I believe what is being half-remembered is that the end of the first day, a member of the Army Signal Corps gathered the magazines of undeveloped movie film from the Signal Corps photographers scattered along the beach, and was loading them onto a boat to be transported back for processing, when the collection slipped and fell into the ocean. Film from one of the five beaches had not been part of the collection, and that is what we see today (or Canadian and British footage).
That’s interesting, because in the PBS special narrator Martin Sheen says that no color film of the PH attack survives today.
Often archiving ‘abilities’ are actually just realities. It’s always a far bigger task than most people realise, and one which is rarely funded adequately (in any organisation of any size).
He needs to check with the National Park Service. The special was aired about 3 years ago and the chief narrator was one of the NPS Ranger specialists who works there full time. Several interviews with various survivors, etc. Quite a bit of talk about the impending collapse of the hull and how to deal with the pollution that will result.
the three-color Technicolor process used at the time required brilliant sunlight to work properly. Obviously that was more likely to be found in the Pacific. It was also expensive.
Much of the photography done in WW2 still slumbers unseen. To review it all would be time-consuming, and time is money. Most of these documentaries are cheaply-made, and rely on easily accessible (and much-used) collections
No, no, no. Technicolor was not used for war photography. The wartime color footage was taken using 16mm Kodachrome. It was enlarged to 35mm Technicolor prints for the theatrical documentary features that I listed above.
German color footage from World War II was taken mainly on 16mm Agfa film.
You can say that again. Not only was the film speed exceedingly slow, as Mk VII alluded to, but Technicolor cameras were enormous. I recently saw Rope and in the supplemantaries the showed a shot of a camera wheeling in on a scene. Ii was about three feet wide, four high and five long. Much too big for toting around when people are shooting about you.
Actually, you’re describing the Technicolor camera when it was “blimped” (i.e., sound proofed), as seen in this production still from Rope. Without the blimp, the three-strip Technicolor camera was much smaller.
Even smaller yet: Technicolor introduced a “Monopack” reversal film in 1941 that was basically a 35mm version of Kodachrome, and could be used in a standard 35mm camera for location shooting when the three-strip camera would be impractical. More here.
But Technicolor owned exclusive rights to Monopack, hence 16mm Kodachrome was used when armed forces photographers shot with color film.
The other thing is that rather a lot- in fact, an extremely high percentage, I’m told- of the colour footage/photos of British/Commonwealth military units, tanks, and aircraft during WWII was taken by civilians or officers who could afford the colour film, which was outrageously expensive. After the war, much of this stuff just sat in people’s attics or private collections, until the owners died and their children or grandchildren found the footage or albums and went “Hang on… People might want to see this”, hence all the “Colour of War” stuff that’s appeared over the last 10 years or so.