Destination Gobi Destination Gobi Destination Gobi is a 1953 American Technicolor World War II film from 20th Century Fox, produced by Stanley Rubin, directed by Robert Wise (his first color feature film), that stars Richard Widmark and Don Taylor. US Navy chief Sam McHale (Widmark) takes command of a unit of weather observers stranded behind Japanese lines deep in Inner Mongolia. McHale must lead his men across the treacherous Gobi Desert to the sea coast. Mongols that the sailors had befriended, led by chief Tengu (Murvyn Vye), help them elude the Japanese and steal a Chinese junk in order to reach Okinawa.
Gobi Desert extending from the foot of the Pamirs (77° east) to the Greater Khingan Mountains, 116°-118° east, on the border of Manchuria; and from the foothills of the Altay, Sayan, and Yablonoi mountain ranges on the north to the Kunlun, Altyn-Tagh, and Qilian mountain ranges, which form the northern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, on the south. A relatively large area on the east side of the Greater Khingan range, between the upper waters of the Songhua (Sungari) and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is reckoned to belong to the Gobi by conventional usage. Some geographers and ecologists prefer to