You may remember when, not so long ago, we took a look at Patton 360, and the folks at the History Channel have sent on a copy of Battle 360 to look at, which is basically the same as Patton 360, but this time, a little broader in view.

This time, Battle 360 will follow not a general, but a ship. Specifically, we’ll be following the Enterprise, along with her battle group, as she runs riot against the Japanese navy throughout the battles in the Pacific. And all the while, we’ll get to see information about her guns, her planes, the guns and planes of the enemy she’ll go up against, and even those of the ships making up her battle group.

There’s an incredible amount of information here–from technical specifications to the individual crew members’ anecdotes about life on the ships, and even how their parts of the battles went. You might think that something with such a massive pile of information contained inside it would suffer from a distinct lack of focus, but surprisingly, that’s not the case with Battle 360. It manages to not only grab attention, but also hang on to it, in no uncertain terms.

And this may be the biggest surprise of all about the History Channel’s Battle 360. This has an order that the events presented could never have had. And there’s just about everything else you could want in here too–a surprising amount of laughs slip in (wait for the story where a bunch of US Naval vessels drop depth charges and all sorts of other ammo on the hapless target of a mop handle), and there’s plenty of poignancy here too as old soldiers are reunited for filming.

The end result is this really delightful, but plenty long, package–seriously, clear your calendar because this sucker’s got a run time of just short of ten hours–that will grab and hold interest.  If you’re a war buff you’re going to love this thing, and the same goes if you favor documentaries. But unless you’ve got a good long attention span, you’re never going to make it through unless you break it up in to smaller, more palatable pieces.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Battle 360 an eight out of ten for putting up a package rich with data and yet both sufficiently well-organized and compelling so as to not be dull. War may be hell, but this show is positively fantastic.