Victory At Sea

Shortly after World War II, NBC television created the Victory at Sea documentary, and aired it in the very early 1950's.  I can remember watching episodes of it from a 14 inch portable TV on rabbit ears.  NBC got Richard Rogers, of the famous Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway show business, to do the musical score.  Back in the day you could buy LP records of just the score.  The documentary makers picked the best of thousands of feet of news reel film,  added Roger's score and some narration.  They made better than 30 episodes. 
  I ran across a DVD set of the whole series in the $5 a DVD bin at Wallymart.  Been playing it on evenings when I lack a new Netflix to watch.  It's all black and white of course.  Color film and just been invented but was so slow ( insensitive to light) that everybody shot the faster black and white film.  And even the black and white film wasn't all that good.  Lot of shots have the sunlit topsides of things over exposed (burned out white) and the shadows pure black.  A fair amount of the footage is enemy footage captured during or after the war.
   If you have children or grandchildren Victory at Sea is a good thing to show them.  It moves right along, all the footage is genuine WWII footage, and there is plenty of action to keep a kid's interest.  From what I hear, schools have pretty much giving up teaching history.  WWII is the formative event of  the 20th century.  Watching this show, even just a few episodes of it will give the children an idea of the vastness of the war.  Although this show emphasizes the Navy side of the war, it gives a fair showing to the land side of the conflict.