Victory's final installment debuted on 3 May 1953. Though Henry Salomon’s earliest series outlines had included a series wrap-up encompassing America’s Cold War and the then-current Korean Conflict, the completed EP26 never strays past 1945–46. It begins with nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while its latter half has American troops—spared from invading the Japanese mainland—arriving in US ports to joyous dockside reunions with loved ones. EP26's scenes of liberated Allied prisoners in Japan and the horrors of Germany's concentration camps are exceptions to the episode’s overall upbeat tone, celebrating the Allied victory and America's optimistic return to peacetime.

EP26 functions as might the Exit Music for a Broadway show: one last “plug” of tuneful strains—the Rodgers themes especially—aiming to plant them firmly in the audience's memory. Particularly prominent are the two Rodgers melodies chosen for individual exploitation, MARCH and TANGO. The latter's “No Other Love” repurposing must have prompted Bennett’s vivid selling of the tune here; Victory's closing episode aired only weeks before Perry Como's recording was released and Me and Juliet opened in New York.

EP26 opens to vivid footage of the Manhattan Project's “Trinity” nuclear test: “5:30 a.m.—July 16th, 1945: the desert of New Mexico. From a single gram of matter, man releases the explosive energy of 20,000 tons of T.N.T., dawn of the atomic age.” Here, as throughout EP26, there are no SFX. Bennett chooses not an “ugly music” chord, but one more dazzling [A] than dissonant: jazz musicians would label it C13#11. The scenes that follow are of the actual wartime bombings’ aftermath, accompanied by the woodwinds’ plaintive J-5a: “8:16 a.m.—August 6th, 1945: Hiroshima, Japan. A city dies as an age is born. Three days later: one more bomb on Nagasaki, and 24,000 more die. Two bombs, and World War II is over.”

At 2:20 the tone brightens with a Mount Fuji sunrise and Allied ships sailing into Tokyo Bay, “the goal toward which they set their course 44 months earlier—after the attack on Pearl Harbor.” Bennett uses MARCH, then VIC-HYMN at 3:05 and J-4 at 3:13, accompanying the Marines’ token, uncontested landing on mainland Japan: “There is no resistance. The empire of Japan surrenders fully, completely.” Salomon and Hanser note the planning estimates for the unnecessary “Operation Downfall” invasion: “The Allies are spared one million casualties.”

EP4, despite Henry Salomon's title, waits until 11:03 to mention Midway Island, about 1,300 miles north-northwest of Honolulu. The first portion of the program surveys Japan's territorial aggression following the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, all of these actions preceding the conflagration at Midway on 4 June 1942. Bennett's opening music [A] establishes the mood as EP4 begins.

The bold Hanser-Salomon narration lists major locales of Japan's offen-sives. In keeping with Salomon's dramatic and poetic aims for Victory, the sequence is memorably alliterative rather than chronological or alphabeti-cal: “Manila, Mindoro, Mindanao; Hong Kong, Hainan, Hanoi; Macassar, Mandalay, Malaya; Bataan, Bangkok, Borneo; Cambodia, Cavite, Corregidor; Batavia, Bandoeng, Bali; Singapore, Shanghai, Sumatra; Panay, Palembang, Pescadores; Surabaya, Soembawa, Soemba.”

EP4's music is 100 percent Bennett until SONG-SEAS at 10:15, accompanying US ships transporting supplies from America to Australia. While a few of the J-tunes that debuted in EP2 recur here, this first part of EP4 is mostly all-new, one-time material. One strictly pentatonic motto is [B], heard at 2:15 and again at 3:15. J-1 appears several times early in EP4, including the bold brass gesture of punctuation [C] at 2:25, which returns at 3:25 and 4:29. As Japanese infantry advance aggressively across rivers and hills there's [D] at 2:31 and [E] at 2:56. At 3:32 the footage dissolves to British colony Hong Kong, assaulted only four hours after Pearl Harbor, which resisted surrender until 25 December 1941. J-1 returns, serving as the bass line. Japan's attack on another US territory in the Pacific, the Philippines, occurred at about the same time, and at 4:01 [F] Manila, its capital city, passes to Japanese control. The J-1 [E] gesture returns at 4:29 for yet another bold Japanese move, its invasion of Malaya and eventual humiliation of British, Australian, and Indian forces at Singapore; Churchill would describe this defensive stronghold's loss as the “worst disaster” in Britain's military history. Singapore's defenders, concerned only with enemy approaches by sea, thought Japan incapable of attacking successfully overland from the north, but “the enemy comes crawling down on Singapore. The jungle does not stop them. The scattered defenders do not stop them. Nothing stops them.” Bennett makes fresh use of his J-tunes here, with [G] at 5:04 using J-5a, [H] at 5:31 using J-1, and then [I] at 6:14 using J-5b, as Britain's General Percival leads his forces’ surrender on 15 February 1942.

EP11's locales are all above the 50th parallel, and the opening narration sets the tone: “For the first time in history, the vacuum that is the top of the world is filled by major powers who meet there and clash… . As the earth shrinks in circumference, so do the routes that link Allies together, so do the avenues along which enemies attack.” This episode circles the globe west-to-east beginning in Alaska, next quickly covering the 1941–42 British and Canadian commando actions in Norway. Further east, we then follow imperiled Allied convoys sailing from Scotland to Murmansk via the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The program concludes with a return to the North Pacific, where the Aleutian Islands are both America's closest approach to its ally Russia and the site of Japan's 1942–43 invasion.

Musically, the EP11 score is often atmospheric, tense, and unmelodic, though there are several newsreel-type scenes that might have been agreeably accompanied by a new concert march. This episode has the most cold-weather footage in Victory, prompting stark, icy scoring from Bennett that is singular in the series. There's one new Rodgers theme, the lighthearted FIDDLE-GTR.

Though Bennett nearly always gives each Rodgers Victory theme a straightforward debut, he sometimes introduces his own tunes by a fragment—as seen in EPs 17, 28, 22, and 24—only later revealing the melody in complete form. His EP11 approach is still different, deriving a good deal of music from a dissonant three-note “cell” of a minor second interval atop a perfect fifth—see [C]. Bennett gives the “cell” a variety of harmonic and rhythmic-melodic identities from 4:07 through the string-tremolo chords at EP11's conclusion; the variations of the “cell” are marked with an X in this chapter's musical examples.

EP11 opens with an American B-17's takeoff and weather patrol in Alaska's desolation, paired with distinctive bleak and wintry scoring [A]. The NBC Symphony double reeds get several solo moments in EP11, first with [B], beginning at 1:33, as oboe, English horn, and bassoon are heard in turn.

After 1:55 is a cross-dissolve to an animation viewing the globe from above the North Pole. Highlighted are EP11's three upcoming Scandinavian locales. The first of these, at 2:22, is the Royal Navy's “Operation Claymore” raid of March 1941 on Norway's German-held Lofoten Islands.

The Battle of the Atlantic pitted the Allies—especially their supply convoys headed eastward from North America—against Germany's Kriegsmarine and its prowling U-boats. Victory's EP16 follows EP1 and EP3 as the third of Henry Salomon's “Anti-Submarine” episodes. The earlier two were sourced primarily from HUSNO's first-published volume of 1947; EP16 then, like HUSNO's later Vol. X, “The Atlantic Battle Won, May 1943–May 1944,” continued the Anti-Sub coverage. The Allies’ success was due both to increased ship and aircraft production and their technological advancements in competition with Germany. During the war, Henry Salomon had visited the Bahamas and several other Atlantic bases crucial to EP16's story, and he later helped draft many of HUSNO's Vol. X chapters referenced for EP16.

A June 1952 NBC press release announced EP16 as Victory's sixth-completed episode. Salomon later altered his plans, however, and the installment received a major revision that October. These changes prompted substantial rescoring and musical re-shuffling by Bennett, most of which survives in his hand, as does his first-version score.

EP16 resumes the Allies’ Anti-Sub focus—fifteen weeks since EP3's airing—with a few scene-setting minutes of German submarine success seen in Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels. The program opens with a surfacing U-boat, the [A] music incorporating GER: “‘The U-boat will decide the outcome of the war.’ This is what Hitler is telling the Germans as his underwater sailors harvest victory after victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. The realities support him—in mid-1943.” Hitler appears with his naval high command [B] at 1:36, underscored by the SUB-extension tune Bennett had composed for EP1's early U-boat triumphs. Here at 2:08 the celebration continues, and Hitler awards his Kriegsmarine officers medals to a processional march of sorts [C]. Though Bennett composed the melody for this very spot in Victory, his 1952–53 viewers would have already heard it in EP10—earlier in the broadcast sequence, though completed and scored later.

At about 2:27 EP16's coverage turns to Germany's wartime Ministry of Propaganda and its exhortations to U-boat builders: “Every German is told his submarines threaten the entire Allied war effort with collapse.” There's Bennett's SUB-extension at 2:35 and a pair of new settings of Rodgers's SUB at 3:06 [D] and 3:27 [E]: “But as the Nazis turn out newer and more murderous models, the doom of the submarine is being sealed by the Allies.”

As Victory began production in 1951, NBC was aware of the many poten-tial viewers—American and otherwise—unreached by broadcast television. Though Henry Salomon later proposed a re-cut, theatrical Victory, the idea of theater screenings had surfaced earlier. NBC's director of TV operations Edward Lyman Munson, earlier the head of the Army Pictorial Service, had written: “Having had control of production of all Army, Air Force, and industrial incentive films during the war … I believe that the item ‘basic terms of proposed agreement’ [with the Navy] could well be revised… . we should attempt to work out some sort of theatrical exception to re-coup expenditures… . We should reserve 16 mm film distribution rights … [and] … foreign theatrical rights.”

Commercial TV's fastest-growing years were the late 1940s and early 1950s, with production still centered in New York. The networks routinely prepared kinescopes of many live programs for re-broadcast, though neither visual nor sound quality could compete with film of the actual programming itself. This hastened the gradual move to filmed shows, which were preferred by syndication buyers. Late in 1951, though Victory's future was still uncertain, Henry Salomon ambitiously proposed a new “NBC film board” and expansion of film production:

NBC announced its new Film Division in March 1952. The FCC was about to end its new-station “freeze” and the syndication value of NBC's filmed programs could only increase as more stations—and viewers—appeared.

EP17 is set in the western Pacific's Mariana Islands—Guam in particular. There's plenty of “ugly music” combat action, and much of the soundtrack is given to Bennett's concert marches and a nearly full-length version of Rodgers's “Guadalcanal March.” What's most distinctive are the delicate passages written for the Chamorro, Guam's native people. Woodwinds, harp, and gentle percussion are prominent, and the alto flute makes its sole Victory appearance.

EP17 opens during Guam's tranquil prewar years. Unlike the rest of the Mariana Islands held by Japan as WWII began, Guam had been a US territory since the Spanish-American War, though remaining lightly defended even as Japan moved in the 1930s to expand its sphere of influence and then joined the Axis powers in 1940. Bennett's distinctive music for this South Seas locale [A] at 1:01 opens EP17 and later returns twice more. His next gentle “Guam” melody at 1:29 [B] is stylistically similar, though like so many of his Victory melodies is a one-time passage. (For more about the musical material of [A] and [B], see the Musical Postlude below.)

EP17 viewers learn at 2:00 that, months before the war's outbreak, “Naval authorities on Guam plead in vain with Congress to fortify the strategic island while time remains.” This a reminder of what NBC's archived Victory documents demonstrate: Salomon's desire to weigh unbiased and unflinching coverage of WWII against prospects of advancing controversial viewpoints or unduly embarrassing any country's government agencies. Indeed, Congress had turned down $5 million in appropriations for Guam's Apra Harbor in April 1939 as part of a $66.8 million Naval Air Base Bill for construction and aircraft, mostly in Pacific locales.

EP17's only moment of on-screen music-making comes at 2:16, as we see the drum and bugle corps of Guam's home-guard militia and then a subset of the small Marine population stationed there. Bennett's NBC trumpets play a unison fanfare in G major [C], fully performable on the US military's standard-issue G bugles.

With an appearance of J-3 at 2:29, the viewpoint is that of Japan, a country aware that Guam, “the American pillbox without guns in the Marianas,” is ripe for conquest anytime. The music continues with J-6 at 2:46 and then again at 3:04, with J-3 added underneath.

Bennett remains best known for his theater work, and his 1981 obituary's headline in the New York Times is unsurprising: “Robert Russell Bennett, 87; Orchestrated Top Musicals.” His earliest attention in the national press, however, had trumpeted his own compositions: prizewinning orchestral successes in the late-1920s contests sponsored by Musical America and Victor Records. Over the ensuing half-century, news features regularly marveled at Bennett's wide-ranging creative activity. He brought his gifts, training, and experience to every endeavor—whether a composition for a friend, Broadway orchestrations ground out against exhausting deadlines, or one of the great musical challenges, satisfactions, and triumphs of his lifetime, Victory at Sea.

Bennett was born in Kansas City in 1894, but a polio affliction at the age of four prompted his family's move to the unspoiled air of the country—Freeman, Missouri, about thirty-five miles to the south. His early musical instruction was piano study with his mother May Bennett and both trumpet and violin lessons with his father George. The latter was also a bandleader during what was the heyday of America's amateur and professional concert bands, when the record industry was young, commercial radio and sound film still in the future, and live music was the norm at civic and social events. Young Bennett learned to play most of the instruments in his father's civic band well enough to capably substitute for missing players, offering invaluable experience for the future composer and arranger.

In 1911, aged seventeen, he relocated to his hometown and was accepted for study by Kansas City Symphony conductor Carl Busch, himself an accomplished composer and onetime pupil of Humperdinck. Forty years later, the New Yorker's Bennett portrait—published just two months before he joined Victory—whimsically recapped this early part of his career, when future president Harry Truman was another working pianist in the city:

NBC's initial 1952–53 Victory run was on a sustaining basis, the radio-TV industry's longstanding term for broadcasts lacking commercial sponsorship. Contrary to Victory lore, however, this wasn't NBC's original intent, Richard Rodgers's mandate, or the US Navy's firm policy. NBC devoted more than a year to finding a series sponsor, with its effort continuing until just weeks before Victory's October 1952 debut. Not until NBC reluctantly abandoned its search did it then decide to promote this late decision as a public-interest gesture, which paid off in praise from opinion-making columnists. Decades later, Rodgers claimed an early and decisive role in the matter while also conflating re-run syndication profits with the issue of first-run sponsorship:

NBC's papers show this account to be fanciful. By mid-1951 the network was already searching for a sponsor, hoping to recover its investment. There was no deluge of interest following Victory's early success, and syndication advertising and licensing also began well before 1952–53's debut season fin-ished. Rodgers had no documented involvement with these matters.

Early in 1951 NBC had signed the Navy's agreement of understanding, which did initially preclude first-run sponsorship. But even then the corporation questioned the Navy's provision:

NBC asked the Navy to reconsider, as Sylvester “Pat” Weaver was already seeking underwriting from TV manufacturer RCA, NBC's parent corporation.

It was WWII Navy veteran and former National Broadcasting Corporation producer Henry “Pete” Salomon who conceived Victory at Sea and proposed it to NBC early in America's postwar television boom. Later, as Victory's producer, he was in remarkable measure able to bring his personal vision to the series. Today, Salomon (1917–58) remains a vaguely drawn character in accounts of Victory's creation, often identified by his associations as either Robert Sarnoff's schoolmate or as historian Samuel Morison's assistant. His Navy service and his other NBC efforts—pre- and post-Victory—are usually overlooked.

Salomon was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Private schooling at Phillips Academy preceded studies at Harvard, and upon his 1939 graduation he took a position in New York with NBC's Script Division. Upon joining the Navy in 1942, Salomon became producer of The Victory Hour, a weekly NBC broadcast. It was the official radio program of America's High School Victory Corps, federally established in September 1942. The Corps’ high school upper-class members would get “immediate, accelerated, and special training … for that war service they will be expected to perform after leaving school” and “active participation … while still in school in the community's war effort.” Salomon's broadcasts kept the millions of Victory Corps members informed about war issues, and special guests included Eleanor Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace. By 1943, The Victory Hour was carried by 100-plus stations and upcoming topics included “What can a high school student do this summer?,” “Youth under fire” (teenagers in Axis-occupied countries), and “Precision wins wars: mathematics and science join the armed forces.”

Salomon's Victory Hour was one early facet of his Navy service. The esteemed historian Samuel Eliot Morison had been commissioned by President Roosevelt in 1942 to prepare his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (HUSNO) and in February 1943 Morison took on Salomon—among his prize history students at Harvard—as first-chosen of his several assistants. Salomon did background research for HUSNO while also first-drafting numerous chapters. Morison and Salomon, too, participated in many of the major Pacific theater offensives they chronicled in HUSNO, with Salomon moving to the Atlantic in mid-1943 as the Allies turned the tide in battling Germany's U-boats. Following his visits to Bermuda, the West Indies, and Brazil, as well as interviews with officers from Atlantic convoy vessels, Salomon returned to the Pacific.

George has asked me to write a short piece about my grandfather, and of course I am happy to do so given all that George has done to honor Robert Russell Bennett's musical heritage. I’ll get to the heritage aspect in a moment, and particularly Victory at Sea, but I’d like to start out by talking about Grandpa's love of sports and games.

He loved baseball. Perhaps the love went back to when he played ball for a Kansas semi-pro team. At first, I didn't know whether to believe him about his baseball career because, you see, he contracted polio as a young boy, and lost considerable muscle and strength in both legs as a lifelong condition. Why the initial doubt? He told me he played catcher.

He loved the New York Giants; he disliked the Dodgers and hated the Yankees. He applauded the Dodgers’ “scram” to Los Angeles and was saddened by the Giants’ move to San Francisco. He disliked changes to the game that were meant to broaden the sport's appeal, and on occasion when I would rhapsodize about such-and-so's home-run prowess, he would correct me by saying that in the era of shortened fences and lighter balls, there were no more home runs, only home “trots.” In my teens I’d dismiss this kind of remark as the older generation defending their ways from encroachments by the younger generation, but I came to see them as the reflection of his artistry, his devotion to true accomplishment as distinguished from showy gambits, no matter how popular. The idea that a ball should fly over a fielder's head to be a home run, rather than have the player stop at the fence and see the ball just make it over the fence has more force with me now.

He loved tennis and played well into his seventies. He played doubles, being unable to cover the court well in singles. He could hold his own against an average player in singles, but that was not his game. He was formidable in doubles against excellent players because of good ground strokes and a formidable serve. With his tall stature, long arms, big hands, and sinewy strength he could hit it. I heard veterans on several occasions warn newbies to ignore Grandpa's limp getting to the service line. As with all things, but especially tennis, he played to win.

Six weeks into Victory's first run producer Henry Salomon explained to a reviewer, “I want the audience to hear the narration in their subconscious. I want them to feel the words rather than listen to them.” Previously, at an October 1952 press preview he had explained, “we have developed motion pictures for television rather than use television to exhibit motion pictures.” Still earlier—at which time the series was only half complete—Salomon had further described his intentions:

Salomon held true to his vision of letting film and music tell the story whenever possible. Victory's scripts average barely 1,300 words each, leaving at least sixteen of each episode's twenty-six minutes narration-free and only the occasional sound effect intruding upon Bennett's orchestral scoring.

Several reviewers singled out the poetic tone of the Victory's scripts. It was a notable departure from the style of the then-recent wartime newsreels and the WWII documentary TV series which Victory eclipsed: 1949's Crusade in Europe and 1951's Crusade in the Pacific (see chapter 11). With Victory's critics focusing on its most-previewed early episodes, however, none seem to have remarked upon a distinguishing feature of the scripts: literary quotations from sources both common and uncommon.

The handful of biblical citations would have been familiar to many viewers: “For everything there is an appointed time” (EP18, 1:38; Ecclesiastes 3); “They have fought a good fight; they have finished their course” (EP18, 18:40; referencing 2 Timothy); “When Joshua heard the sound of the people shouting” (EP18, 25:20; Exodus 32:17–18); “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (EP20, 24:12; Matthew 11:28); “How are the mighty fallen” (EP22, 24:59; 2 Samuel 1:27).

EP8 takes place in and around the Mediterranean, from Italy's mid-1940 entry into the war until late 1942. The Italians are more in evidence here than Axis partner Germany, with combat in the skies, in Greece and North Africa, and at sea. The Allies’ poor showing in Crete against German paratroops is unmentioned, though EP8 in its first-completed form gave Crete considerable coverage.

Bennett's recording date for his EP8 score was an important stepping-stone in the series’ completion. NBC's original 1951 contract with the US Navy (see chapter 1) had stipulated that Victory broadcasts couldn't begin until fifteen of the twenty-six programs were completed; the all-important fifteenth installment turned out to be EP8. If the US Navy was indeed holding NBC to their agreement, Bennett's recording session on 22 October 1952 would leave four days to mix the final soundtrack and unite it with the assembled film footage before EP1 would be cleared to air on 26 October.

EP8 opens with a flurry, Mussolini having announced Italy's declaration of war against France and Great Britain on 10 June 1940. We see his immediate offensive move at the French Border (some historians’ “Battle of the Alps”) while hearing an “Italian” Bennett march at 1:14 [A]. The voice of President Roosevelt follows with words of alarm, and the Salomon-Hanser narration sets the stage: “Mussolini, founder of fascism, self-appointed high priest of war, draws the saber he has long been rattling on the sidelines. With France defeated and England tottering, he commits the Italian empire to support his personal pact of steel with Hitler.”

Italy's invasion of Greece in late October 1940 follows around 2:25. Bennett's accompaniment at 2:41 is a lively ¾ folk dance [B], no actual combat being shown prior to 3:33. England, pledging its support, brings aid from North Africa at 3:44, accompanied briefly by the first “British” music in EP8, just before Axis planes appear: “Across the Mediterranean, the hard-pressed British rush troops and supplies to the embattled Greeks, sailing fearlessly under the bays of Axis bombers.” From 4:08 to 4:52 is a no-narration sequence of mostly “ugly music” as the Royal Navy fights off another air attack.

A jaunty march at 5:24 [C] heralds the British troops’ arrival in Greek harbors, the tune having been written for the already-completed EP10 (at 15:41).

America's massive new B-29 “Superfortress” airplanes appear at EP23's opening, during 1945's bombing of Japan pre-Hiroshima. These attacks had been enabled by the conquests of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, which provided suitable bases for America's long-range air assault upon the home islands. EP23 concludes with the invasion and takeover of Iwo Jima, even closer to Japan, where American airbases can host shorter-range fighter escorts and provide a haven for troubled B-29s. The central portion of this program, however, is devoted to (1) the activities of the many US servicemen in the Pacific involved in supply and support, and (2) the vagaries of weather in the western Pacific, especially the feared tropical cyclones—the typhoons.

Bennett's score was recorded on 1 April 1953 and aired on 19 April, the eighteen-day interval tied with EP24's as Victory's shortest. Given such a timeline, Bennett's five and a half minutes of re-uses seem modest. Though the program's focus is entirely the Pacific war with Japan, there are no J-tunes at all, because little of EP23's storytelling is from Japan's perspective. One special musical distinction, unique in Victory, is the small-group jazz at the start of Part Two.

As EP23 begins, the music [A] sets the scene in Tokyo: “Spring 1945: one of the great cities of the world becomes one of the great battlefields of the world… . Tokyo is objective no. 1 for strategic air attack by the Allies… . The B-29's [bring] war to the makers of war.” An air raid sends civilians into underground shelters, and then the B-29s arrive and commence bombing, to whole-tone tremolo accompaniment at 1:37 [B].

In blunt terms, America shifted its bombing strategy over Japan from high-altitude daylight strikes with conventional bombs to low-level strikes at night, using incendiaries to raze wooden commercial buildings and homes. EP23 doesn't dwell on this, simply moving from strategic targeting of rail yards and such to the nighttime sequence after 2:27: “The great fire raids consume Japan. Sixty-six cities are swept by hurricanes of flame.” Bennett's music [C] is in his especially vivid key of F sharp, with woodwinds and even trumpets trilling. At 2:45 is EP23's first truly “ugly music,” as P-51 “Mustang” fighters attack ground targets. This 2:45–3:28 scoring, including [D] with its tritone-related chords, is a re-use from EP19's Leyte Gulf action (15:33–16:14).

Victory's years in syndication were surprisingly profitable, but its gradual move downmarket seems inevitable in retrospect. During the series’ first season NBC had given affiliates the network's Sunday afternoon feed without time gaps for advertising, and those stations broadcasting from film in other timeslots were forbidden to break Victory's twenty-six-minute continuity with commercials, as “such action would breach the mood of the show and destroy the dramatic impact.” Soon enough, however, came the intrusion of local advertising in most markets. By 1957 the series was in its fifth syndication cycle in New York City, but Henry Salomon was reluctant to view broadcasts: “I really can't look at it anymore. It was my first television effort and it's rather like one's oldest, dearest child. I can't bear to see it brutally broken up for commercials, to see its continuity spoiled. Any mishandling hurts me.”

Salomon died unexpectedly in 1958 and would never know the extent of Victory's durability: by 1964 Japan and Germany were among the forty countries where the series had aired, Japan having “bought it and liked it so much that they renewed it for a second showing a year later,” according to NBC. In 1962, the FCC's pivotal All Channels Act stipulated that new TV sets receive both the VHF and UHF broadcast bands—the latter typically used by “educational TV” stations—and Victory's US syndication shifted from commercial to non-profit outlets through the 1960s and 1970s. It would have pleased Henry Salomon that, in the years preceding home video's emergence, his program could again be viewed without commercial interruption and by an audience somewhat like 1952–53's Sunday-afternoon demographic. America's corporate TV networks had found themselves unable to fully sustain the ambitious cultural programming of their postwar dreams, but Victory at Sea earned a special distinction: an early-1950s commercial TV series later granted the prestige of regular public television exhibition.

Musically, Bennett's Victory writing is as unfashionable in today’s Hollywood as Rodgers-style tunes are on Broadway. Yet the series’ orchestral scoring repays study by both aspiring and veteran film composers, just as Rodgers's body of work is instructive to musical theater's current and future songwriters. Excerpts from the three Victory LPs remain available as digital downloads, and the score retains an independent concert life today in the form of Bennett's 1950s band and orchestra medleys which showcase the Rodgers themes.

EP13's action is set almost entirely in and around New Guinea, which was under Allied control before Japan's first inroads early in 1942. Musically, the episode is distinguished by Bennett's numerous concert-march strains—more than ten minutes in total—along with “jungle music” scoring second in length only to EP6's Guadalcanal coverage.

The program opens just after the early May 1942 “Battle of the Coral Sea.” Japan, hoping to break America's bonds with Australia, was unsuccessful in its naval effort to invade Port Moresby, on New Guinea's southern coast, and is forced to attack Port Moresby overland from their northern-coast base in Buna: “The formidable Owen Stanley mountain range stands between the Japanese base of Buna in northern New Guinea and Port Moresby in the south—miles of jagged hills and gloomy gorges, steep escarpments and trackless jungle: a frightful natural barrier.”

Bennett's atmospheric music at 1:37 for aerial footage of the windswept Owen Stanleys [A] is shown here in detail, and his “jungle music” at 2:01 for the intrepid Japanese soldiers [B] recalls similar EP6 scoring. At 2:55, EP13's underscore gains in tempo: “This is the part of the world called Melanesia—the ‘black islands.’ For the Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen who must throw back the Japanese, the Melanesian nightmare begins.”

Australian infantrymen, with the help of native Papuan guides, halt Japan's advance only thirty miles outside Port Moresby, after which the Allies push northward through the jungle, routing the Japanese. A no-narration sequence of the inland conflict from both sides’ perspective lasts from 3:34 to 4:58. J-6 is featured prominently, and in complete form at 4:37. One specific Allied goal was the plains outside Dobodura, seen at 5:08: “Months of bitter, brutal combat. But the allies push inexorably forward, into the strategic Dobodura plain with its vital airstrip, only six miles from New Guinea's north coast.” Though the fight proved costly, in 1942–43 the Allies would eventually build the area up to a major complex of fifteen airstrips.

Recapped next at 5:19 is the “Battle of Buna-Gona” which began in November 1942. Bennett's music turns slow and reflective: “The Japanese retreat becomes a rout. Enemy garrisons give up Buna, Gona, Sanananda—north-coast bases that will serve as stepping stones for future Allied advance,” although “For both sides the campaign has been a horror of death, wounds, disease.”

EP14's focus is Italy and the surrounding Mediterranean. The Allies’ July 1943 invasion of Sicily preceding Italy's capitulation and naval surrender is followed by the 1943–44 assaults on Salerno, Naples, and Anzio. The concluding scenes are in Rome, which the Allies enter in June 1944 as the occupying Germans retreat northward.

The program opens with Hitler's railroad excursion to visit Mussolini in Rome, and the pageantry of his reception there “after four years of war”—though some of Salomon's footage is from Hitler's earlier, mid-1938 travels to Italy. Following a short opening fanfare for trumpets, the oboes and bassoons play GER, accompanied by the snare drum's hard-to-hear sixteenth notes. At 1:34 [A] is a German-style march for Hitler's arrival, followed by an “Italian” march [B] at 2:20, reprised at 2:48. We see an Italian military band, complete with flicorni and sarrusophone, and the music catches the bass drummer's tempo at 2:23 very closely. For the festive evening scenes in Rome from 3:12 a processional-style bass line at 3:23 underpins Rodgers's NAPLES-ROME at 3:39 [C]: “The foundations of fascism are crumbling. Its days are numbered. This is the twilight of an era.”

EP14 transitions at 3:52 to North African scenes of Eisenhower, Montgomery, and other Allied leaders planning the attacks on Sicily and then the Italian mainland. At 4:05 Bennett's trumpeters, in turn, take up three bugle-call figures in counterpoint: A major (trumpet 2, muted), C major (trumpet 1, Harmon mute), E flat major in the lowest voice (trumpet 3, open). Allied troops leave their North African ports, and some Royal Navy men gather topside to sing [D] at 5:00. The men's northward Mediterranean crossing merits an extended sequence: “In the path of the smooth-sailing convoy a storm is waking up—unreasonable, unpredictable, threatening weather.” The music, not much subdued under the narration, is a pair of re-used SONG-SEAS settings, the first at 5:17–5:55, taken from EP5 (18:29–19:07). The second re-use, 5:55–6:40, is from EP3 (19:10–20:00). Though the fresh underscoring that follows at 6:42 [E] accompanies invasion troops receiving their final briefings, there's practically no footage of the Sicilian invasion itself and we learn of the “six weeks of vigorous fighting before Sicily falls.” Captured Germans at 7:12 are led to LSTs headed back across the Mediterranean to North Africa, and at 7:21 an Allied ship founders while hauling German prisoners southward across the Mediterranean.