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Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans

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Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> wrote:
> On 25 Jul 2020, Andy Hewitt wrote
> (in article <rfgure$vn4$1@dont-email.me>):
> 
>> Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> They released For All Mankind an episode a week, so ... well who knows
>>> but given Apple TV+'s relative dearth of material I'm sure they'll want
>>> to spread Foundation out a bit.
>> 
>> Yeah, it’s the lack of material that made me think it not such good value
>> as a service at the moment. I can see it being abandoned in the not too
>> distant future to be honest, it just isn’t coming anywhere near to Netflix
>> or Amazon Prime (even without the ‘unlimited’ extra subscription), as a
>> value for money service.
>> 
>> We did watch Greyhound this week, and enjoyed it, although I thought it was
>> a bit too heavy, and a bit low budget, on the CGI elements.
> 
> Eh. ‘Greyhound’ had a number of problems.
> 
> 1 Grey Wolf. No, unterseeboot kapitans did not get on the TBS (Talk Between 
> Ships, the short-ranged radio telephone system) and taunt escort captains; 
> they let their torpedoes do the talking for them, and in 1942 through early 
> 1943 the torpedoes were very loud. After May 1943 those torpedoes quieted 
> down quite a bit, and u-boot commanders still didn’t taunt on the TBS, 
> doing that kind of thing was just begging for a salvo of Hedgehog or Squid, 
> or some close attention from an aircraft.
> 
> 2 in the book, USS Keeling’s TBS code name was George, not Greyhound. I 
> suspect that ‘George’ would not have made as good a title for a movie as 
> ‘Greyhound’.
> 
> 3 in the book, Eagle was the Polish destroyer Viktor, not an RN ship
> 
> 4 in reality, it was quite rare for an escort to kill even one u-boot during 
> any one cruise; one of my uncles was in a Western Approaches destroyer for 
> most of the war, and his ship had exactly three confirmed u-boot kills in 
> four years. The record for u-boot kills in one convoy-escort cruise is three, 
> held by HMS Starling, flag of Frederic John ‘Johnnie’ Walker’s escort 
> group during the epic cruise when the group got six kills total. Johnnie 
> Walker got a CB and four DSOs and died in July 1944, basically of overwork. 
> ‘Greyhound’ got _that_ right. An American destroyer escort in the Pacific 
> got four I-boats in one cruise, but two of those kills were not during convoy 
> escort operations. The most successful American escort on the Atlantic was 
> one of the big US Coast Guard ’Treasury’ class cutters, named for former 
> Secretaries of the Treasury, the USCG belonging to the Dept of the Treasury 
> rather than the Navy Dept during peacetime. (USCG is now part of Homeland 
> Security.) The Treasury cutters were the biggest, most powerful, ASW ships on 
> the Atlantic, and one of them got two u-boots in one cruise.
> 
> 5 in both the book and reality by 1943 convoy escorts didn’t go to action 
> stations with every contact; the captain was probably on the bridge, exactly 
> as portrayed in the movie, but usually only the normal watch would be on 
> duty, though they’d be doing watch and watch, four or eight hours on, four 
> or eightv hours off, all the way across the Atlantic. C.S. Forrester makes a 
> point in the book of having Captain Krause realise that going to GQ for the 
> first action had been a mistake.
> 
> 6 in the book Evelyn is... not as portrayed in the movie.
> 
> What I’d like to see, but there’s about zero chance of it happening, 
> would be a movie of HMS Ulysses.

Thanks for the history lesson.

Although I agree that historic inaccuracies are rife in some films, I don’t
usually let that spoil my enjoyment of them.

I can accept that this is a movie representation of events from that era,
and that they won’t be actually accurate.

Although one of the best films depicting this particular subject was
probably ‘The Cruel Sea’, which IIRC did follow the book quite well (I was
about 14 when I read it at school though).

It’s more about giving the audience a feel for what people went through at
that time. Sometimes that does need some artistic licence.

-- 
Andy H

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OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-23 16:02 +0000
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> - 2020-07-23 17:59 +0100
    Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> - 2020-07-23 10:35 -0700
      Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> - 2020-07-23 10:37 -0700
        Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Tim <timstreater@greenbee.net> - 2020-07-23 20:28 +0000
        Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Flavio Matani <flavio_matani@mac.com> - 2020-07-29 20:06 +0000
          Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com> - 2020-07-29 13:34 -0700
      Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> - 2020-07-23 18:47 +0100
        Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-23 20:36 +0000
          Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Graeme Wall <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> - 2020-07-23 22:12 +0100
          Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-07-23 23:03 +0000
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-07-23 17:17 +0000
    Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Ian McCall <ian@eruvia.org> - 2020-07-24 09:50 +0100
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> - 2020-07-24 06:56 +0100
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2020-07-24 14:21 +0100
    Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-24 15:18 +0000
      Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> - 2020-07-24 17:14 +0100
        Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-24 17:21 +0000
          Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Chris Ridd <chrisridd@mac.com> - 2020-07-25 08:50 +0100
            Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-25 09:43 +0000
              Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-07-25 09:56 +0000
                Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-25 11:26 +0000
                Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> - 2020-07-25 16:00 +0000
                Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-25 17:04 +0000
              Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2020-07-25 19:27 -0400
                Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Andy Hewitt <thewildrover@icloud.com> - 2020-07-26 06:48 +0000
            Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Flavio Matani <flavio_matani@mac.com> - 2020-07-29 20:09 +0000
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2020-07-25 19:37 -0400
    Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Bruce Horrocks <07.013@scorecrow.com> - 2020-07-26 00:44 +0100
      Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> - 2020-07-25 22:27 -0400
  Re: OT: Apple TV news for Asimov fans Flavio Matani <flavio_matani@mac.com> - 2020-07-29 20:10 +0000

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