Task Force (film) footage documenting the rise of naval aviation as well as Technicolor footage filmed during the war in the Pacific, including the Battle of Midway, the Japanese attack on and a kamikaze attack on USS "Franklin". Encouraged by the offer of support from the U.S. Navy, when the production received permission to proceed with a film, a decision was made to shoot the first segments in black-and-white to merge into the original footage of the , the first American aircraft carrier, and . Principal photography began in late 1948 on the escort carrier, to replicate USS "Langley", as well as Naval
Japanese battleship Haruna to American carrier airstrikes on Japanese island bases. "Haruna" participated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, engaging American vessels in the latter. In 1945, "Haruna" was transferred to Kure Naval Base, where she was sunk by aircraft of Task Force 38 on 28 July 1945. "Haruna" was the fourth and last of the Imperial Japanese Navy's "Kongō"-class battlecruisers, a line of capital ships designed by the British naval engineer George Thurston. The class was ordered in 1910 in the Japanese Emergency Naval Expansion Bill after the commissioning of in 1908. The