Battle 360 Hammer of Hell (2008– ) Online

In this episode, the Grumman Avengers and Hellcats, and the Douglas dive bombers attack the Japanese naval and air stronghold at Truk. By the time the Enterprise and her sister carriers launched the two major raids, the Japanese had figured out that something was up and had withdrawn almost all of her warships to safer waters, leaving behind a few destroyers and smaller vessels. They were all properly pummeled. The bottom of Truk lagoon is still littered with broken iron hulks and human bones.

I won't carry on about the virtues and flaws in this series because they haven't changed much from one episode to the next -- except that this is the first time I can remember in which a computer-generated airplane (on fire) zooms head first directly into the camera lens, a cliché popped up every few minutes in the "Dogfight" series. If it was designed to thrill, it failed. It's distracting and ultimately enervating.

But, again, the series is not to be dismissed. It contains comments from the now-elderly participants who add colorful and instructive anecdotes and observations. I, for one, never realized that there were considerable differences in the air-cooled .30 caliber Browning machine guns used by the infantry and those used on aircraft. The narrator still sounds like some kind of martial cheer leader but his statements are largely accurate. Two of the talking heads are professional historians and the clarity and lack of passion in their comments comes as a relief.

Nobody mentioned it but by this stage of the war the Japanese A6m Zero was thoroughly outclassed by American aircraft, as the pilots were better-trained than the Japanese. Japan had no real natural resources and its supply routes to the South were being compromised. It was about this time that the butt plates of Japanese rifles were being hammered on with nails. And the Zero came in only two major variants. Late in the war it was facing Allied fighters with twice its horsepower.