Watching 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' (the SEAVIEW!) in TV probably started it... I remember very well both arcade games mentioned by PTHO and ReM...
But the thing that made me understand how serious a matter it was, was a film about US submarines in the Pacific (I don't remember which one, I think the sub was called SeaHawk), in a scene a sailor had forgotten to shut one of the internal doors closed, there was a depth-charge attack and concussion made the door close with a crash, severing the arm of the standing sailor. It was the most horrifying scene I had yet watched in TV, and must have really hit something inside me, because from that moment on I devoured everything I could lay my hands on, regarding WW2 US submarines.
Soon afterwards, I saw a magazine with photographs of the interior of a German U-boat during an actual depth-charge attack. The captions said the photos came from a camera retrieved from a U-boat wreck (I have never seen them again, and I am not sure if the history was true). The photos showed the bearded crewmen sitting quietly in half-light, looking upwards, while an officer counted with his fingers the seconds, waiting for the depth-charge explosions.
Thus my interest extended to German U-boats, and has not ceased to grow in the next 35 years...
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