Dating to 1943, this WWII newsreel shows the Battle of Stalingrad and the fierce winter fighting that turned the tide of WWII in the East. Also seen in this film are highlights of the Battle of the Philippine Sea as "carrier X" (likely the USS Enterprise) fights in the Pacific (likely at the Battle of Santa Cruz).
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe. Marked by constant close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as the single largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. The heavy losses inflicted on the German Wehrmacht make it arguably the most strategically decisive battle of the whole war. It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II–the German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses.
This short newsreel, produced for the home market, shows what is likely the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise under attack by Japanese Zeros during the Battle of Santa Cruz. The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, 26 October 1942, was the fourth carrier battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II and the fourth major naval engagement fought between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the lengthy and strategically important Guadalcanal campaign. In similar fashion to the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomons, the ships of the two adversaries were rarely in direct visual range of each other. Instead, almost all attacks by both sides were mounted by carrier or land-based aircraft. This film appears to show events on October 26, 1942. At 10:08 a.m. the Enterprise came under attack by Japanese dive bombers. Attacking through the intense anti-aircraft fire put up by Enterprise and her escorting warships, the bombers hit the carrier with two 551 lb (250 kg) bombs and near-missed with another, causing heavy damage to the carrier and jamming her forward elevator in the "up" position. Twelve of the 19 bombers were lost in this attack. Twenty minutes later, the 16 Zuikaku torpedo planes arrived and split up to attack Enterprise. One group of torpedo bombers was attacked by two Wildcats which shot down three of them and damaged a fourth. After suppressing most of the onboard fires, Enterprise reopened her flight deck to begin landing returning aircraft from the morning U.S. strikes on the Japanese warship forces.
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