“YANKS SMASH TRUK!“ WWII U.S. ATTACK ON JAPANESE BASE AT TRUK OPERATION HAILSTONE (SILENT) 21324b

Want to support this channel and help us preserve old films? Visit Browse our products on Amazon: This WWII film, one of a series of newsreels produced by Castle Films, shows Operation Hailstone -- the U.S. Navy’s assault on “Japan’s Pearl Harbor“ -- the naval base at Truk. Footage shows Task Force 58, which included the fleet carriers USS Yorktown, USS Essex, USS Intrepid, USS Bunker Hill, USS Enterprise, and the light carriers USS Belleau Wood, USS Cabot, USS Monterey, and USS Cowpens as they strike the Japanese base beginning in February of 1944. Extensive gun camera footage is seen in the film, as well as an astounding shot of a carrier plane making a perfect landing on one wheel. Japanese ships sunk during the Truk raid included the light cruisers Agano, Naka, Katori, and the destroyers Akikaze, Mutsukaze, Harusame, Maikaze, Nowaki, Oite, Sutsuki, Shigure, Tachize and Fumizuki. The film ends with footage of American planes returning to t