The Fighting Lady

Directed by the renowned photographer Edward Steichen while he served in the U.S. Navy, this documentary follows life aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, identified only as "the Fighting Lady" for wartime security (she was the USS Yorktown). The film moves from the routines of life at sea through the Panama Canal to combat in the Marcus Islands and the climactic "Marianas Turkey Shoot," where American pilots downed nearly four hundred Japanese aircraft. Cameras mounted in cockpit canopies show what it is like to dive through anti-aircraft fire. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the film is in the public domain.