The Cost of Incompetence
- Episode aired 1998
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Bismarks to Okinawa.
It's a lot of history to cover but the series does its best. Basically, it lays out the development of American air and sea power from its scratch force in 1942 to its massive strength in 1944. The Royal Australian Air Force gets due credit.
The narration is surprisingly candid. "General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz neither like nor respected one another." Some important elisions are also noticeable. Halsey "smashes" Ozawa's decoy force at the battle of Leyte Gulf but no mention of his having been lured away from his station.
Towards the end, Japanese aircraft were being downed wholesale by American pilots. As the narration points out, the American pilots were now better trained and better equipped. But the Japanese narrator isn't given time enough to describe the desperate situation of his home country, an island nation like England, with virtually no resources of its own. The Japanese, like the British, were mostly limited to building different versions of airplanes that had begun the war. The Japanese Army managed to produce some tough, speedy fighters but there were never enough, they came too late, and there was neither time nor fuel adequately to train new pilots. The later version of the Zero, with about 1,000 horsepower, faced Allied aircraft with double that amount.
As the host, William Boyne, points out, the effects of the kamikaze attacks late in the war were far more damaging than were admitted at the time. And as the narrator points out, the older SBD Douglas dive bombers, called "Slow But Deadly" by some of the crew, were replaced by the Curtis SB2C Helldiver. It was not exactly revered. From Wikipedia: "Crew nicknames for the aircraft included the Big-Tailed Beast (or just the derogatory Beast), Two-Cee and Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class (after its designation and partly because of its reputation for having difficult handling characteristics). Neither pilots nor aircraft carrier skippers seemed to like it." The splendid Vought F4U Corsair is said by the narrator to have been called "Whispering Death" by the Japanese, which I regard as nonsense.
Relatively speaking, though, this documentary series takes a refreshingly balanced approach to the subject of air combat. It's not a jingoistic flag waver like the earlier documentaries, "Victory at Sea" or "Crusade in Europe," or even some more recent productions like "Dogfights.
The narration is surprisingly candid. "General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz neither like nor respected one another." Some important elisions are also noticeable. Halsey "smashes" Ozawa's decoy force at the battle of Leyte Gulf but no mention of his having been lured away from his station.
Towards the end, Japanese aircraft were being downed wholesale by American pilots. As the narration points out, the American pilots were now better trained and better equipped. But the Japanese narrator isn't given time enough to describe the desperate situation of his home country, an island nation like England, with virtually no resources of its own. The Japanese, like the British, were mostly limited to building different versions of airplanes that had begun the war. The Japanese Army managed to produce some tough, speedy fighters but there were never enough, they came too late, and there was neither time nor fuel adequately to train new pilots. The later version of the Zero, with about 1,000 horsepower, faced Allied aircraft with double that amount.
As the host, William Boyne, points out, the effects of the kamikaze attacks late in the war were far more damaging than were admitted at the time. And as the narrator points out, the older SBD Douglas dive bombers, called "Slow But Deadly" by some of the crew, were replaced by the Curtis SB2C Helldiver. It was not exactly revered. From Wikipedia: "Crew nicknames for the aircraft included the Big-Tailed Beast (or just the derogatory Beast), Two-Cee and Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class (after its designation and partly because of its reputation for having difficult handling characteristics). Neither pilots nor aircraft carrier skippers seemed to like it." The splendid Vought F4U Corsair is said by the narrator to have been called "Whispering Death" by the Japanese, which I regard as nonsense.
Relatively speaking, though, this documentary series takes a refreshingly balanced approach to the subject of air combat. It's not a jingoistic flag waver like the earlier documentaries, "Victory at Sea" or "Crusade in Europe," or even some more recent productions like "Dogfights.
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- rmax304823
- Jan 20, 2014
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of The Cost of Incompetence (1998) in Australia?
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