The Fleet That Came to Stay (1945)

Well before he made the Westerns for which he would primarily be remembered, director Budd Boetticher put together this documentary of World War II's Battle of Okinawa from footage shot by Navy cameramen in the thick of the fighting. The vital editing skills Boetticher learned from Academy Award® -winning editor Barbara McLean helped him tell this complicated and protracted story with a directness and power that are both impressive and horrifying, as the soundtrack pounds with bombs and gunnery fire and the screen fills with dozens of Japanese kamikaze pilots deliberately crashing their planes into battleships and aircraft carriers. War correspondent Ernie Pyle makes a brief appearance, only weeks before he was killed on an island near Okinawa. - Marilyn Ferdinand