[ARCHIVED THREAD] - U-571 (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 6/3/2006 7:14:04 PM EDT
| Is this movie worth watching, or is it a peice of shite? |
One of my friends put a lot of research into this. His conclusion was, the Poles broke it and the Brits paid for it, and that's pretty much it. |
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1) getting an enigma cypher wasn't a big deal. Knowing the settings that encrypted the message that you intercepted was. Not knowing the settings, you input the encrypted message into a computer (the Polish "Bomba"). 2) the movie is really about WWII as fought in a parallel universe. |
Another +1 for cryptonomicon. Love that book. When the book explains how the enigma machine works using turings bicycle as a metaphor... just amazing. |
No other Sub movie even comes close to Das Boot. Jürgen Prochnow nails the role as the Kapitän. Das Boot is very accurate in that it shows that the Commander has a extreme dislike for the Nazi's which was very typical of Kriegsmarine in general and also has the utmost respect for the British Royal Navy which also was typical of the Kriegsmarine. I remember reading about some US WWII submariners who saw Das Boot, a couple came out shaking, they said other than language and uniforms the movie nailed life on a WWII sub especially the depth charge attack. |
I thought U-boat crews and officers were hardcore true-believers in the Thousand Year Reich. You'd have to be considering how harsh and difficult their job was. |
also I didn't think that anybody was using guided torpedos in WWII......so shooting underwater would be a waste. |
Wow! I wasn't aware there were so many WWII naval warfare experts on this board! I am truly impressed!  Honestly, who's going to pay to see a submarine movie with a bunch of British heroes? Oh, wait a minute... there was that Russell Crowe flick, "Masters and Commanders" I guess...  It is not historically acurate, but it is what it is... a Hollywood war movie. As a fictional war movie, I thought it was pretty good. 
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The movie was about the capture of the Enigma device, not breaking the code.  IIRC, it was a Brit surface ship and crew that captured the first Enigma device, as I'm absolutely sure the Polish Navy was out of commission at the time. |
Kharn |
At the end of the war they had torpedos that could discriminate between low speed screw (freighters) and high speed screw (destroyers) noise. They also had torpedos that could be set to run a pattern within a convoy, like you said. If they missed their intended target, they were set to run back and forth with the hopes of accidentially hitting something. |
Incorrect, the G7e/T4 Falke acoustic homing torpedo was introduced in March 1943, but was replaced by the marginally faster G7es/T5 Zaunkönig in September of '43. Submarines were sunk by torpedo attacks, but they were normally running on or very near the surface (read: enemy spotted periscope/antennas). I've not read anything about submerged submarine duels occuring in WWII that actually resulted in sinkings. |
Don't forget that there were cases of subs being hit by their own returning torpedos. DOH!!!!! |
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U-571 was Hollywood garbage. It's been many years since I've seen Das Boot, but I remember it to be pretty damn good. Hunt for Red October was not as good as Das Boot, but watchable. Kinda hard to watch now, knowing Alec Baldwin is a fat stupi-douche. There was a great documentary on PBS years ago about the Enigma code and the Japaneese code. I think it was called JN-25/code named "purple." I'd rather watch stuff like that. Scott |
Germans had acoustic homing ones, not sure how wide spread there use was though probably limited found this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G7e |
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BBC Article Capturing the real U-571 David Balme: "The scale was beyond the budget of a British film" History shows that David Balme's bravery was key to helping turn the tide of World War II against the Germans. Unfortunately, Hollywood does not accord him the same honour. As a sub-lieutenant on HMS Bulldog in 1941, Mr Balme led a boarding party on to the captured German submarine U-110. Inside he retrieved an Enigma cipher machine and documents which contained secret settings and procedures for the sending of coded military messages. It was the first of only three U-boats ever to be boarded by Allied servicemen during the war, and the episode provides the basis for a major new American movie, U-571. Sub Lt David Balme was just 19 when he boarded U-110 But the film, which is released in the UK on Friday, has sailed into a storm of controversy for putting a very American spin on events. Thanks to some creative scriptwriting, it is the Americans, not the British, who stage the daring Atlantic assault. However, Mr Balme is sanguine in the face of the controversy. "It brings home the whole Battle of the Atlantic to a generation who otherwise would have known nothing about it," he says. Balme on board His eagerness to accept this remarkable reinterpretation of history is, in part, down to his own involvement with the blockbuster. I don't know why anyone complains because no-one had heard of this before the film As word of the project leaked out last year, and anger among British veterans began to stir, Mr Balme was co-opted into the venture by the movie's director Jonathan Mostow. It meant spending two weeks in the company of the crew during filming off the coast of Malta, in the Mediterranean. The 79-year-old was consulted by Mostow and bonded with the film's star's Matthew McConaughey, Jon Bon Jovi and Harvey Keitel. "They were a marvellous bunch. Matthew McConaughey is a terribly nice chap. Harvey Keitel has a wonderful manner and is a fantastic actor." There was even talk at the time of Mr Balme taking a bit part as a coast guard, although this never came off. Mr Balme admits he was sceptical when he first heard of the project. "I was a bit surprised and initially I thought it was a pity. But I don't know why anyone complains because no-one had heard of this before the Americans made the film. "Once I got working with them I realised that the scale they were going for was beyond the budget of a British film." He failed to convince Mostow to include a message at the beginning of the film making clear it was a work of fiction, but did win one important concession. Towards the end of the picture, a written dedication appears on screen, honouring the Royal Navy's role in the capture of U-110. Fear factor While Mr Balme is glad of the renewed recognition afforded to those who fought in the Battle of the Atlantic, the experience has reawakened the fear he suffered when leading the boarding party on 9 May 1941. The decision to board the captured vessel was unusual, he says. Normally it would have been rammed or abandoned to sink to the sea-bed. As Sub Lt Balme, then aged 19, climbed on board he knew the sub could either be booby-trapped or Germans could be lying in wait. Descending the steep ladders that took him down the conning tower required two hands, leaving him totally defenceless. "Going down those ladders and thinking there may be Germans ready to shoot you ... it was terrifying. We couldn't believe that they would have just abandoned this submarine. "It was something that haunted me for 15 or 20 years afterwards." His judgement on Hollywood's interpretation is far more upbeat. Mr Balme has already seen U-571 twice and he thoroughly approves. "It's a great film. It's all blood and thunder and the young people will love it." |
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You may wish to check out these: >Seizing the Enigma / David Kahn >Ultra at Sea / John Winton >The Ultra-Magin Deals / Bradley Smith >Decoding History / W J R Gardner >Tracking the Axis Enemy / Alan Bath Good read on the 1943 Battle of the Atlantic climax.... Black May / Michael Gannon And, the Second Pearl Harbor for the U.S. .... Operation Drumbeat / Michael Gannon, the Brits tried to tell Ernest King and the USN of the impending danger, but the U S and other allied merchant seaman paid the price off the U S east and gulf coasts. Also, check out... Lone Wolf / The life and Death of U-Boat Ace Werner Henke / Timothy Mulligan. Henke was shot for attempting to escape from a POW camp....he is buried at Ft Meade in Maryland. You may also enjoy, Day of Deceit / Robert Stinnett. Great read on U S intelligence lapse in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor. I visited the NSA Museum at Ft Meade this past year......great info on the Battle of the Atlantic. You can actually use an Enigma machine.....see the Bombe computer and many other items. Great museum and reference library. I also visited Capt. Werner Henke's grave...he is buried in a military cemetary nearby. |
The director of Das Boot had the real U-96 skipper as an advisor, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (170,237 tons shipping sunk).  |
They weren't Thompsons if I remeber correctly- they were Reisings en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reising Surprised this went so long without being answered on Arfcom! |
Been a while since I've seen it, but I thought they had 1928 Thompsons with cutts compensators and no buttstocks. |
Dang it, just went and looked at the old VHS jacket and from the pic on the back it looks as if you're right. I'll have to pop it in and double check. Don't know where I got the Reising thing from. Guess I thought wrong. 
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No, not really, are the soldiers and Marines fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan hard core believers in GWB or the republican party? Most Germans, especially the Kriegsmarine in WWII ended up fighting for the same reasons our guys do now, for each other, for their buddies, for the unit, etc.... The Kriegsmarine was the least politicized branch of the Wehrmacht, and tended to be anti-party. Most people have no idea what the actual German military was like in WWII....not every German soldier, sailor or airman was a fanatical "Nazi" yo-yo who fought for the party, far from it, there were actually very few actual combat soldiers who were. Sure in the upper ranks you had them, but no different than much of the ranks of General and above in the US Military today who are boot licking sycophant ticket punchers who are more like the politicians they hope to become than the ground pounding soldiers they might have been at one time.... For entertainment, the movie was fun, for accuracy it was total bullshit. Hell, one of the assholes even had his brustadler (breast Eagle) sewn on the wrong side of his uniform, like any real German sailor wouldn't have noticed that right off the bat... Also the scene of the Germans machine gunning the survivors in the lifeboat was complete Hollywood "We gotta make the German into war ciminals scumbag" propaganda. Hell, in the beginning of the war, U-boats would try to rescue/help survivors, surfacing, launching lifeboats, bringin them on board if possible, leaving them food and water. It was the RAF that brought a halt to that....The RAF was supposed to leave U-boats engaged in post sinking rescue/help efforts alone, much like a hospital ship. When the RAF renegged on this and attacked the U-boats regardless, all bets were off.... Was it possible isolated incidents might have happened....yes. But we also machine gunned the shit out of Japanese survivors at times. Its war, shit happens, other imperatives take precedence sometimes.... |
Look closer. Those aren't Cutts compensators, the Hollyweird muzzle blast gives that away, it goes in 5 directions instead of just 2. It looks like they have side-folding buttstocks, but I could be wrong. Certainly 28A1 based, but I think they were Hollyweirded-out for the flick. |