This is a series of 400ft colour sound films from I.E International, it is a series i have mentioned before but never really reviewed.
First of all here is brief summary,
This series was a hard hitting show about World War II, Lloyd Bridges voice adds a lot of feel to the stories being recounted from real soldiers diaries. the editing & narration are absolutely spot on.
Watching this can be, at times, quite a chilling experience; after awhile you feel as if you've been transported on board the ships, or on Iwo Jima or Okinawa--not just sitting in your home cinema watching it on the screen.
Even almost 40 years later this documentary has lost none of its power. Quite the opposite. It serves as a great introduction, for those born after WWII, to an enormous conflict that radically re-shaped the world around us and subjected peoples grandparents/parents to dreadful hardship.

I am not too sure how many of these were on Super 8 but we only discovered a couple by chance around 5 years ago, the episodes we have now found are ,
The desert war, Iwo Jima, Kamikaze, Okinawa at the emperor's doorstep, Saipan, Target Tokyo.
Each one has come to us in its original case and all with excellent image print and sound quality, there is some fade but it very early film so it actually suits it in a strange way.

This particular episode shows the G.I's landing on Okinawa with no resistance at all, in fact the soldiers are shown relaxing, cooking and even doing of bit of rodeo. they soon realise they were lulled inot a false sense of security as the Marines move up the Island only to find over a 100,000 Japanese soldiers dug in and waiting to pounce. We see some very hard hitting footage of the US using flame throwers on back packs and tanks with deadly results, building to the climax of the Americans advancing to a beautifully built Shuri Castle realised that this was were the Japanese had set up there headquarters and we see it here being shelled and burned & turned to nothing but dust and ruin. We also witness in graphic footage the women and children who were hiding in the hills so scared of being captured due to being told by there own people that the Americans were barbarians that they commit suicide by jumping off the cliffs with their children.
It concludes with the figures of over 120,000 Japanese deaths/injuries and over 50,000 Americans dead or injured.
These reels are very personalised with reading by the narrator Lloyd Bridges quoting from G.I's diaries. If you are a WW2 documentary fan then these are a must. This one was won on ebay this week for £6.42. It was another lucky win and another pressy for my Brother. (this time from my three children).

Thanks a lot for posting this, Tom! I guess you also already knew I was interested in it :-) I loved reading the review and watching the pictures! I must try to find one of these. £6.42 was a steal!

I don't mind if it has faded a bit. Most WWII are b/w anyways, so reddish film is ok. It feels natural in some way. And you have still some color left in yours.

I am not very fond of very explicit images, but that was how it was in the war. My interest is more towards Europe and North Africa (and a bit Russia) so the reel with the desert war would be the one I would love to find first.