WWII Guns of Windtalkers

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FPrice

New member
Just got back from seeing "Windtalkers" with Nicholas Cage. Great WWII flick about the Navojo code-talkers. I think there was one small error in the basic premise of the movie, but I'll let others decide on their own. I could be wrong tho.

The guns were the standard WWII guns, M1 Garands, M-1 Carbines, Colt 1911 (A1s I am pretty sure - but none were parkerized, all were well-worn blue). The GySgt in charge of the unit carried a pump shotgun, hard to tell for sure but it appeared to be a Model 12 (looked but could not see an exposed hammer). One of the group carried a BAR which was used with great effectiveness. Nicholas Cage and Christian Slater both carried M1 Thompson submachineguns. Very early in the movie Cage carried what appeared to be a Model 1927 Thompson with a drum magazine. I do not know if any military units used the drums, thought they all used stick mags.

In all a good movie with some VERY intense combat scenes. I recommend it.
 
K

KSFreeman

New member
Should have known better. It started with the drum magazine, then the hand grenades that were like napalm cannisters. I couldn't take it and left in the middle--GF was happy (and I'm all about that).

I'll wait for the DVD. YMMV.
 
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FPrice

New member
"...then the hand grenades that were like napalm cannisters."

Yeah, the special effects guys got carried away with some of the explosions for sure. I tried to look past that.

I guess that I was more impressed with the valor of a group of people who really had no reason to like the American government yet gave their lives to help it when it was needed. Pretty much like the Nisei who fought for us in the European Theatre.
 
A

Aion

New member
I wanna learn that trick where you spin around and snap off 3 shots from a .45 and take out 6 enemy soldiers... what do you call that, a "one-half shot stop" ...? :rolleyes:

Don't go to this film if you're expecting to learn facts about the codetalkers, or the Navajo, or the war in the Pacific. Don't go if you're expecting a return to the John Woo of old. *Do* go if you just want a fun war flick on the model of Sands of Iwo Jima or The Dirty Dozen. Wait, come to think of it, Dirty Dozen was more accurate. :D

- Aion
 
L

LoneStranger

New member
For that matter, just how accurate is the storyline that this was a great secret? Weren't there several Marine WWII movies made in 1945-1960 that showed the use of Navajo's for communications?

How secret is a secret if everyone knows about it?
 
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Jay Baker

New member
LoneStranger, "Battle Cry," made in late '40s or early '50s, starring Aldo Ray and Van Heflin, had Navajo code talkers in several scenes, although the movie was not specifically about them.

Bit of triva: Aldo Ray served in WWII, as a Navy "Frogman" (UDT), in the South Pacific.

J.B.
 
M

Mike Irwin

Staff
I don't know about previous movies, but it has sort of been on the edge of conciousness for a long time.

Part of the reason is that the Navajos themselves, the ones who served as code talkers (that's the phrase I've always heard, not wind talkers) never talked it up much. Their cultural sense of modesty apparently had a lot to do with that.

I'm not certain if it was Tony Hillerman, the novelist who sets most of his books in the Navajo Nations, or not, but one person who went out to try to do a book on the code talkers got VERY frustrated because it was very hard to draw the veterans out on their experiences.
 
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Navy joe

New member
For sale, 1 Thompson subgun, sights never used. Chuck Taylor could watch that movie and die happy, because apparently they all do fall to hardball. Aimed or not. A regular point shooters lovefest. Later though we actually see some of the Garand guys taking a wrap on their slings and aiming, too weird. Flamethrower was rather Hollywood too.

I want some of those grenades, like a small nuke.

I liked the film, but from start to finish everyone except the japanese seemed to be running out of ammo and it was apparently more expedient to run around with a seven shot pistol carried cond II (yep, had to get that movie cock in) Than to do something sensible and pick up a real weapon lying about on the ground.

50 star flag brief shot at the enlistment oath scene, and I swear early on I think the sound guy slipped in an M-60 beat for a burst or two.
 
S

Sodbuster

New member
I think it was a secret during the war. The Japanese couldn't crack the code. What else do you want? Nice ending statement FPrice.

Modesty may be a part of why the surviving code talkers don't talk. Another part may be that the red man still doesn't trust the white man. Smart people, those that were here first.

One of Hermann Hesse's characters speaks about listening to Mozart's music on a noisy radio. He listened to the spirit of the music through the static. Others complain about the static.
 
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Mike Irwin

Staff
the Choktaws, too.

I think the reason why Navajo was used was because it's several orders of magnitude more complex than most other Indian languages, and it's not a written language, only an oral one, which I think makes it pretty much unique.
 
K

Kaylee

New member
and it's not a written language, only an oral one, which I think makes it pretty much unique.
Click to expand...

Not that unique. The only Native language to develop a written form (that I know of) was Cherokee, and that wasn't until well after white contact. In fact, much of the symbology is derived from western characters.. looks kinda like a mash of English, Greek, and Cyrillic. Pretty nifty, actually.


-K
 
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Dfariswheel

New member
The Navajo language had no written form. The word's meaning depends on the context, and most importantly, the pronounceation. One word can have many meanings, so having a list of words would be useless. Because each word has any number of meanings, attempts to decode it by analizsing usage patterns, failed.
Since the language was further obscured by codeing, even other Navajo's were unable to understand what messages meant.

The language is totally unlike any other Indian language, so even though there were experts in Germany and Europe who spoke other North American Indian languages, they were unable to even state that what they were hearing was actually a language.
Basically, unless you know how to speak Navajo, the language itself, is an unbreakable code.

The only people capable of speaking Navajo are people who were raised with or around the Navajo.
In the days before WWII, only 30 non-Navajo people in the world spoke the language, none outside the US, and we knew who all 30 were.
 
2

2kiddad

New member
For any that have access to it, there is an excellent article about "Wind Talkers" is the June issue of "Leatherneck" Magazine, the house mag of the USMC. They give the movie a thumbs up.

According to the article, the Navaho actually endured a tremendous amount of skepticism and descrimination from their fellow Marines outside of the Radio Battalions. Also, the key to the code was not only the Navaho language, but the fact that radio talkers developed a code within the language itself. In any other language, the code might have been deciphered. Rendered in the Navaho language, the code became unintelligible. Finally, the fact that the Navaho language was used was not what was classified. That was well known and depicted in many films after the war, including "Battle Cry", (by Leon Uris who was actually a member of a Marine Radio Battlion and familiar with the Code Talkers). It was the code WITHIN the Navaho language that was classified until the late 60's. The advances made in electronic encryption are what declassified the code and rendered it obsolete.
 
H

Hutch

New member
It bit

I was hoping the 100 million they spent would have bought the kind of realism we saw in "Saving Private Ryan", or "Band of Brothers". Boy, was I wrong. Poor gun handling, stupid pyrothechnics, idiotic tactics, the works. The close air support was so obviously CGI, I just rolled my eyes.

If SPR could be such a box-office hit, why don't other directors (listen up, Woo) use his stylistic effects.

A hundred megabucks to make this turkey? Must've had some great parties while they were in Hawaii.

Editted to add: Oh, and the slow-mo recoil impulses and the muzzle blast signatures of the field artillery was just hideous.
 
M

Mike Irwin

Staff
Heard on the news last night that Windtalkers is TANKING at the box office.

This makes about 5 in a row for Nicholas Cage that have tanked...
 
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swingset

New member
I haven't seen it - don't plan to - it's John Woo for pete's sake!

I'd guess any POS he directs will have animated, overly choreographed violence, a wild car (jeep?) chase, and at least 5 scenes where someone dives away from a fireball explosion and JUST makes it to safety.:rolleyes:

Ugh. I'd honestly rather go to Ya Ya Sisterhood. Chick Flick, but at least I know up front that it's a ****. Nope, JW, you won't sucker me in with a story I want to see. I'll stick to REAL moviemakers.
 
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S&W 24

New member
I know of writen accounts and I have also talked to a vet that told me that drum mags were available in the pacific and if they had it there for shure they were around in europe.
 
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