were taken from an Enterprise dive-bomber during the actual attack, but short on fuel, the plane landed on the first carrier it could find... which wound up being the Yorktown. Shortly thereafter, the Yorktown was sunk and the pictures lost.
** They also reused a lot of footage from ''[[ToraToraTora Tora! Tora! Tora!]]'' which miffed the ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'' director.
** A lot of the combat footage is StockFootage from war films by EijiTsuburaya such as ''Storm over the Pacific'' and ''Attack Squadron''.

The campaign is shown from both sides perspective and shows the Japanese as honorable and brave enemies. History is mostly followed though there are some inaccuracies notably Kamikaze's being used at Midway; while it was not unknown throughout the war for downed planes of both sides to crash into an enemy ship in a TakingYouWithMe gesture Kamikazes were never official policy even in Japan until toward the end, and they would have been fairly rare. It may be a case of being betrayed by the StockFootage, as most of the color footage filmed in World War II was late in the War, and scenes from Leyte Gulf and the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa (when Kamikazes were in use) are used for this battle.

** ...which is TruthInTelevision

* ConflictingLoyalty: Haruko's family is falsely accused of this by TheGovernment. To be fair to them there is some evidence in the father's background; namely he has an honor-debt to an old friend who is a Japanese Nationalist and has back issues of Japanese patriotic periodicals(possibly no more then "ethnic heritage" magazines of the type that can be found in large bookstores today but never explained). At the time TheGovernment would unfortunately think the whole thing looked suspiciously like a HoneyTrap.

* StarCrossedLovers: Garth's son and Haruko.

* AirstrikeImpossible: Infamously, Torpedo 8's attack on the Japanese fleet, with no escort or dive bomber support.[[note]]In theory, an attack on an enemy fleet would be carried out by torpedo bombers at low altitude, dive bombers from above, and escorting fighters dealing with the enemy air support, in order to divide the defenders' attention, but the American planes ended up separated that day[[/note]] During the battle, Torpedo 8 was effectively wiped out, with only three men and one plane surviving. Two other torpedo squadrons fared little better that day, even with fighter support. Torpedoes of the day required the bomber to fly slowly at low altitude in order to properly release the torpedo, all while enemy AntiAir gunners and fighter escorts did everything they could to blast them out of the air.

* AFatherToHisMen: Admirals Nimitz, Nagumo and Yamamoto

* HeyItsThatGuy: [[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Monk Gyatso]] is apparently an Imperial Japanese Naval Officer.

* {{Determinator}}: Matt Garth's son flies a crippled fighter back to his carrier after being [[NightmareFuel half burned alive]].

A war film from 1976 about the UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Battle of Midway. It was a grand production with such stars as CharltonHeston and Henry Fonda. It had two intertwining threads, one following the Battle itself and the other following the fictional American officer Captain Matt Garth whose son is a fighter pilot who is at this inconvenient time engaged with Haruko Sakura, a Nisei ("second generation," an American child of Japanese immigrants) girl.

*** There's no known footage extant from the carriers of either side (though famously there is from Midway Island itself)[[note]]Filmed by JohnFord and his unit, that's right, John Ford was within 200 miles of the battle, but only got land footage (which still won an Oscar). WhatCouldHaveBeen[[/note]]. The Japanese carrier Akagi had a newsreel cameraman named Teiuchi Makishima onboard, but his footage of the attacks on the carrier Kaga and the vessel he was on were lost when he abandoned ship. There's perishingly few photographs of the Japanese ships from the battle at all, taken almost entirely from B-17s. Frustratingly, pictures were taken from an Enterprise dive-bomber during the actual attack, but short on fuel, the plane landed on the first carrier it could find... which wound up being the Yorktown. Shortly thereafter, the Yorktown was sunk and the pictures lost.

A war film in 1976 about the [[WorldWarII Battle of Midway]]. It was a grand production with such stars as CharltonHeston and Henry Fonda. It had two intertwining threads, one following the Battle itself and the other following the fictional American officer Captain Matt Garth whose son is a fighter pilot who is at this inconvenient time engaged with Haruko Sakura, a Nisei ("second generation," an American child of Japanese immigrants) girl.

!!This work provides examples of:

** "They sacrifice themselves like samurai, these Americans."

* OldSchoolDogfighting

* ShotByShotRemake: Much of the scenes involving Yamamoto are reshoots of scenes from two earlier war films, ''Admiral Yamamoto'' and ''A Turning Point In Showa History: The Militarists'' in English language with some actor changes.

** Most of the combat footage you see is real, taken from various newsreels. Of course, very little if any is actually from the Midway air battle itself.

A war film in 1976 about the [[WorldWarII Battle of Midway]]. It was a grand production with such stars as Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda. It had two intertwining threads, one following the Battle itself and the other following the fictional American officer Captain Matt Garth whose son is a fighter pilot who is at this inconvenient time engaged with Haruko Sakura, a Nisei ("second generation," an American child of Japanese immigrants) girl.

*** There's no known footage extant from the carriers of either side (though famously there is from Midway Island itself). The Japanese carrier Akagi had a newsreel cameraman named Teiuchi Makishima onboard, but his footage of the attacks on the carrier Kaga and the vessel he was on were lost when he abandoned ship. There's perishingly few photographs of the Japanese ships from the battle at all, taken almost entirely from B-17s. Frustratingly, pictures were taken from an Enterprise dive-bomber during the actual attack, but short on fuel, the plane landed on the first carrier it could find... which wound up being the Yorktown. Shortly thereafter, the Yorktown was sunk and the pictures lost.

* BatmanGambit: It is suspected that the code word AF means "Midway". Therefore Midway is instructed to radio in the clear that it is short of fresh water in the hope that the Japanese intercept it and radio it back.