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Originally Posted by TheJaguar
The code books and Enigma were taken by the Britsh .
Not by the USA who were not in the war at that stage.
The movie is wrong but an American Hero sells better at the Box office.
I was quite offended by that lie.
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The idea of the American Hero sells better at the box office
in America - which is more or less who the target audience was. Had the film been written, directed and produced as a UK release, or an Iranian release or Mexican box office release im confident the story would have been quite different.
Im sad to admit - perhaps its the failing of the school system? - But there are a lot of "Yanks" out there who are on the same mental level as Homer Simpson and they flock to movies like this thinking "oooohhhh special effects." These types of people see no real historical value in the movie and in fact probably think it was the way it really happened. Either way this type of movie go-er doesnt really care for much but the size of the explosions and the mindlessness of the story line.
On the other hand im happy to admit that there are just about as many people who understand that this is box office propaganda and would have probably seen the movie even if it were the British or Canadians or Australians capturing the U-boat secrets. Some of those men went down with the U-boat while handing secret documents out the conning tower hatch!
While films as U-571 are glittery and tell a white lie to present a story - it is important to remember that no one nations contribution during the second world war is more important than the contributions of another nation... the reason behind this as that for a brief proud moment in history national lines practically were erased - all of our nations were united - as one nation if you will - for a common cause. Because of this it is more important for us to remember the truth rather than concentrate on some box office money generator with little basis on fact.
NOW
as far as an S-class sub being made to look like a Type VII... all they did was put a type VII replica conning tower on it - it DIDNT look like a Type VII.
but in the rain, at night with the captain's (bill paxton) orders
"keep her low in the water - i dont want this german getting a good look at our silhouette." i think that the conning tower would have been pretty much all that was visible to the nearby german crew.
so how did the U-boat which attacked the S-class sub know it was enemy? I guess by the crew loading up the prisoners on deck. not to mention that during the initial attack sequence the radio operator on U-571 had ample time to fire off a distress message to BdU such as
"U-boat arrived... not ours... under commando attack". BdU would have probably had time to send a message to the outbound rescue sub - something like -
"U-571 compromised - under commando raid as of 2200 hours - contact with U-571 now lost - assess the situation and if required sink U-571 and her agressor with extreme prejudice in order to protect enigma secrets."
any self respecting U-boat skipper would have followed those orders...but thats just my guess on how things happened in the film.