Bataan is a 1943 American black-and-white World War II drama film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced by Irving Starr (with Dore Schary as executive producer), and directed by Tay Garnett, that stars Robert Taylor, George Murphy, Lloyd Nolan, Thomas Mitchell, Lee Bowman, Desi Arnaz and Robert Walker.

It follows the fates of a group of men charged with destroying a bridge during the doomed defense of the Bataan Peninsula by American forces in the Philippines against the invading Japanese.

After the Army and some civilians cross, an ad hoc group of thirteen hastily assembled soldiers from different units is assigned to blow it up and delay Japanese rebuilding efforts as long as possible.

Army Air Corps pilot Lieutenant Steve Bentley and his Filipino mechanic, Corporal Juan Katigbak, work frantically to repair a Beechcraft C-43 Traveler aircraft.

He continually fires it directly into the camera lens as the end card reads: “So fought the heroes of Bataan, Their sacrifice made possible our victories in the Coral and Bismarck Seas, at Midway, on New Guinea and Guadalcanal.

In his autobiography, Schary wrote that he was intentionally trying to break the color barrier in American War films and was specifically criticized by some studio executives for casting an African-American actor (Kenneth Spencer).

[4] Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, described it as "a surprisingly credible conception of what that terrible experience must have been for some of the men who endured it", albeit with "melodramatic flaws and ... some admitted technical mistakes."