page_title: Destination Tokyo
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Destination Tokyo / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonial Theater advertisement for the American war film Destination Tokyo (1943) - 8 Jan. 1944 Morning Call, Allentown PA
context_page_description: Destination Tokyo is a 1943 black and white American submarine war film. The film was directed by Delmer Daves in his directorial debut, and the screenplay was written by Daves and Albert Maltz, based on an original story by former submariner Steve Fisher. The film stars Cary Grant and John Garfield and features Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Warner Anderson, along with John Ridgely, Alan Hale Sr. and William Prince.
  Destination Tokyo has been called "the granddaddy of submarine films like Run Silent, Run Deep, Das Boot, and U-571".
context_section_description: Production on Destination Tokyo began on June 21, 1943 and continued through September 4 of that year. Members of the cast spent time at the U.S. Navy's Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, to familiarize themselves with submarine procedures and operations. Technical advisors to the film included the captain of the USS Wahoo, Dudley Walker Morton, and crewmember Andy Lennox. The Wahoo was reported as missing in action after production on Destination Tokyo completed, sunk by Japanese aircraft in October 1943 while returning home from a patrol in the Sea of Japan. Commander Morton and all aboard were lost. Thanks to the efforts of the Wahoo Project Group, the wreckage was identified in 2006.
  Previous versions of this article have confused the fictional Copperfin and its fictional mission with the Wahoo. The Wahoo did not go on its first patrol until August 1942, and could not have been involved in assisting the Doolittle Raid.
  The existence of a submarine in Tokyo Bay relaying information to the Doolittle Raid is mentioned in the film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), based on pilot Ted Lawson's memoir. There is a scene on the USS Hornet where Lawson (Van Johnson), fresh from a briefing on the latest positions of the barrage balloons over Tokyo, tells his friend Bob Gray (Robert Mitchum): "You know, the changes in those balloons threw me. Just think, a bunch of guys sweating all day in a sub down in Tokyo Bay, guys just like us, sneaking up at night to radio balloon positions..." The existence of such a submarine is not part of the participants' or historians' accounts of the raid. The Doolittle Raiders detailed description of the raid states that the barrage balloons seen on the raid were a negligible threat. There were many other possible intelligence sources for information given out at the briefings.
  The model of the Copperfin used for filming was based on actual American submarines, except that, to confuse the Japanese, it was given equipment and apparatus that were used on numerous different types of subs. The film was accurate enough to be used by the Navy as a training tool for submariners.
  The incident in Destination Tokyo in which the pharmacist's mate performs an appendectomy was based on an actual event which took place on the submarine USS Seadragon.
  Some filming of Destination Tokyo took place at Portuguese Bend near Redondo Beach, California.
  For Destination Tokyo, Warner Bros. borrowed Cary Grant from Columbia Pictures in a swap which sent Humphrey Bogart to Columbia to make Sahara. Grant had turned down the role that Bogart eventually played, and Gary Cooper had turned down the role of the captain of the Copperfin that Grant played.
caption: Ad for a showing of Destination Tokyo in Allentown, Pennsylvania
exif: {}