SENSATIONAL FILM

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3267, 24 May 1943, Page 5

SENSATIONAL FILM

( BATTLE OF BISMARCK SEA SHOWING AT REGENT THEATRE Twenty-two ships on the sea, and then, in two days, an empty sea, and no ships! This, in' brief, is the story of the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, told most graphically by the camera of Damien Parer, who, on behalf of the Department of Information, made a magnificent record of the action. It ' is doubtful if a bettei’ short of planes and ships in action has been made during the war. “Battle of the Bismarck Sea” is one of the shorts which will be shown at the Regent Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday. Parer stood behind one of the pilots in a plane which dived to below mast-high level to drop the bombs on the doomed Jap. fleet. The plane was a Beaufighter, tearing over its target with many otheis, while up above the American bombers rained down heavy death on the Japs. The battle oyer, word comes that there is still Nippon life in the Bismarck Sea—boats and barges and rafts crammed with men who have escaped from the ships. Once again the Beaufighters are off, and once again the camera records for people far away some breath-taking shots of planes, flying at 350 miles an hour, swooping on to what looks like specks in the ocean. Guns roar, wa.er comes up in white spray, and the specks disappear.