 To Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. This is movies we can learn from. And we're reviewing the Greyhound movie, which is a very interesting experience with history in the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942. A remarkable movie about an American destroyer. It comes from a book. And so there are parts of it that are accurate fact taken out of history. There are parts of it that come from a book. C.S. Forrester, The Good Shepherd. And I guess that means that this destroyer, by the name of Greyhound, was a shepherd for the convoys crossing the Atlantic. So for this discussion, we have Shackley Rufero, associated with the Marine Corps, and the Navy. And I get that right. Yes. And okay. And Michael Wiry, who had a career in the Navy and has a lot of shipboard experience. And we are going to talk about that. So let's begin with you, Shackley. What's the historical context of all this battle of the Atlantic? Why isn't something we should know about, and if we don't, we need to learn about? Well, it's a huge subject. Let me start by saying that. So I probably won't do it justice. But basically, it was the longest continuous battle of World War II. I don't think a lot of people realize that. It started in September 1939 when Britain declared war on Germany after Germany attacked Poland and didn't end until the very end of the war in 1945. And it basically involved the Allies and before the US got into the war, including the US on a pretty high level in Canada, supplying materials through merchant vessels to England because England was becoming isolated. And after Hitler lost the Battle of Britain, which was in the summer and fall of 1940, where he thought he could attack Britain and subdue it by air and then land in Britain when he gave that up and then turned against Russia, he decided that he could use naval assets, naval and air assets, to starve Britain into submission by stopping the flow of materials from the Allies and from the Dominions and the rest of the British Empire, places like India and Salon and places like that. And the Germans tried to do that by using U-boats. We use that term, but it's actually under Z-boat, which is German for undersea boat and Churchill actually coined that term. So we're going to call those guys U-boats and ours, the good guys, we're going to call them submarines. But they relied mostly on U-boats, but they also relied upon surface raiders, auxiliary raiders and actually employed pocket battleships to go out and attack merchant ships. And they also had the only four-engine bomber that the Germans ever built was the Falk Wolf 200 Condor, which they used to go out and find the convoys to direct the submarines to and then they also bombed merchant ships with it and they actually sunk a few merchant ships. But most of the destruction was done by these U-boats and that included Italian U-boats, by the way, until the Italians left the war, although most of it was German U-boats. And the Allies tried to combat that by grouping after the initial beginning when the Germans put their U-boats to sea. They didn't have very many. They only had about 70 at the beginning of the war and they were going out and they were attacking individual boats, individual ships. But eventually the Allies decided it was better to put to group the ships together in convoys, groups of ships, and then to escort the ships with surface warships, like destroyers, destroyers, escorts, corvettes and so on. But in the beginning there was a real shortage of those kinds of ships because even when the US got in the war, we were dealing with the Pacific as well. And then there was a whole theater of war down in Africa, Operation Torch and Maramel in North Africa and all that. They needed convoys or warships to squirt convoys down there as well. So there was a real shortage of ships and also technology. And in the beginning the Germans seemed to have the technological advantage. And also they engaged in a huge construction program to build more U-boats. In fact, they built hundreds of them during the war and put them to sea. And during the beginning part of the war there was a gap called the Atlantic gap. And that was right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And we could send escort ships across with the convoys, but we couldn't cover them with air. And air power became very important as the war went on in defeating the U-boats because the U-boats had to submerge to avoid being bombed by the bombers, mostly B-24s that we built and provided to the British. And we could either keep them submerged so that they couldn't go after the convoys or they could be attacked. But in the beginning, up until about May of 1943, there was this big gap in the center. And I think that that's probably depicted in the movie. And that's where the action with the submarines occurs. In any case, we had terrible losses just to give you some statistical idea. During the war we lost 3,500 merchant ships, the Allies lost, and 175 warships in the battle of the Atlantic. Over 72,000 sailors and merchant seamen were killed. And on the German side, 783 U-boats and 47 other surface warships were sunk. And then in the U-boat arm, 40,000 U-boat sailors, 30,000 of them died during the war. So it was a huge, huge long-term cataclysmic war. And there was also a technological war on each side. And that's what I think really turned the tide for the Allies eventually, is we cracked the enigma code. We developed sonar and methods of delivering depth charges and hedgehog bombs on these submarines. And we had radio direction finders called HuffDuff and some other tech and radar first locating U-boats on the surface. And then we even had a developed a procedure for airplanes to attack U-boats on the surface at night because U-boats in those days were diesel electric. And so they had to come up to recharge their batteries at night. And then they could submerge and use electric batteries. But so they were on the surface at night, and airplanes couldn't find them initially. So the amount of these huge lights on the bombers and the bombers and put radar on the bomber. So the radar, the bomber crew could see the U-boat on the surface with the radar. And then at the last minute, turn the light on before the submarine could submerge and they go in and attack. And that worked really well. But when the Atlantic gap existed, they couldn't do that. So there was this exposure that occurred in the middle of the Atlantic. And Admiral Donuts, who was in charge of the U-boat arm, he had this dream of using wolf packs of large groups of submarines together. He had thought of this in World War I when he was a Submariner. And he put it into effect. And he would array, say, 10 or 15 U-boats in what he thought was the course of the convoy and then communicate with him by radio to gather them in certain areas. And then they would work together to attack the convoy from different directions at night and otherwise. And they were very, very effective. Up until about 1943, when things began to turn against the U-boats. That's a basic background. Wow. You know, the thing about it is at the time that a lot of this was classified and public in the U.S. didn't really know what was going on. There was so much action going on in the middle of the Atlantic. And only later did we find out all of these statistics you're talking about and all of these challenges. I'm reminded of the Bofin at Pearl Arbor, which, you know, you can go on the Bofin and you can see really pre-technological devices. And I think that's part of the Greyhound. These devices they had, these routines that you saw in the movie were actually before they developed, you know, destroyer technologies. And as you say, Shackley, it was only a few years in when the U.S. kind of caught up with the technology and was able to defend against the U-boats. Let's talk to you now, Michael. Tell us about your experience on destroyers and on ships and on bridges. I mean, I was in the Coast Guard. I did some investigations of legal work involving things that happened on bridges. But I really have never been so close to the action on a bridge as with this movie. And you must have really enjoyed and learned from the depiction that Tom Hanks made of life on the bridge. Can you talk about it? Well, the visual effects of what it was like being on the bridge during combat close quarters. They're maneuvering their ships right and to the left of them, their submarines, and they've got torpedoes. So what reigns on the bridge is almost chaotic. It looks almost chaotic. Just seconds can make the difference between survival and success. It's very important on a bridge that you communicate clearly, that you follow the protocols. Everybody understands what the commands are. But I like the fact that they demonstrated what it was like to be on the bridge of a ship under those conditions. And I've been in combat. I didn't have submarines chasing me, so I didn't have that kind of chaos. But we used to do what they call operational readiness inspections. And they would throw everything at us, just like what was going on on that bridge. They would have torpedoes. They would have bombs. They would have planes attacking us. We would have casualties. The captain was knocked unconscious. We lost ship steering. We had to go into after steering. I mean, all different kind of chaotic things. This thing vividly describes and shows just in a visceral way what it's like to be on a ship there. I enjoy it from that standpoint because it was very realistic emotionally. You could feel it. It was like you're always on the edge of your seat. That's the way it is. Well, that was really something with Tom Hanks. He wrote the screen play, as you mentioned. And it moved so fast. And then I had the impression, although I haven't been there as you, that things moved very fast in an emergent situation on the bridge of a destroyer. But the question is, did they give us an accurate picture of what it might have been like in 1942? Yes. Yes, they did. There's no question in all my readings, the situation where both the convoy and then the escorts, how they're dealing with this submarine threat, the one thing that was a little different, protocol required zigzagging. And Tom Hanks, against regulations, made a choice in the movie to steam across the Black Pit, this place in the middle, where they had all the threats. And that would have been against regulation. Most of these convoys, remember, these convoys, the biggest one was 166 ships. They're in multiple columns. And they're three to 600 yards apart from the ship, front of you behind and a thousand between the columns. And they had a system with a zigzag clock where every ship had the same clock and it was timed. And the clock would do an alarm and they would, in unison, like a school of fish, they would turn left. And then 10 minutes later, alarm would go off and then they would turn right. I don't know how they were able to do that without collisions, but they were successful in that. There was a collision in the movie. I think they were trying to point those things out to us. Little vignettes, for example, small thing, but one of the men on the bridge sneezed. He sneezed in the middle of an operation and he could not repeat the command. And when it was all done, he was able to repeat the command because he finished the sneeze. But the captain turned to him and said, I hope you won't do that again. We can't have you. They did that in the book, too. It was so important on the bridge that the bridge orders follow protocol. And unfortunately, a lot of the commands were not. Sometimes the officer of the deck would assume the... One person has the comm, has control of the ship. So it's an officer of the deck or a commanding officer, but you always make it clear to everybody on the bridge who has the comm because that's the person you take the orders from. And then he gives clear orders to the helmsman, for example. He says, right standard rudder. And sometimes the helmsman in the movie would say, aye, aye, sir. Well, I can tell you from experience, even when the helmsman says right standard rudder, aye, aye, sir, as a response showing that he heard the order and he's carrying it out, even then sometimes he gets it wrong. But for the OED to say right standard rudder and the helmsman says aye, aye, sir, that's just completely wrong. It's inappropriate. And they did it several times in the movie and I was disappointed in that particular thing. What's the correct procedure? Whatever command you give, the helmsman or the Lee helmsman does the engine order telegram and the helmsman is driving. So if you give an order to the helmsman, right standard rudder, the helmsman says, right standard rudder, aye, sir, aye, aye, sir. So you know it's right, it's right standard or you give all ahead full and the Lee helmsman said, all ahead full, sir, aye, aye, sir. So he's telling me that he heard what I told him to do. He asked Michael, what is right standard rudder? And there was all these commands going on and on. It's 45 degrees to the right or 45 degrees to the left. But then there were other right rudder commands also. Well there's hard rudder, hard right is all the way over and that's really, I mean you're really on the rudder to go hard rudder, hard over. And he would say hard right rudder which was correct and then he would say hard over that was redundant and that would never have happened in the Navy. There are a lot of commands like that you really wondered about it. But you know, just to talk about the technology for a minute, I visited the bridge in one of these cruise ships which was docked here in Honolulu and I took us up to the bridge and we had a wide space from one side of the ship to the other, a lot of space. But the guy who was running the ship sat at a small console and he had a little weak computer like a laptop and with that he ran the ship. He turned it, he stopped it, he started it, all that. And by pushing keys on a keyboard immediately and without any need to repeat it, it was all automated. And I kept thinking of that on the destroyer that you know there was room for failure, room for mistakes and yet the technology now would never permit that anyway, right? No, the destroyers McCain and Fitzgerald collided two or three years ago and in both cases, the people on the bridge lost the bubble. They completely lost their understanding of what's around them, who's around them. When I'm on the bridge, I know where every contact is and I have a CPA closest point of approach on each contact constantly. So I always know, am I going to have a collision or I've got wiggle room? But even with sometimes Jay having too much technology is not a good thing. The tried and true work. We never had collisions, a mashup never came close. And we were in South Vietnam where you'd be sailing through thousands of fishing junks and we avoided them. But sometimes technology, you rely on it too much and not relying on your own judgment and keeping aware of your sea space around you. Now, certainly a destroyer in 1942 is very tactile, kinetic. You could reach over and you could see the submarine passing you. You could shout out at them and they could shout out at you even while you were doing broadsides with your weapons. It was really different than what you might expect. It was very close proximity kind of war. I'm sure that wouldn't happen today. But in those days, it must have been horrifying to be shooting at somebody which is maybe 20, 30 yards away. Well, think about all the people that were on that ship and that's exactly how they were. They had phone talkers. They had messengers of the watch. Both wings had lookouts. There was a helmsman and a Lee helmsman who was doing the engine order telegraph. You had a quarter master's keeping track of the navigation. You had an officer of the deck, a junior officer of the deck, plus in the back you had the combat information center where the XO was and they had what they call a dead reckoning plot and they're plotting all of the contacts, all of the whatever submarine contacts and then they had a grease board and they would write up all the contacts and update them constantly on the grease board. Unfortunately, they weren't normally you're writing behind the grease board backwards, but these guys were writing in front blocking it from the executive officer. So that was. But that had been in the combat information center or on the bridge? It would have been both. Both. You have it on both. I did want to, Jay, want to make one comment about Hank's Tom Hank's characterizations. He did a great job. But one thing that I didn't feel that was true with any commanding officer I've served under many commanding officers and that is he kept showing emotion. He saw this troubled look in his eyes and he'd be sometimes visibly tired and seem vulnerable and he'd be looking at his subordinates and he's making a difficult decision. Do I pick up these people that on the water or do I go save the boat? And that's not the way a commanding officer projects himself. He has to project control and that confidence in him and the crew. And this is what CS Forrester wrote. This is what Tom Hank's character in the book was saying to himself. He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he that ruleeth his spirit than he that taketh the city. It was his duty to stay unangered, to speak in a flat tone with every word distinct and with no trace of emotion. That's the only part of this characterization that I think did not characterize a commanding officer or the destroyer. Well, it must have been something to serve on a bridge. You know, you make me think of the relationship between the commanding officer and the executive officer. In this movie, the executive officer Charlie Cole was his name was played by Stephen Graham. And I thought from the outset that that he was just right in being, you know, not being too close to the captain in calling him sir every time in exceeding to his commands and wishes every time but also being able to offer advice in a critical situation. I thought the relationship they portrayed between the captain and the XO was right on the mark. What about you? How did you react to that critical critical fight? Of course, I worked with many commanding officers and executive officers and I had five reserve commands and I had my own executive officer. And that that relationship is critical. The captain runs the ship. He makes the decisions. But in the XO he's doing more of the running of the ship. The captain is directing it but the XO is helping to run the ship. And he's going to be the first one to tell the CEO if he's got a problem. They may make a decision that maybe has to rethink it. And a good CEO will always have the XO. Please, if I'm going over a cliff, tell me before I do it because I'm not perfect. And that relationship was a good relationship, I thought. Well, this came up in the course of the Greenville incident off Waikiki in, what is it, 2001. And one of the issues that the court of inquiry looked at was command climate. And that means the nature of the relationships on the bridge of the Greenville submarine. And did the crew and the other officers feel comfortable in saying command, sir, you better think that over. That may be wrong. It didn't happen on that ship, that submarine. Yeah, right. Well, maybe the Navy has picked up on that over the years and learned more about it because he could have been a queen the same way, right? He could have made mistakes. And if there wasn't any command climate to permit somebody to correct him, it would have been a disaster. I knew a guy that his job was to go around and teach commands how to communicate. And he told me an example of an airplane and some grunt in the back notices that their hydraulics are going out. And so he calls up the captain and the captain says, don't bother me. Okay. And the plane crashed. And that's somewhat of what happened on that ship with Captain Waddle. One of the enlisted realizes there was a problem, but you couldn't tell him anything because he knew everything. He was Superman, so you can't tell. You've got to have a free flow of communication, a willingness for a subordinate to tell a boss, hey, you got a problem here. Yeah, that was a lesson of the court of inquiry that investigated that. You know, Shackley, one thing, one moment I thought was really critical is they needed air cover as you talked, as you spoke. And so they come up, they come a point where the air cover from the United States side of this voyage couldn't cover it. They didn't have the range. And as Michael mentioned, there was this thing called the black pit in the movie, where the air cover coming from the European side couldn't find the right didn't have the range. And so they were exposed. And the ship ran into trouble in the middle. And they had, you know, some sinkings and some attacks by the submarines and they lost, I don't know how many ships and men. So now the captain is on the bridge with the executive officer. And he asks the executive officer to come out on, I guess, on the flying bridge outside, because he has to have a private conversation with them. And he says, I want to steam straight for Europe. I don't want to do zigzag. And I want help. I want the European side to send out these planes to support us and bomb the submarines. But I don't want to give away the fact that we're in extremists over here and that we have these losses and concerns. So what message should we send to the Admiralty in England? It was very, very interesting. And the two of them drafted the message. The first draft was something, it was only a few words. The first draft was something like, we're in trouble. We have an urgent need for your support. And then they decided we need your help immediately. And then they finally decided the two of them working drafting this together. The CO and the EXO drafted this message. And finally, they came to one word, help. And why? Because they thought that would bypass the Germans who were listening for their radio traffic. This kind of interaction between the commander and the executive officer and the drafting of the message. There were a lot of messages. I was very impressed about how Tom Hanks could spit out this message and say send. But this one was the most special message of all. And it worked. Except I don't know that they had air power to come to the rescue. Unless they were at the edge, the pit was the mid-Atlantic gap that I'm talking about. And the reason there was a gap is because they didn't have air cover. And in fact, the British had a real shortage of aircraft at the beginning. If this was in 42, they'd still have a shortage. And they had requested bombers, those B-24s that I mentioned that were long range, they'd requested those from the U.S. But the 8th Air Force wanted the bombers to bomb Germany because they were bombing Germany at the same time trying to destroy their industry. And that's another movie, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. But they didn't have a lot of those bombers in the first place. But when they got them, then that's what they used them for, was to cover that gap. And then they brought aircraft carriers in. And another interesting thing is that the German Condor or engine bomber that I mentioned would come out and would find the convoys and direct, you know, through radio communications direct to U-boats, and then attack some of the ships. Well, the British tried mounting hurricane fighters on merchant ships so that they could launch them when these condors would come around. And they actually did this several, shot about four of them down. They launched them and they go up and they shoot the condor down. And then they'd have to land in the sea and hope to get picked up. And I guess some of them were lost, of course, but that actually was one way that they tried to solve that air cover problem in the beginning. And later they brought in escort carriers, which had their own aircraft and that helped a lot as well. And change things. So this, you know, the experience in the movie was good for a couple of years. And after that, you know, the U.S. found ways to alleviate the risk. But I wanted to ask you both this question, and it's worth discussing. I'll ask you first, Jacqueline, what's the message here? Tom Hanks, as I mentioned early on, is a great patriot. He really cares about the country. He makes movies. He's been in so many movies and depicting how, you know, the American strength will prevail on the battlefield, has prevailed on the battlefield. And this is another battlefield. And this is another Tom Hanks movie. And it's, you know, this movie was made only a few months ago, at a cost of $50 million or so. And then, but Apple bought it for $80 million, so there's some spare change there. But what I'm saying is this is a message that Tom Hanks wanted to deliver, as in all his movies. Now, you know, 2023, 2024, what is the message you think he wanted to deliver by this movie? Never forget. He wants people to know about World War Two, because the people who participated in World War Two are almost all gone now. So there are no firsthand memories, except those that are recorded here and there. And I'll bet if you ask the young person, Gen Z or whatever, what the Battle of Atlantic was about, they'd say, what, what are you talking about? And by doing these movies, and he's usually a real stickler for authenticity. That's why when they had the taunt from the, allegedly from the U-boat captain, you know, over the radio, I was, I was really disappointed in that, because that was nonsense. That made it, that was a Hollywood movie thing. And usually he's very, very good on authenticity in the Band of Brothers and in the Pacific and then in Masters of the Air. That's one of the things that I really like about him. Don't forget Private Ryan. Saving Private Ryan was a great movie. Yeah, yeah. But I think he, I think he just wants people, younger people to know and not forget. Michael, what do you think? What do you think the message was? And the second part of my question is, is the message likely to be received and appreciated by the target audience? Well, hey, this is the greatest generation. So we're telling the story of real patriots. But, but also, the message is, these people are out there fighting for us, fighting for our families at home, fighting for an ideal, defeating Nazis, Germany, Japan, fascism, fighting for our way of life. And that's what our soldiers and Marines and Coast Guard and Airmen are doing out there today. They're doing it now. And if we can get that message out, that's a powerful message. And I would hope that people would see that not just for the entertainment, but for the bigger message about we're fighting for an ideal. And that's what that's what Tom Hanks was doing out there in the Atlantic. Yeah, you know, it's really an interesting emotional experience, maybe not for everybody in the world. I'm be interested in how other people react. But, you know, you see him handle the two sailors who got into a fight. You know, as you said before, you know, the captain is the captain. He's got to be flat out about things. And he must insist on obedience for all his commands. And that moment in his office or whatever office it was, when he talked to those two men, was somehow, to me, a great statement of leadership. Maybe we're talking here about leadership. And his comments and moves on the bridge, while all these horrendous and threatening things were happening, also leadership. And you looked into the eyes of the men around him, taking and repeating his orders. That was a crucible of some magnitude to see the way they reacted to him, to see the way he treated them. Again, leadership on the bridge. I know, you know, maybe he showed too much emotion sometimes, that's Hollywood. But in fact, the climate, I'll say command climate, because that's what came out of the Greenville case, was pretty good. He was in charge. And he was teaching them. You know, this one fellow said, there's a torpedo coming captain. And he said, remember your training. You have to tell me from what direction, at what speed and how far away, and all that. And, you know, he's even in a moment of crisis, he's teaching them. So, you know, there's a command climate thing that actually, you know, reinforces the notion of old fashioned leadership on that bridge, right? Leadership is not orders. Orders come after you have demonstrated respect to your subordinates, so that they believe in you and they believe in your judgment. And then you can give any order and they will carry it out. But the stereotype of the military just orders people to go and be mowed down. That's not the way it is. A leader is always out front. And he's demonstrated that he has got the respect of everybody in that ship, so that they'll follow him over the cliff. If he says it, that's where we're going to go. And that's what leadership is all about. Exactly. You spent some time in the Marine Corps. Is it different? I don't think so. No. Real leadership is about showing the people that are under your charge, that you're willing to do anything that you've ordered them to do, or that you want them to do. I'll give you an example, Jay. When the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed. Anyway, a Russian admiral was touring a US Navy ship. And he was in the combat with the fire control system. And there was like a third class petty officer, young sailor, probably 19 years old, showing him what his job was and how he operated this fire control system. And the Russian admiral told the people that was escorting, he says, that wasn't a sailor. That was an officer you dressed up as a sailor. Our sailors and our officers from the time they enter, they're all taught leadership. And everyone grows from the ground up in the military. Everybody starts at the bottom, and they learn leadership skills as they go up. I'll tell you, when I was on my way to Vietnam of a first class black petty officer, and I were standing on the gunnel of my ship, and he says to me, and I'm a young, I'm a boot ensign, I'm a young ensign, I'm 22, he says, can I speak freely, sir? And I said, okay, I guess yes. And he says, do you know what an ensign is? And I said, no. And he said, it's a high paid E1. In other words, the lowest sailor. He says, you don't know nothing, but we'll teach you. And they did. That reminds me of a standard provocation in the first day of school at the Naval Justice School, where they had an E1 walk in a lieutenant commander who would teach you to class, and he was really surly to him. And a couple of things happened. The first thing is, one of the remarks that the E1 made was, if give me one weekend commander, assure, and I'll take you around to the places where the enlisted are, and you'll never want to be an officer again. At which point the submarines, by the way, sitting in the front row of that class jumped him and pinned him down because they thought they didn't know this was a theatrical provocation to test the class many years ago. But I want to go ahead. One last comment. When you think about the climate on that bridge, they were up over 30 hours. In fact, the transit across the Black Pit is 50 hours. And I have been up on a combat ship for 24 hours, 30 hours, 36 hours. My CO said, one time we were up for 50 hours. I didn't remember that. So all of the stuff that you're trying to keep track of and give orders on the top of that is you're absolutely exhausted. While you saw in the movie, he took his shoes off and his feet were bleeding from Tom Hanks from standing there so long. And he pulled out the slippers that his girlfriend gave him before Elizabeth Shoe was played. That was a wonderful, her devil that was her name in the movie. But you know, I looked at some of the rock tomato type reviews on this, and there was more than was comfortable. They were saying there was no character development in the movie. It was about process. It was about life on the ship and on the bridge. But it wasn't about character development. And you need that for a movie. And my question to you guys, you're shaking your head, Michael, and I agree. Do you need that? Did it was a movie deficient for the lack of character development? This was a no nonsense combat movie. It's like if you remember Master and Commander, there weren't even any women in the thing. It was all combat. And that's what this one is. This is a classic movie demonstrating what it's like to be in combat at sea at war. And and they're they're carrying out their duties. So developing a character and having, you know, that's a different that's a different movie. Yeah, I agree. Shackley, you know, we didn't we didn't see the romance part of this movie either. Elizabeth Shoe happens to be one of my favorite actresses. And with Nicholas Cage, there was a great movie called Leaving Las Vegas years ago when she played, you know, his is a romantic half. She was a hooker or something in Las Vegas. It was it was an amazing movie. And for me, it made her as a as an actress. But she didn't have more than 90 seconds in this whole movie. I wondered whether she was necessary at all. Well, I thought she was irrelevant to the story, actually. Yeah, what was the story? I mean, a minor character in the book. Even even in there, right? Actually, he was married to her. And and she was, I think, two timing him. But that's character development. A little bit. Very interesting. That was a benefit. I mean, he worried about her when he was on the ship. But she wasn't a character in the book. Was this faithful to the book? It was actually more faithful than I thought. A lot of the mistakes that I thought were mistakes. Hank took them right from the book. There was one there was one mistake that he made, though. They broke down the movie into different watches and watches are four hours long. And so you have the four noon watch or the afternoon watch or the mid watch. And then they said dog watch. 1600 to 20 hundred. In the book, it says the same thing, but it says dog watch jazz. And what Hank's didn't know is a dog watches two hours long. And so there's two dog watches between 1600 and 2000. And what that does means that when you go on watch every day, you never stand the same watch you rotate. And that's the purpose of the of the dog watch. And by the way, the they say the dog watch came from the dog star, which was serious, which is the first star you see at night. But I like the Jack Aubrey, the paddle Brian Jack Aubrey books. Dr. is his friend, Dr. Matron asked Aubrey, the commanding officer of the ship, and he says, what's this dog watch? And he says, well, it's two hours long. It's 1600 to 1800, 1800 to 20 hundred. He says, yeah, but why you call it a dog watch? And he says, because Mr. Matron, it is curtailed, curtailed, a play on words. That was a mistake on Hank's part, but I enjoyed the titles, you know, you talk about, you know, how they told you what watch it was and what time it was. It sort of gave you a structure, you know, this is the morning, this is the evening, this and they always told you how many hours away from air cover they were, which is, you know, kind of a way of saying how much risk they have. So exactly, you know, we always ask in these reviews, what we learn, what we can learn from this movie. And I mean, I must say, I learned a lot, although maybe it was imperfect about what happened on the bridge, what happens on the bridge, the relationship of the men to the men and the men to the captain and the XO and all that and how you get the job done and what happens when things go wrong and what happens when you have burials to see for people who are killed and, you know, maimed and whatnot. So I learned, did you learn? Was this any of this a surprise to you on the technical knowledge that they imparted? Boy, I don't know. I haven't been at sea during war. I've been out on the destroyer for a few days in a storm. And the one thing I noticed is that in a storm, a destroyer really flops around because it has a high free board. And it didn't seem like it was flopping enough. No, for me. But and that makes you really tired. And that's what I guess that's why the watches are short. But the first few days, people are sick and they're very tired. I don't I don't know if I learned a lot. I just thought it was a great story. And I enjoy all those kinds of details, you know, about what goes on in a military situation. And that's about all I can say on that. Now, Michael, you know, one thing struck me, and I wonder, A, what you learned. And I mean, maybe you knew it all anyway, from your experience at sea. But also, you know, destroyers, destroyers were critical in crossing the Black Pit in 1942. Critical. Otherwise, many more ships in the convoy would have been sunk. Are destroyers, do they still play that role? There are. I remind you, there are no more convoys that I know of. And, you know, query, what what good are destroyers today? We know about, you know, aircraft carriers and all that. But does the destroyer still play a role in the Navy? And what did you learn about that from this movie? Well, the role is not changed. They escort battle fleets, carriers, they independently steam. They're all over the world sailing to keep open the sea lanes. There's a thing called the Taiwan patrol that we always did when we translated from Vietnam to Japan and back. We would go between Formosa and Korea and China. And that's to tell China that this is international waters. And we do that today. They feel like that's Chinese waters and we shouldn't be in there. But we have destroyers doing that. The McCain was off the Malacca Straits when they had their collision. They were independently steaming same thing with the Fitzgerald. So these destroyers are still serving the function that the destroyer can have because it's very maneuverable. It's also a lot of firepower. Yeah, the destroyer is a U.S. destroyer that's been shooting down the hooky missiles. Exactly. Exactly. They're on their own out there. But the nonstop, what they experience in there, the only thing that I wondered about is when I was in combat, when we were in combat, we would either be in general quarters where everybody's on lunch or we would go port in starboard and we'd be on for six hours and then off for six hours. But when you're off for six hours, you're still working. So that's the only thing that they would be in those close quarter combat and still rigid with the dog watches of two hours and the regular four-hour watches. I don't think that's the way it would have been. I think they would have spent more time on general quarters, for example. If they're in close quarters and not in general quarters. And he was kind of proud that he wasn't in general quarters the whole time. Yeah, there was one moment in the ship in the movie where the ship had sunk a German submarine and everybody was applauding that and taking it easy there for a moment and he gave a visible sigh of relief. And 10 seconds later, there was another attack and they went to general quarters again. So one lesson I learned is you can't really relax in a situation like that because it could happen again and again and again. You have to be ready to go to general quarters anytime. So that's pretty stressful over a period. Well, let's go to ratings now. Shatly, you want to go first? You can go one at the lowest rating or 10 at the highest rating or you can go above 10. Many of our reviewers here on TicTac go above 10 when they feel they need to. So can you give us your rating of this movie in the fullness of your life experience and your movie experience and tell us why? Well, I'd give it a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 and because I didn't, I really didn't like the scene where the German U-boat captain called him up and told him that he's the gray wolf and he's going to get the gray hound and all that. I thought that lowered the quality of the movie, made it a Hollywood movie for me and also I thought that the initial scene with the lady was irrelevant to what was going on. Other than that, I thought it was a very good movie. Yeah, Michael, your thoughts? I gave it a 7 to an 8. Tough, like a Navy commander would do that. The captain of the ship must be tough. From an experience, I give it a 10 plus. No question, just because I watch the movie for technical and for enjoyment. So I critiqued it very closely as I watched it the first time and then I watched it with my wife just for entertainment and it's way over 10. But technically, I give it more like a 6. So, you know, kind of an average there, but there are so many errors in there that I was disappointed that they didn't, I mean, they had three marine consultants who either gave them the right advice or they ignored it because there are such blatant errors in bridge commands, in factual errors, contact errors, technical errors. There was one scene in there where they say there's a submarine bearing 190, which is off the port quarter, off the left, aft. And then they pan up and you see the convoy and you see the ship and then you see the submarine and it's over on the right quarter. I was wondering about this, just throwing these bearings at you, left and right, literally left and right. It's like, my God, what does that mean that he's coming at you 087 or 010? What does that mean? Well, you know, on the ship, the bearings are off of the ship. So, it goes 380 degrees, you know, 360 degrees. So, the front of the ship is 0180 is aft. And they were saying, contact port 010. Well, we wouldn't say that. We would say bearing 350. So, you know where it is. There's no such thing, port 010. I mean, that technically was such an error. So, that's why I gave it like a 5 from a technical standpoint, but over 10 from an entertainment standpoint. And there's just one thing that, and I agree with Shackley about the girl didn't add to the thing at all and the submarine commander talking to him would never happen. They don't even get on that talk between ship system, the Germans. So, but, you know, a Navy captain doesn't look at himself as a hero. He's doing his job. And the closest that Tom Hank to realizing that he may have been a hero, and he may have been somewhat embarrassed about it, but happy about it is at the end when that ship of sailors or soldiers are cheering him. It was a troop ship. It was a troop ship. And they're cheering him. And I mean, they're cheering him as a hero. They saved his life. And maybe he's a little bit embarrassed by that because he doesn't, he's just doing his job. But then he has this smile and he accepts the cheers. He accepts on behalf of his crew. That was very emotional, wasn't it? With all those soldiers and sailors on that other ship passing by. That was really a powerful moment in the movie. Well, when I was in Vietnam, many times a Marine platoon or Army platoon was trapped on the top of the hill and they gave us a distress call. And they spotted our rounds around the hill. He said, don't worry about getting too close. And we would shoot just few feet around and they would spot them. And we would save their lives. We'd wipe out the VC that were about to, the Viet Cong, were about to overrun them. And over the net came this wild cheering and laughing and thanking. And I mean, everybody on our ship were just, I mean, I'm getting goose pimples, just remembering the joy of us saving those Marines and sailors or soldiers on the top of those hills so many times. And that's what Hank was feeling. Yeah. Shackley, did anything Michael say caused you to reconsider your original rating? Well, he knows more of the technical steps than I do. So I can understand why his rating is what it is. I was mostly rating it as just a movie, right? Yeah. Well, in what, how strong a recommendation would you make to somebody in a generation that has no contact experience or understanding of the greatest generation? Would you recommend, would you recommend they see this movie? Yeah, I think it's a must-see. It's in that line of we shouldn't forget about this whole era and what the whole world went through. And lots of people lost their lives. And I mean, I know it continues to go on with Ukraine and Middle East and all that. So I guess that captures the current imagination, but we wouldn't have the, we wouldn't be free today if it wasn't for all those people. There's no question about that. We just think of the, I mean, you go to Europe and, you know, the Germans controlled all of Europe. And they would have kept it if he hadn't attacked the Soviet Union, I think. Yeah. Any of that affects your rating, Michael? I'm just trying to negotiate here. From an entertainment standpoint, it's 10 plus. I would recommend 100% anybody to see it. My technical rating is only because, you know, I went down and I looked at every single time they gave an order that was just wrong. And they had technical mistakes all through it. Some of them were, they should never have made the mistakes. But the movie needs to be seen by everyone. And it's a 10 plus as an entertainment and getting its message across. I agree. Let me give you some thoughts I've had just in the four corners of this discussion. Number one is it was really well made, you know, as a movie, you know, the lighting and the the camera angles that I watched for that, you know, I always do. The sound, the music was really outstanding. The music built up to a crescendo when it had to, you know, some movies are made worse by the music. In this case, the music was an important part of the movie. And finally, from my observation, you know, I was watching the credits, I just wanted to see who the military advisers were and all that. But beyond that, at the end of the credits, they had the guys who did the CGI graphics, because, you know, you can't have a convoy these days. There are no convoy these days. You have to build that with graphics. It has to be, you know, a auto shop. And the number of people involved in those graphics were hundreds of people. The crew, you know, what, 30, maybe? But the people involved in the CGI graphics went on and on and on. And guess what? Most of the names were Indian. I found that was very interesting. They must have done the graphics, you know, in India. And finally, you know, one thought I have is that this is, I mean, I've seen Tom Hanks, you know, in talk shows. I kind of understand a little bit where he's coming from, you know, as a member of the society, a member of the Hollywood Society. And I think that he wants to demonstrate that we have to appreciate our military. We have to appreciate what happened in World War II, the greatest generation, but we have to appreciate them now. And I think that's an important message, because now everybody does appreciate them. You know, when the draft ended in what, in the 70s, all of a sudden, there was no connection, except for you guys, there was no connection between the average citizen and the military. And so we, we, the country lost the kind of nexus we had with the military in the war and in Korean war and all that, for that matter, Vietnam. But, you know, this, this movie is among other things, the message is that they're us. Those people are our people, they're Americans, and they have leadership and also courage to willing, you know, put their lives on the line. We haven't had that kind of connection in a while politically. So maybe just maybe a few people will be affected. Your comments, am I wrong? Am I right? Trackley? No, I think that's right. I think if we, you know, it helps educate those who have no exposure to the military about some of the history that, that has preserved our country. It is true that since we don't have the draft anymore, you wonder what kind of stake people feel they have in the country and what sort of obligation they have to come to its defense when that's necessary. I know we say, well, all volunteer for us is superior and so on, but in my day, you know, there was a draft and everybody went and everybody had that experience in common for better, for worse. Some people hated it, some didn't, but, but, but I, I think it was a, it was a good social activity for educating people and making it feel like they had a stake in our democracy. Thank you, Trackley. And Michael, you can close. Well, I'm sorry this wasn't in the major theaters. When I watched Master and Commander, the whole theater shook from the cannons going off. And if this had been on a big screen in the theater, it would have had a big impact. And also it would have reached a lot more people, only people with the Apple TV get to watch this thing. So it's a limited audience and how many kids are going to see that. And I, you know, I, I've always felt that honor, you know, service is so important. I wish everybody was required to at least serve something, go to Peace Corps, go in the military, serve your country so that you, you learn what it's like to do something outside of yourself to serve the country. And that's what all those folks were doing on that, that ship when Tom Hanks ship, they were serving the country and saving America for and, and freedom and defeating fascism. So that's a powerful message. And I just wish more people would, would be exposed to the book, to the movie. It's a great movie. Thank you, Mike Lilly. Thank you, Shackley Rafferter. You guys give a powerful description of this powerful movie. I really appreciate that. Aloha.