The upcoming Tom Hanks feature Greyhound reminds us of the tremendous fight that was the naval war in World War II. WWII was the last war in which major naval powers squared off against each other. The changing technology meant that battleships, submarines, and aircraft carriers all vied for control of the waves.
Titanic battles, the largest in history, raged all day long. When they were finished, oil burned on the sea and thousands of sailors, alive and dead, were left floating in the waves. Filmmakers have struggled to capture the tremendous scale of these massive battles, but some have succeeded. Here are the ten best naval epics of WWII.
We Dive at Dawn (1943)
Many of the best naval epics were actually shot during the war, including this story of a British submarine crew, released in 1943. We Dive at Dawn sharply juxtaposes the demands of the war against the home lives of the crew, who have their leave abruptly canceled.
This means they have to leave unfinished business ashore and rush to try to sink a newly launched German battleship. The film successfully reproduces the claustrophobic atmosphere aboard a submarine, and expertly uses stock footage intercut with new sequences to construct compelling naval battles.
Midway (1976/2019)
Midway was the battle that truly turned the Pacific War against the Japanese. In this battle, US aircraft carriers managed to ambush a large Japanese Navy group that was seeking to eliminate the carriers which had escaped Pearl Harbor.
However, the US turns the battle against the Japanese, sinking four of their aircraft carriers, a loss the Japanese could not replace. The 1976 dramatization stars Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, and is an exciting epic that captures not just the events, but the feeling of the battle. The 2019 version is also not bad at all, if you don't mind the CGI-heavy production that can make it look almost like World of Warships.
Sink the Bismarck! (1960)
When the German battleship Bismarck launched, it was among the most powerful warships in the world, and the British navy in the Atlantic was unprepared for it. If it could escape into the open sea, it could devastate critical Atlantic shipping.
The story of its sinking is one of the most dramatic high-seas chases ever, and this film captures the excitement. It tells the story from both sides with true human drama. Stock footage, live-action, and exciting models bring the battles to life.
In Which We Serve (1942)
Because the full scope of the war is impossible to capture, many movies try to convey a sense of the war by focusing on a single unit. This is common in army stories like The Big Red One, but it's also the strategy used in In Which We Serve. The movie tries to capture the naval war of WWII as seen through the crew of the British destroyer HMS Torrin.
The story takes place after the ship is actually sunk during a battle in the Mediterranean Sea, but the crew flashes back to several key battles as they cling to a life raft. This includes fighting off Norway and the evacuation of Dunkirk. Although the movie has no big-name stars other than writer/director/actor Noel Coward, the acting is engaging and helps keep the action compelling from beginning to end.
Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)
The cramped quarters of a submarine are pressure-cookers for tensions between men. Juxtaposed against the high-stakes battles taking place around them, these tensions make for great movies. So it's no surprise that there are several of them on this list, including this epic featuring Clarke Gable and Burt Lancaster.
Gable stars as the obsessive commander out for revenge after the Japanese sank his former command. Lancaster is his Lieutenant, who thinks the command should have come to him. Based on a novel written by a WWII naval veteran, both the naval battles and human drama feel realistic.
The Cruel Sea (1952)
One of the challenges of filming naval epics in the postwar period was finding ships to use as settings. In The Cruel Sea, producers were able to purchase the last surviving wartime corvette to use for key sequences in the movie. The movie tells the story of an escort ship trying to protect merchant ships from submarine attack.
Also based on a novel by a WWII veteran, The Cruel Sea highlights many features of the naval war: the initial youth and inexperience of many crews, the divide between sailors and officers, the brutal weather, and the hard choices captains face in trying to lead their ships to victory.
The Enemy Below (1958)
This is another classic movie about the strategic battle between convoy escorts and submarines. This movie, known as Duell im Atlantik in German, focuses on both captains, their crews, and their strategies.
The movie is just far enough removed from the war that the German commander can be seen as a multidimensional character. Curd Jürgens portrays submarine captain Von Stolberg with at least as much empathy as Robert Mitchum gives to destroyer captain Murrell. You're not entirely sure who you want to win.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
The definitive movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! was a joint US-Japanese production, enabling it to represent the battle from both sides. In fact, the even-handedness of this production shows just how close the US-Japanese alliance had grown by this time. However, the cooperation does not diminish the intensity of the battle scenes.
However, this epic goes beyond the immediate field of battle to show how the decisions made by commanders on both sides affected the battle, and the good and bad luck that made the Pearl Harbor raid at once a spectacular success and an abysmal failure since it failed to destroy the US' naval power.
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunkirk may be Christopher Nolan's greatest film. In it, Nolan demonstrates how sci-fi movies can give one a powerful perspective on real-life history. Nolan's experience thinking about time in Interstellar indubitably helped him envision the use of different time scales in Dunkirk, which allows it to so effectively convey the different phases of the battle in a single narrative frame through just a few point-of-view characters.
The movie demonstrates just how critical the navy's response was here, and how the events at Dunkirk turned a feeling of defeat and despair into something very like victory.
Das Boot (1981)
It might seem unusual describing something as epic when it has such a small setting as Das Boot. Most of the movie is set inside the tiny U-96 submarine, just a couple hundred feet long and 30 feet tall. But the emotional scope of the film is incredibly epic, as it puts you through all the rigors of crewing a submarine. This includes the extreme boredom, the cramped conditions, the filth and, above all, the terrible fear of undergoing attack with depth charges.
With an initial length approach 2.5 hours and a 3.5-hour director's cut, the movie is itself a grueling experience, but it's well worth the experience. At least once.