Band of Brothers was one of the greatest piece of war filmmaking that I have ever had the pleasure to lay my eyes on so I was super excited to hear that a second series called The Pacific was in the pipeline.

On 8th December 1941, just over 24 hours after the Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbour, Congress issued a formal declaration of war against the Empire of Japan.

For a decade, tensions had been mounting between Japan and the US, as the Japanese expanded their conquest of a large region including much of China and Southeast Asia.

As a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the United States officially entered World War II, already in its third year of being waged by countries of the Allied powers, including the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Canada and Australia, against the Axis powers of Japan, Germany and Italy.

Practically overnight, military recruiting offices across the United States were jammed, as thousands of Americans rushed to enlist in the armed forces. Many of those young men chose to join the Marine Corps, which saw its ranks more than triple in the six months following Pearl Harbour.

The Pacific tracks the three entwined, real-life journeys of Leckie, Sledge and Basilone and their fellow Marines over the vast landscape of the Pacific in World War II.

The mini-series follows them from their first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal, through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day.

The production of the series has cost an estimated $200 million and has been shot entirely in High Definition. The investment in the project has given the finished series the look and feel of a major Hollywood theatrical release with the ongoing narrative of a serial drama.

So here we have some of the first footage from the series as well as some images: