The Hull on the Ways: The United States in the Two-Ocean War

A Liberty ship stands on the ways at Richmond, California, in 1944. This episode opens on what was at stake if one country had to supply a war on two oceans. It follows American neutrality, the destroyers-for-bases deal, Lend-Lease, the decisions of December 1941, the Atlantic convoys, the Eighth Air Force, the Ardennes, Remagen, and the surrender at Reims. Pearl Harbor, the Norman beaches, the Pacific campaign, and the deck in Tokyo Bay are not retold. No invented quotes, dialogue, or casualty counts. The moving pictures are public-domain United States government film. The launch is the Richmond section of a 1944 United News reel (National Archives Identifier 39018). The Atlantic convoy is unedited Navy film produced in April 1942 (National Archives Identifier 80394). The bombers are the 1944 Army Air Forces film Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (Department of Defense PIN 26134). The winter fighting is the Army Pictorial Service film The Enemy Strikes, on the Ardennes. Remagen is unedited Army Signal Corps film of the bridge after it fell, 17 March 1945 (National Archives Identifier 17400). Still photographs, held as public domain, are mixed with the film: welders on a Liberty ship at Baltimore in 1943, destroyers before transfer to Britain in 1940, Roosevelt and Churchill on the Augusta in August 1941, Roosevelt signing the declarations of war, Alfred Jodl at Reims on 7 May 1945, and a cruiser with carriers of the Pacific fleet in March 1945. Music is an original march written for this video, heard at the opening and the close only. Narration is original. #History #WW2 #UnitedStates #WorldWarII #TwoOceanWar #LendLease