Revealing mistake: In one scene just before the attack on a big Hunter the young captain (Jürgen Prochnow) is sitting with his charts. Beside him he has got a glass of beer standing. The sub lurches heavily right and left in the hard weather, but the surface of the liquid stays the same.
Das Boot (1981)
Plot summary
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer, Hubertus Bengsch, Klaus Wennemann
La Rochelle, (occupied) France, in late 1941: The adventurous, naive German war correspondent Leutenant Werner volunteers to go aboard U-96 and experience life as a crew member on a German U-boat hunting allied convoys in the North Atlantic. Little does he know the "adventure" is going to be a nightmare trip: After sinking three cargo ships, the U-boat is relentlessly hunted down by enemy destroyers, dropping endless rounds of depth charge and making the U-boat crew go through hell. Escaping narrowly, U-96 (already on its way back home) is re-assigned to sneak through the heavily guarded Straits of Gibraltar, virtually a suicide mission. The U-boat is discovered, attacked and sent to the bottom of the Straits. However, unbeknownst to the enemy, the crew manages to survive and repair the vessel underwater. U-96 resurfaces and finally makes it home. Having just arrived, however, allied fighters air-raid the port. Half of the crew gets killed (Werner among the survivors) and the boat is sunk in the dock - this time for good.
More mistakes in Das Boot
Captain: I'm sorry.
Lt. Werner: Is it hopeless?
Captain: It's been 15 hours. He's not going to pull it off. I'm sorry.
Lt. Werner: I asked for it. 'To be heading into the inexorable... where no mother will care for us... no woman crosses our path... where only reality reigns... with cruelty and grandeur.' I was drunk with those words. Well, this is reality.
Trivia: The full sized mock up of the U boat was rented by Steven Spielberg for use in the first Indiana Jone's film.
Question: I know practically nothing about submarines, so this seemed a bit strange to me. When there's that huge storm, why do they keep staying at the surface, only going down for an hour at a time?
Answer: Because that's what the U-boat was designed to do. Unlike modern nuclear boats, they didn't have the capacity to stay submerged for long periods - basically just as long as the air lasted; there wasn't atmosphere control equipment. They would 'snorkel' near the surface, recharge the batteries with the diesel engines, and then dive for a few hours at most before having to come back up and repeat the process.
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Answer: U-boats also travelled much faster on the surface...about 18 knots, vs only 8 knots or so beneath the surface.