High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Fighting Sullivans, originally released as The Sullivans, is a 1944 biographical war film directed by Lloyd Bacon and written by Edward Doherty, Mary C. McCall Jr. and Jules Schermer. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story. The story follows the lives of the five Irish-American Sullivan brothers, who grew up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression and served together in the United States Navy during World War II. Their eventual deaths in the Pacific theater aboard the light cruiser USS Juneau (CL-52) (sunk on 13 November 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) are also chronicled in this film, which is based on the brothers' true life story.