VICTORY AT SEA

[Music] in the North Atlantic the submarines found good hunting war have come again to your world war 2 the sea was a battleground on control of the sea hung the survival of freedom the fate of man if the ship's enough of them got through isolated England might live if the ship's enough of them was sunk England would starve Europe would die the soil of Europe exists for those who possess the force to take it so said Adolf Hitler the dictator of Nazi Germany and with naked force he seized the soil of Europe in Poland in Norway in Belgium in Holland in France those who want to live he said let them fight those who do not want to fight but do not deserve to live you [Applause] [Music] driven off the continent by the German armies driven underground at home by the German air force the British stood alone in the path of Nazi countries through the Battle of Britain through days and nights of unceasing terror from the sky the people rallied to the trumpet call of Winston Churchill we shall never surrender it was Britain's finest hour [Music] [Applause] and the fire that swept London ignited the world after years of aggression and expansion in the Far East after months of diplomatic tension with the United States the Empire of Japan struck struck in secret and with stealth in the remote Pacific it was the dawn of X day the day of infamy the pilots of the Rising Sun had their orders advance into Hawaiian waters and upon the very opening of hostilities attacked the main force of the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor [Music] Honolulu a sleepy tropical Sunday morning flying weather good visibility clear life was just beginning to stir on the unsuspecting island [Music] ten minutes to 8:00 on December 7th 1941 yeah Oh [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the behind them a shattered fleet and the United States at war before them the domination of all Southeast Asia glory was their goal glory for the Emperor and oil and rubber and rice for a victorious Japan [Music] Manila and Malaya cavite and Corregidor Singapore and Sumatra Borneo and Bataan the haunting names of the Far East became a swelling chorus of Japanese conquest Banzai [Applause] Japan Germany Italy east and west it was there are the bells rang out and the swastika waved and the song was sung Deutschland Deutschland uber alles the new order had come it was adult Hitler's hour and there were high matters of state to settle with his fascist partner Benito Mussolini of Italy division of spoils further conquests the little figurehead King Victor Emmanuel joined in the pomp and ceremony that veiled the brutal realities of dictatorship force terror all nations in bondage and the song was sung today Europe belongs to us tomorrow the world the Fuhrer and you'll duty not only did they command vast armies and air forces the powerful navies who ships were a grave and growing menace to the precarious sea lanes on which the survival of democracy now depended and Emperor Hirohito third leader of the axis whose target was the world his was the navy that had never known defeat the Magnificent Imperial fleet which after Pearl Harbor extended its way over the greatest of oceans to realize her ancient dream of domination to hold and extend her sweeping conquests throughout all Asia Imperial Japan looked to her navy the ships the men the planes the guns that had challenged the United States to mortal combat a generation of Americans had a rendezvous with destiny a nation of 140 million people rose to meet the challenge and keep that rendezvous in one enormous urn the whole country threw off the letter G's of peace and girded itself physically and morally for global war it was America's finest hour [Music] they hadn't asked for it they didn't want it they came in their millions from the towns and the cities from the farms and the streets the rich and the poor to answer the call together in the great Fellowship of war they faced a common future in distant places with uncommon nails vulnera and gone port moresby and no mere Tuilagi and Guadalcanal for those names and many another their lives and their deaths would be forever linked the wars longest ocean lifeline 6,000 miles of open sea stretched from the west coast of America to the east coasts of New Zealand and Australia across the International Dateline over the equator beneath the Southern Cross the United States reached out to join her allies and meet the common enemy [Music] after days of boredom after weeks of tedium the orders went out to the crowded cramped Marines assault seize and hold the obscure island of Guadalcanal whose enemy airfield threatened to cut allied communications to the South Pacific on August 7 1942 exactly eight months after Pearl Harbor the United States of America began its first offensive action against the Empire of Japan [Music] land the landing force and in they went the Marines unopposed a first by an enemy who forfeited the beaches the beaches but not the junk the jungle a place of menace and mystery where wild orchids flourished and cockatoos screeched 90 tangled miles of it reeking with rock disease and decay and now it began the toil and the terror that made Guadalcanal not a name but an emotion there was the enemy savage but unseen there was the enemy unseen but everywhere [Music] [Music] you [Music] many a jungle in many an island battle the Americans met savagery with savagery all from the South Pacific with their Australian and New Zealand allies other Marines and other soldiers fought for other bases and other islands New Georgia and Bougainville Bella lamella and Cape Gloucester and all the way up the coast of New Guinea they fought and they fought and they fought [Music] in all the history of human slaughter few troops ever endured such scourging as the soldiers sailors and Marines and the Solomon Islands in you Guinea but if there was horror and ferocity there was also courage and self-sacrifice if there was death filth and disease those men met their enemy and stalked him and first turned the tide of war they kept thereunto who those men those grim men those old young men and on Guadalcanal there was a lonely grave whose epitaph spoke for them all and when he goes to heaven to st. Peter he will tell another marine reporting sir I've served my time in hell [Music] but the storm just beginning in the Pacific had long been raging in the Mediterranean after the fall of France Great Britain's Royal Navy held the crucial battle line along from Gibraltar east to Suez 1,800 miles of tempestuously disputed sea where the fate of Empires hung in the balance your deal was great the odds impossible but officers and men remember the ancient words it is upon the Navy under the good Providence of God that the wealth safety and strength of the kingdom do chiefly depend [Music] to keep the Empire's lifeline open against the combined sea and air power of Germany and Italy to support the Allied troops now fighting in North Africa to sink the ship supplying the Axis armies now hell-bent for Suez that was their mission in the great tradition of Drake and Nelson never counting the cost they set themselves to master it [Music] the Italian surface fleet deployed in three Swift squadrons were skilled in manoeuvre and gunnery and manned by able crews of calabria off Cape spotted in tow at the Battle of meta Pam Italian and British warships converged and clashed in a series of sea battles whose life may never be seen again hold to hold gun to gun engagements that decided the fate of the Mediterranean [Music] [Applause] [Music] the cost was great the struggle long and narrow but the axis ships went down sunk with all their supplies without which the Axis armies in North Africa could not survive defeated at sea the Germans and Italians were strangled on the trackless desert sands they had come to conquer [Music] storming out of the east driving in from the West allied troops closed the pincers that crushed the axis in Africa and the whole free world rang with the words of Winston Churchill it is not yet the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning now there was something new in the war in North Africa as well as its Stalingrad long lines of axis prisoners whom the war was already over [Music] and not by Eastern Windows only when daylight comes comes in the light in front the Sun climbs slow how slowly but Westwood looks the land is bright from the fields and shops and factories of America from the arsenal of democracy not producing full blast the war supplies came pouring out in floods and torrents but producing it pouring it out piling it up was only the beginning it would all be useless worthless unless the ships could carry it soonest where it was needed most first and last delivering the goods was the basic job of World War two [Music] for the Atlantic convoys the war began just beyond the harbor as the ships sailed into open sea out where the weather brewed its fury out where the submarines bred death [Music] vigilance mounted intention grew when the convoys reached the waters where the u-boats prowled the strain of maintaining station never ceased the ship that straggled behind was certain to be sunk there was no safety no haven anywhere friendly planes provided cover for the convoys wherever possible submarines dared not surface or attack with aircraft overhead but beyond the reach of any sky patrol lay a vast mid-ocean gap the sailors called it the black pit it was the terror of the North Atlantic [Music] and there were other terrors Park the ancient curse of Mariners which intensified all the hazards of a hostile sea reducing speed favoured the enemy but collision would be fatal the convoy had no choice but to slow down a dangerous desperate measure all that endurance and courage all that skill & seamanship couldn't do was done often too often it wasn't enough watchdogs submarines stalk the convoys shadowed them plotted their speed and course and radioed the fatal information to German naval headquarters on the coast of occupied France prelude to slaughter at sea Admiral called doughnuts in command of submarine warfare skillfully used the data to devise his attack reckoning the positions of his u-boats in relation to the oncoming convoy he organized them into a striking force called a Wolfpack and orders came to all the submarines in the area rendezvous and take station in the path of the approaching ships where the Wolfpack deployed around the convoy giving each skipper his share of the Spoils victory said Adolph Hitler depends on destroying the greatest possible amount of Allied shipping the u-boat will in the end decide the outcome of the war [Music] ah you [Music] mmm [Applause] [Music] [Music] but then with improved detection methods with new tactics and new weapons the tide gradually turned in the Battle of the Atlantic by pooling their brains and their resources the navies of the United States Great Britain and Canada made the Atlantic even more deadly for the submarines than the submarines have made it for the convoys [Music] we you deeper deeper deeper they dive seeking safety below [Music] a fatal wound this you vote like 800 of our sister ships will never kill again so the convoys came through the ships most of them the sailors most of them reached the far shores the distant ports an unbroken bridge of ships spanned all the oceans linking the arsenal of democracy with those who fought for democracy see Naples and die an old saying took on new meaning thousands of Allied soldiers and sailors died for the port of Naples at Sicily and Salerno at Anzio but it became a major base for the masses of supplies and men that would break the German grip on Italy [Music] in from the coast up from the South the Allied armies flowed together and began their march the march on Rome for Italy destruction and defeat with a legacy of fascism of dictatorship Italy was knocked out of the war and Benito Mussolini's dream of empire collapsed in the rubble of a hundred towns and the graves of unnumbered men North with the Germans fled Northland to dig in and fight and fight hard again but Rome was free free again wrong the city of all time and of all the world and all the world had seemed came marching into Rome on that fourth day of June 1944 the Americans came the British came the Canadians and Greeks and Indians and Irish the Moroccan poles Brazilians Dutch and Italians - an army that spoke 40 different languages all with a single meaning it'll a was free free of the fascist yoke people was free my [Applause] No just two days later them on the English Channel and even more historic event was in the making and another prayer was offered up a prayer which echoed the words of General Eisenhower the supreme Allied commander let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking it was the day called Dee from Falmouth and from Portland from Plymouth from Weymouth from a dozen different ports tents men and torch ships sailed to Normandy Operation Overlord the invasion of Europe the greatest amphibious assault in all history [Music] you [Music] you [Music] and waiting for them across the narrow English Channel the ultimate barrier Hitler's Atlantic Wall massive guardian of festung Europa the fortress of Europe mile after mile of concrete and steel bristling with cannon studded with armand manned by sixty Nazi divisions and the beaches were strewn with death for any who dared transgress but there was no roof on the fortress of Europe and all-out assault from the air was the overture to attack from the sea Allied planes by the hundreds by the thousands wiped the German Luftwaffe from the sky and pulverized it on the ground every road every Bridge every railway from the coast of France all the way back to Germany itself was smashed paralyzing enemy troop movements cutting off the beaches from reinforcements isolating the Atlantic Wall [Music] [Applause] [Music] the mightiest Armada ever assembled four thousand ships two hundred thousand men bore down on the coast of Normandy as HR approached in combat information centres gunnery officers picked out their targets plotted the range allied men of war prepared to open the Western Front h-hour of d-day June 6 1944 the supreme climax of the European war [Music] [Music] [Music] order of the day from the supreme commander soldiers of the Allied expeditionary force the eyes of the world are upon you the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere go with you good luck [Music] and and the order of the tape also said your task will not be an easy one your enemy is well trained well equipped and battle-hardened he will fight savagely he did [Music] and the German commander said the war will be won on the beaches but his troops could not destroy the invaders their masses of men their mountains of equipment fast enough the Atlantic wall was brilliant the bloody beaches secured and onto those beaches the unchallenged Allied navies day after day poured more weapons and more supplies and more troops for the Great Crusade the liberation of Europe ahead late Paris and the roar and the Rhine ahead lay one final and terrible year of war but Nazi Germany was doomed behind them the beaches strewn with the bodies of those who died to enslave the world and those who died to free it and so it was with the beaches of the world all over the world in the Central Pacific the ships and their sailors the planes and their pilots the landing troops had profoundly altered the course of the war they rested 800,000 square miles of ocean area from the enemy's grip Tarawa Raja Lane anyway talk sacrifice victory war and all over the Pacific American submarines had one prime objective sink the Japanese Merchant Marine for the island empire would survive only as long as her ships could feed her at home and sustain her armies abroad so the merchant ships went down 1392 of them [Music] japanese survivors counted up the mounting toll of their disaster six million tons of shipping sent to the bottom [Music] fifty-two United States submarines would never return their epitaph overdue presumed missing but for those that survived the longley patrols and enemy waters it was back to the barn back to Pearl Harbor back to Pearl with the enemy threat to Hawaii long past it meant time out from war for the men of the fleet it meant time for hula girls and flowered leis and fun [Music] Oh [Music] for most of the 11 million Americans in uniform the war was one long wait boredom and routine in remote rear areas where no guns boom but for the assault troops one thing was certain no matter how bad any given island may have been the next one was sure to be worse as the drive toward Tokyo called for yet more fire and yet more blood on yet more distant islands [Music] not all the battles of the Pacific were fought against the Japanese there were other trials to endure and none worse than an angry ocean lashed by typhoons eternal father's strong to save whose arm hath bound the Restless wave who bids the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep o hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril [Music] yeah [Music] ah [Music] with the fast carriers in the vanguard the darkened troop ships slipped through the long Pacific Knights toward enemy islands toward ominous shores with Dawn would come the test of combat your deal by fire [Music] soldiers are sworn for action they must win some flaming fatal climax with their lives soldiers are dreams when the guns begin they think of file at homes clean beds and wives