I just re-watched Das Boot last week.
Remarkable movie. Just remarkable. I have determined I need to buy the Blu Ray version.
My absolute favorite part of the movie is the very beginning, the party, the drunken bacchanal the night before they put to sea, just rings of authenticity to me. (The whole movie has the ring of authencity to it)
That, and the Fire Drill...:)
Of course, after watching it, I re-read Admiral Charles Lockwood’s excellent biography “Sink ‘Em All”, and he said something in that book that brought home (as much as a book could) just how terrible a prolonged and close depth charging must be.
He spoke of the account of one submarine that was subjected to a particularly brutal charging (I think it might have kept them down 30 hours!) where they had a depth charge go off so close aboard that a 3,000 lb. torpedo jumped a foot off its rail.
Inside that pressure vessel, the crushing sea all around, and being bounce around like that. If it made a 3,000 lb. torpedo jumped a foot, imagine what it would do to a 180 lb. man.
The author of Das Boot, Lothar-Günther Buchheim, was a war correspondent like “Leutnant Werner” and spent time on U-Boot patrols.
But in the end he was critical of the film, thinking the cast were over-acting and that the anti-war message was not strong enough.
Still, one of the best films of that genre.