I thought they abondon the idea and turned to La Rachelle

And I thought that's where they almost got sunk and spent all those hours sitting on that "tiny spit of sand" on the bottom while they patched the boat up at a zillion meters depth.

I gotta watch this movie again - SOON! :yep:

On a related note. I was watching the movie Underworld the other day. You know the one were the vampires and werewolves are at war. I could swear the the guy that plays the creapy werewolf doctor is Johann. I didnt see the credits. Can anyone confirm this?

Yes, he played "Singe".

This is Erwin Leder´s home page, it has a nice photo gallery:
http://www.erwin-leder.com/index2.html

They never made it to La Spezia.

The Boat was on its way back to La Rochelle when they received the order to attempt passage through the Straits of Gibralter to get to La Spezia.

First they had to rearm and refuel. This they did at Vigo...in Spain...from an interned German supply ship.

When they tried to get through the Straits they were sighted by an allied fighter...Krigsbaum (sp? the navigator) was wounded after they were staffed. The straffing damaged the dive planes which locked in the down position and they hit a sandy outcropping and came to rest on it at the bottom of the Straights. They mangaged to re-float the boat and then returned to La Rochelle where they were staffed and bombed...resulting in the loss of the boat, its captian and many of the crew.

Hello Forum

Thats not quite correct. "Der Alte" didn't die in this airraid, he was only severely wounded (though in the movie it looks like he died).
Buchheim wrote another book about his adventures in late-WW2-France called "Die Festung" (The fortress). Don't know if its available in english, but worth reading:
Lehmann-Willenbrock became base commander of one of the Uboat-bases (St. Nazaire?) until it was captured by the americans. He made it out of port just in time in an old sub that had actually been already decomissioned but was fixed with the spare parts of five other damaged subs. When they made it into Bergen it literally fell apart. :cool:
And - in case anyone wants to know how the story ends - there is a third book about Buchheim and L-W: Der Abschied (The farewell), Munich 2000, where both are old men, meeting for one final time to say all the things that were left unsaid...