The Story
Sterling Hayden plays a carrier commander during the Korean War, but the film is essentially a flashback of his time on the same carrier (The USS Princeton) during World War II and what was learned and required to get men physically and mentally ready to fight an intractable enemy – the Japanese – in “their own” waters (Japan-occupied Philippines 1944 and various islands of the western Pacific that were (Iwo Jima) or temporarily (Carolines, etc.) became part of the Japanese Empire).