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Well, now we know where we're going.

Did you get that about those snakes?

I don't mind Japs, but snakes!

How did the skipper say it?

"Okie", "Okey", "Okay"...

I heard him. He said "Okinawa".

...country around Frisco.

Yeah, but the people look like Japs.

Frisco? They don't like it up in San Francisco

when you call it Frisco.

Spent my honeymoon up there.

Drove up from LA.

Made it in eight hours. 400 miles.

Eight hours? What was holding you back?

I used to make it from Buffalo to New York in six flat.

That's 370 miles with hills.

370 miles.

Why, right here we're closer to Japan than that.

We're just 325 miles from their home office.

- 325 miles? - You heard him.

That's what the old man said.

325 miles.

From Milwaukee to St Louis.

Hmm, I always felt pretty safe in St Louis.

That's awfully close.

Mighty close.

Yes, mighty close.

Especially for a modern bomber with a job to do.

About an hour's run from any number of Jap airfields.

But here we were,

closer than any fleet in history

to a major land-based air power.

At Midway, in the Coral Sea,

even in the Marianas,

distance had been against the Japanese air force.

But now, as our fleet sailed against the enemy inner islands,

the range was easy for any Jap plane that could fly.

There were those who said no fleet could risk it,

but the stakes were high.

With Okinawa in our hands,

we could control the China coast,

send swarms of planes to smother Japan.

We were reaching for the throat of an empire.

The risk must be taken.

On the island of Okinawa,

5,000 miles from San Francisco,

the earth shook from a fearful pounding

by our ships and planes.

To the south, our British allies were hurling their naval might

at the bypass fortress of Formosa.

They were raking Fukushima with shell and bomb.

England's greatest battleships and newest carriers were there,

screening us on the south,

paying off with pleasure an old debt to Nippon.

On the northern flank,

Admiral Marc A Mitscher's tireless Task Force 58

stepped up its two weeks' old aerial assault on Kyushu

and the enemy home islands.

It was the Fourth of July in reverse,

on Japanese shipping, harbours, airfields, factories.

There's a Jap carrier in trouble.

Men of the Navy, 400,000 men,

called it "Love Day".

Elsewhere in the world, it was Easter Sunday, 1945.

At 8:30 that morning, the Marines and the Army went in.

100,000 Yanks were rattling the lock on Japan's front door.

They were ploughing sacred soil,

with American boots, tractors, tanks.

The first seven days were baffling.

Mysteriously quiet.

Ashore, Army and Marines pushed steadily forward,

looking for an enemy which had vanished.

On the 1,400 ships supporting the invasion,

men waited at their battle stations.

And waited.

We knew the blow would come.

But how? And when?

Then, it struck.

They call it "kamikaze",

meaning "the divine tempest".

We call them "suicide planes".

Manned by pilots wearing the ceremonial red sash

of the Kamikaze Corps.

They specialise in one-way trips.

Their destination:

the deck or hull of any American ship

onto which plane, bomb, burning gasoline,

and red-sashed pilot can crash.

Japan's secret weapon

was no secret to our gunners or our fliers,

who for months had been tinting the far Pacific

with those same red sashes.

But now to meet our latest challenge.

Our deepest thrust.

There rose every plane that could fly, new or old,

from the very heart of Japan itself.

Sixteen-year-olds, still in aviation school,

were given their wings, a sash, and a mission.

It was a maniacal, all-out effort

to smash our sea power,

isolate our troops on Okinawa.

It was desperation.

It was suicide.

But it would be the pattern

from now on to the very finish.

A struggle between men who want to die,

and men who fight to live.

He's hit!

But he's still heading for the target.

Missed!

By night it went on.

Hundreds of land-based planes

streaked all over the sea at our carriers.

They dove out of the dawn,

raced through dull overcast,

to throw themselves in screaming, smoking fury

at Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner's ships off Okinawa.

Again, the old battleships were there,

and new ships of the line,

and a rugged little man

named Ernie Pyle.

There was no retreat.

This was the fleet that came to stay,

that had to stay.

Had to stay, because the men that the Navy landed

needed tons of steel for Navy guns.

Even as we beat off fresh waves of Jap planes overhead,

the big guns of the fleet smashed enemy strongholds miles away.

Had to stay, because our men,

advancing through the rice paddies, and over the steep ridges,

had to have close air support

from the baby flat-tops.

In the Air Control Room, aboard the command ship,

strike upon strike was ordered.

Then the Navy and Marine fliers

laid down precise, deadly rocket fire,

to help make the next fifty yards of advance less costly.

This was the fleet that had to stay,

because always the stream of supplies to those troops

must be steady and huge.

A bridge of ships was thrown across the Pacific

to bring our men more food,

more medicine,

more ammunition.

And, waiting at the end of the longest supply route in any war,

were the kamikaze.

It was weird.

It was savage.

This was a fleet fighting like infantry,

punching away at the enemy.

Only, there are no foxholes in the ocean.

"March 18th to the 21st,

"556 Japanese planes destroyed."

Men fought without sleep.

Some fought with guns,

some with axes,

torches,

some with fire-smothering foam.

It was fix and fight at the same time.

Many fell at their battle stations,

and some were buried.

"Don't give up the ship!"

became more than a schoolbook legend.

It became a fact of life.

April 13th brought more planes,

and shocking news.

Between attacks, weary men, afloat and ashore,

paid honour to the beloved figure

in the blue Navy cloak.

Said farewell to the father

of the modern American Navy.

Then they turned, and met the next assault.

During three fabulous months,

thousands of aircraft were hurled against our ships,

but only ten per cent ever slipped through our air patrols.

Yet the siege by air went on.

The Japanese beast still spat zeroes.

"April 6th, 277 enemy planes shot down.

"April 12th, 100 planes. May 3rd, 97."

In the early, grey hours

of the morning watch on May 9th,

the great news came.

VE Day in Europe.

It came first to the lookouts,

to the men who stand guard while the others sleep.

Men were glad, and grateful.

Home seemed a little nearer.

But, for now, VE Day was simply

the 1,247th day of our Pacific war.

From the rolling decks of our carriers,

the fighters rose once again to intercept the enemy.

On the cruisers, and destroyers, and battleships,

our heavy batteries once more levelled against

the Jap-studded hills of Okinawa.

The barking 20s and 40s sent streams of fiery lead

into the world's last alien sky.

"May 12th, 164 Jap aircraft downed.

"June 3rd, 45. June 6th, 67. June 8th, 30."

For week after vicious week,

the most devastating air-sea battle of all time wore on.

The Japanese paid with their air force,

with their newest ships.

4,232 planes.

The fleet that came to stay paid a price, too.

But our men, our ships, our planes

took everything the land could throw at the sea,

and handed it back double.

The question, "Could a fleet stand up

"against the massed fury of land-based planes?"

got an emphatic answer from the men who fought to live.

From the fleet that came to stay.

SUBTITLES BY POWERHOUSE FILMS LTD