I’m excited for the upcoming Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound, the first trailer for which was released on Thursday, because it will speak to a moment in history that almost perfectly encapsulates American exceptionalism: the service of Americans to save strangers far away.
Based on the novel The Good Shepherd by the master of maritime fiction C.S. Forester, Greyhound follows a U.S. Navy convoy task force commander as he seeks to deliver aid to Britain and the fight against the Axis powers. It’s a topic worthy of Hanks’s attention. While convoy escorts in the Pacific theater also faced daunting threats, the tenacious skill of Kriegsmarine U-boat commanders made the Atlantic especially precarious. The Kriegsmarine’s use of “Graue Wölfe” or “Grey Wolf” pack tactics often meant that convoys would face multiple submarines at the moment of attack. Just imagine being in the middle of a stormy ocean, surprised by multiple torpedoes incoming from multiple directions.
Tens of thousands of Allied sailors or merchant marine men were lost as a result of such tactics.
Still, the convoy operations went on. They were necessary to keep Britain from starving and to ensure that American military personnel could get into the fight. Set in 1942, Greyhound covers the time just as the U.S. Army was preparing for its first major Allied offensive: the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch.
This story is personal for me. My British grandfather was a career Royal Air Force officer who served as a Coastal Command pilot for part of the war. Coastal Command’s mission was to support convoys by detecting and destroying U-boats before they could strike. During that time, as shown in my grandfather’s scrapbook page below, he bombed numerous U-boats and even helped capture one!
— Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) March 5, 2020
Of course, it was far riskier to sail alongside the U-boats than it was to fly above them. And without the men who crewed these ships and braved the U-boat enemy, we would not have been able to cross the English Channel, storm across France, and destroy a despicable regime.
We need more movies like this one and others, which celebrate military service in heroic causes. Let us hope the movie is watched by many — and especially by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff.
Watch the trailer below.
