Task Force (film) Battle of Midway scene, the "Japanese carrier" blowing up is actually exploding after being torpedoed by . When Cooper and Brennan attend the mid-1920s reception in Washington, D.C., the Chief of Naval Operations is called "Admiral Ames" (Moroni Olsen); the real CNO was Admiral Edward Walter Eberle. The movie CNO is clean shaven, Eberle had a full beard. Seen listening to Scott (Gary Cooper) tell Sen. Bentley (Stanley Ridges) about the use of aircraft carriers over battleships in future naval warfare and that Japan is a threat to the United States, the real Japanese naval attaché who would have heard
Naval tactics in the Age of Steam each based around a single carrier. Through a series of raids on Japanese-held islands, the American gradually grew more confident in their handling of aircraft carriers, learning that the right place for the task force commander was aboard a carrier, not one of the escorting cruisers, and developing tactics like having a single fighter direction officer for task forces operating in company. The four great carrier battles of 1942 – Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz – were all fought by aircraft without the ships on either side actually coming in sight of one another. The Japanese carriers