The Frogmen
The Frogmen is a 1951 blackandwhite film made by Twentieth Century Fox. It is based on operations by United States Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, popularly known as frogmen, against the Japanese Army and naval forces in World War II. It was the first such movie about scuba diving and became a popular cultural hit.
During World War II, Navy Lt. Cmdr. John Lawrence Richard Widmark, a strict disciplinarian, is put in charge of Underwater Demolition Teamafter its former leader, Lt. Cmdr. Jack Cassidy, is killed in action. The units men are distrustful of the professionally aloof Lawrence, and the relationship immediately takes a turn for the worse when they brawl with sailors aboard their transport ship. The ships captain, Lt. Cmdr. Pete Vincent Gary Merrill, understands the natural resentment the elite UDT men feel over the death of Cassidy, which they have transferred to Lawrence, and offers to go easy on the team at captains mast. The bythebook Lawrence, however, elects to hold his own mast and disciplines the entire team just before a dangerous reconnaissance mission to ascertain the safest landing beach during an upcoming invasion of a Japaneseheld island. Lawrence is scornfully perceived as afraid when he splits up the platoon and puts team executive officer Lt. Klinger in charge of a diversion to the more dangerous beach, where the main landing is scheduled.During the mission, Lawrence cuts his leg on coral, and the diversionary sections pickup boat receives a direct hit from artillery during pickup operations, killing Klinger and most of his men. Lawrence sees that two frogmen, including Chief Jake Flannigan Dana Andrews, are still in the water, but rather than risk loss of the information already gathered, orders a rescue boat launched and continues back to the transport. The rescue succeeds in recovering the two swimmers, but Lawrences apparently cowardly action increases the units ill will toward him. An embittered Flannigan and some of the others request transfer to another unit, but Lawrence insists that they first complete the next days mission to clear the new landing site for the invasion. ........
Source: Wikipedia
