Victory at Sea is a 1950s television documentary series that chronicles the Pacific theater of World War II from the American perspective. Famed Broadway composer Richard Rodgers (South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music) composed 12 themes to form the basis of the series’s music. Robert Russell Bennett is credited as orchestrator for the series (as he was for several Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals), but in reality he composed the bulk of the music for the 13-hour series using Rodgers’s themes as his basis.
The US Navy Band performs the Victory at Sea Symphonic Scenario:
The entire original documentary is on YouTube:
Victory at Sea on the Internet Movie Data Base.
I am nearly certain the “Victory at Sea” musical documentary includes activities of our nation’s forces in the Atlantic Ocean as well. I know that the Murmansk Run was one of the toughest shipping routes that had to be dealt the. regardless, thanks for this site, my Dad was oh so proud of his brief but voluntary and eventful service in the US Navy as a Radioman 2nd Class, we remain equally as proud and plan to pass all of this wonderful heritage of their bravery to the grandkids.
As I write this, I am watching Volume nine of the series, this one in Casablanca. And the reason so many think it was about the South Pacific who are not of our ages is because of the prominence of the South Pacific Ocean in the openings, and so many of the episodes were of the South Pacific Islands. Anyway, we didn’t get in officially until Pearl Harbor. FYI, I was born in December 1940, had many uncles and other kinfolk who were involved. I have just finished a book printed in 2017 about the Code Girls, and did not realize it was not about Bletchley, but about American girls involved in decoding in the US, which had remained secret for many years afterward. I particularly am interested in the music, which I actually performed some of in a Wind Ensemble I used to be in. That is why I just saw your message..