This Man's Navy

This Man's Navy (1945)

Love and Laughs and Roaring Action!

During World War II, Chief Aviation Pilot Ned Trumpet is in charge of an airship at Lakehurst, New Jersey naval base. Trumpet orders an unauthorized and premature attack on a German submarine but the bomb misses and the submarine fires back, hitting the airship. Trumpet takes over the controls and sinks the submarine, The pilot faces a court-martial for disobeying orders but the older man takes the blame for his actions. Weaver transfers to the Ferry Command, and while on assignment in Burma, his aircraft crashes in Japanese territory. Trumpet rushes to the scene with a rescue team. Both are successfully brought out and are decorated for their heroism. Afterward, Weaver indicates that he will be returning to the lighter-than-air service in Lakehurst, to reunite with his "father".

Date of release
1945-01-04
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Adventure, Drama, War
Director
William A. Wellman

Casting

Interesting facts

This Man's Navy is a 1945 World War II film about U.S. Navy blimps directed by William A. Wellman and starring Wallace Beery, Tom Drake, Jan Clayton and James Gleason. The supporting cast features Selena Royle and Beery's brother Noah Beery Sr., and presents a rare opportunity to see both Beery brothers work together in their later years. The picture is also one of the very few films, other than training films, to depict U.S. Navy airship operations.

Production

This Man's Navy was an example of Hollywood's efforts during World War II to spotlight every branch of the U.S. military. Wallace Beery, commissioned a lieutenant commander in the US Navy Reserve in the 1930s, was instrumental in convincing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce the film as a tribute to the US Navy's lighter-than-air (LTA) operations.

The majority of scenes set at a U.S. naval LTA base were filmed at the Naval Lighter-Than-Air Station in Santa Ana, California, whose enormous wooden blimp hangars were among the largest free-standing structures used in Hollywood production at the time. Santa Ana provided the backdrop for both daytime operations and complex nighttime interior scenes requiring extensive lighting and rigging.

To depict the overseas segment of the story, the former Naval Auxiliary Air Facility Del Mar in San Diego County was repurposed to stand in for the Chittagong base. The relatively undeveloped Del Mar site allowed the production team to construct temporary structures, dress the surroundings with Southeast Asian set dressing, and stage action scenes representing the rescue mission in Burma.

Additional aerial and stock footage of K-class airships in flight was captured at Naval Air Station Moffett Field in Northern California. A few scenes were also filmed at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Technical advisors from the U.S. Navy—including Lt. Comdr. Clyde E. Schetter, Lt. Fred M. Lloyd, and blimp manufacturer representative Hugh Allen—all contributed to the production. A U.S.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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