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)
1 revealing mistake
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer, Hubertus Bengsch, Klaus Wennemann
Continuity mistake: At the end of the first attack by the destroyer - where she misses the U-boat and throws her bombs further away - the boatswain makes 22, then 23 strokes on the slate of the Control Centre,thus counting the number of depth charges used against the boat. A few seconds later, in a shot from another angle, with the slate in full view, we see only 22 strokes. (01:03:30)
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 movie is based on actual events and some of the characters have existed in real life. One of them, Pilgrim, took his own life after the book on which the movie is based was released.
Question: During the film one of the officers was holding a bottle of Becks beer. Was the label on the bottle age/era appropriate?
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Answer: The label is absolutely correct, but at this time Beck's Beer was only for export and not regularly available in Germany.