U.S. Naval facilities in Tsingtao (Qingdao) Shantung Province, China, after World War 2. Camera pans across top of building labeled: United States Naval Air Base. It pans over semi-tropical flora. View from hill looking down on rice paddies, and coastal waters. A U.S. Navy R5D transport plane seen overhead, through mist, with landing gear down, approaching to land. Series of jerky images from vehicle moving along a road on Naval base and vicinity. Steel framework at industrial site. Partially destroyed building. Various industrial areas. Sign at driveway entrance reads: "ASAN." Heavy construction equipment. Chinese people wading in flooded area, seemingly fishing for something. U.S. military truck, quonset huts, and American servicemen at a base. View down on a cemetery containing various monuments, including some Christian crosses.
United States Army Air Force airmen at their base in the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, during World War 2. They stand on a ridge watching cleanup operations at site where P-51D 44-63912 "Miss Jackie" of the 531st Fighter Squadron, 21st Fighter Group suffered severe damage from a ground loop at Central Field, Iwo Jima. Other P-51s parked on the flightline in background. The site is surrounded by Airmen cleaning up and salvaging equipment and parts. Machine gun ammunition belts from the wreck. Men look beneath the damaged plane.
As World War II heats up, 16,500,000 men between ages 21 to 36 register themselves throughout the United States, signing up during the first peacetime conscription in U.S. history. (This was triggered by passage of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, the genesis of "Selective Service.") Opening scene shows men lining up to register for the draft before the United States entered World War 2. Views of men filing out their registration forms. At 00:22 famous prize fighter, Barney Ross, is being registered. (He jokes that the registrar shaking his hand has too strong a grip.) At 00:34 Hollywood cowboy Gene Autry is seen registering. Close up view of street signs at Chinatown intersection of Bayard Street and Mott Street in New York City. Sign below it notes "School Street. Drive Slowly. Make no unnecessary noise." Line of many registrants of Chinese-American descent waiting in line, and processing paperwork. Scene changes to another area of the city, where a line of mostly African American men wait outside a registration building. Some cheer and wave for the camera. A police officer at the entrance hustles them inside, pulling some of them along. View of the exterior of the White House in Washington DC. United States President Franklin D Roosevelt addresses the nation's men of draft age, telling them that the call up of 800,000 men for training in year one, and less than one million men in each subsequent year, is a program of defensive preparation only. Roosevelt says to the registrants that "Democracy is your cause. The cause of youth." ( Note: clip is silent except for President Roosevelt speaking at the end.)
Numerous German Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers are seen taking off from an airfield, on bombing missions against targets in Warsaw, Poland, during invasion of Poland in World War 2. Ground crews load bombs aboard the aircraft. A Dornier D0-17 bomber is seen taking off. A Henkel He-111 is seen in flight. View of ground target from nose of the bomber. Smoke rising from burning targets on the ground. Narrator refers to Bzura River area (where Polish forces had launched a counterattack). The Confluence of the Rivers, Vistula and Narev, are seen and the Polish fortress of Modlin, as the bombers approach it. Fires and smoke are seen rising from the German bombing.
U.S. military trucks, part of a convoy of 113 vehicles, led by Brigadier General Lewis Andrew Pick, are seen traversing the Ledo Road (aka the Stilwell Road) approaching their final destination of Kunming, China, on February 4, 1945, during World War 2. (They departed Ledo, India, on January 12, 1945, traveling a distance of 1,079 miles.) (Narrator gives distance as 1,044 miles.) View from an overflying airplane shows the long column of trucks on the road below. View from the ground, of the convoy reaching the city gates, where it halts as General Pick and his staff proceed through the gates to a speaker's platform set up in a covered pavilion displaying American and Chinese flags, and pictures of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. General Pick and staff are introduced by Chinese General J.L. Wong who, speaking in English, celebrates this first convoy over the Ledo Road, and points to a banner containing four Chinese characters that spell out "The Road to Victory." General Pick takes the podium, shakes hands with General Wong, and accepts the banner from him. Camera shows the area completely filled with Chinese troops, witnessing the ceremony, including many sitting atop a nearby roof. General Pick speaks briefly, accepting the banner on behalf of the convoy members. He then leaves accompanied by the Governor of Yunnan Province, China. Officers cut a ceremonial ribbon across the road at the West Gate of the city, and the convoy is led into the city by two Chinese soldiers on motorcycles. Chinese spectators line the way and celebrate with firecrackers and cheers, as General Pick passes, standing in a jeep, displaying the Amercan flag and with the Chinese "Road to Victory" banner in its back seat. views of the convoy trucks proceeding through the city. Closeup of one, with a painting of the road, and snow capped mountains, and "First Convoy over the Ledo Road" and "Pick's Pike Life Line from India to China" painted on its canvas cover. A sign over one of the shops along the road reads in Chinese and English, "Welcome First Stilwell Highway Convoy." Views of troops waving from the trucks and Chinese citizen spectators crowding the sides of the road to watch.
Sailors work on catapult control panel on board United States super carrier Kitty Hawk in Pacific Ocean. Another sailor cleans the canopy of F-14A aircraft. Anti sub marine helicopter SH-3D lands and US-3A aircraft takes off on board the carrier. A pilot in the cockpit of United states Navy F-14A gets ready for a flight. A-6B aircraft moves to catapult, unfolds wings and takes off. F-14 Tomcat, A-7E and E-2C aircraft take off, one by one.
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