The score, by Richard Rodgers with Robert Russell Bennett conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, was such a hit that recordings have been almost continually available. Over 50 years after the original broadcast, the score, played by RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, is available in a modern stereo recording, digitally remastered on compact disc.
To create the 26 half-hour episodes, the editors reportedly started with approximately 13,000 hours of 16mm and 35mm film from the U.S. Navy, The Royal Navy, the German Navy and Japan's Imperial Navy.
When NBC committed to the series, it was given a budget of $500,000, an extraordinary sum for a television project in the very early 1950s.
Most of the NBC affiliates ran the series at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time Zone) on Sunday afternoon.
The second episode, which dealt with the attack on Pearl Harbor, was re-broadcast on December 7th, the 11th anniversary of the attack.