June 22, 1961 (USA)
The Guns of Navarone/Release date

“The Guns of Navarone” almost never was. Production was a heartbeat away from being scrapped when star David Niven became deathly ill near the conclusion of filming the popular 1961 action-adventure.

Anna
Anna (Gia Scala) is a traitor and a spy from the 1961 movie The Guns of Navarone. She is part of a group of Greek Freedom fighters that assist a group of allied commandos on their World War II behind the lines mission to destroy a fortified gun emplacement in Navarone, Greece.

The Guns of Navarone1961
Force 10 from Navarone1978
The Guns of Navarone/Movies

The Greek island of Navarone does not exist and the plot is fictional, but the story takes place within the real historical context of the 1943 Dodecanese campaign.

The Greek island of Navarone does not exist and the plot is fictional, but the story takes place within the real historical context of the Dodecanese Campaign, the Allies’ campaign to capture the Italian-held Greek islands in the Aegean Sea in 1943.

Navarone does not exist: It is a fictitious location. On fictitious charts shown in the movie, Navarone is shown to lie in the in the Aegean Sea, somewhere between the Islands of Khios, Tinos, and Icaria.

“Force 10 from Navarone” is an oafish account of what appears to be the least necessary and plausible commando operation of all fictional World War II. Now at area theaters, the film is a belated sequel to “The Guns of Navarone,” one of the big hits of 1961.

In 1943, the British Navy is not able to rescue 2,000 soldiers trapped in the Island of Kheros since two powerful German cannons on the top of the Navarone Island are sinking the Allied vessels. After a failed aerial attack, the Allied command decide to send a six-man team disguised as fishermen to Navarone to blow-up the guns.

The situation is critical, and ships must come in. On the cliffs above and between two key beaches is a major enemy position, the heart of which are four 150mm naval guns that can sink any ship afloat. They are well protected by anti-aircraft guns, machine guns, and more.

Bombardment by ships including the American battleship Arkansas and the French cruiser Georges Leygues failed to silence the battery — and shelling from the guns forced the flagship HMS Bulolo to retreat. Finally, the British cruisers Ajax and Argonaut closed to point-blank range and engaged in a gun duel with the battery.

Two powerful German guns control the seas past the Greek island of Navarone making the evacuation of endangered British troops on a neighboring island impossible. Air attack is useless so a team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is put ashore to meet up with partisans to try and dynamite the guns.