Das Boot... questions??

[Hanomag]

I just watched Das Boot, the 293 minute version recently with a friend and several questions arose.

1. The year in the movie is 1942, dont they get harrased a little too much for that early in the war? Aircraft attacks, DD detection etc. (besides the Gibraltar bombing) Being that my only knowledge about this is from the history channel and Das GWX, I could be wrong in this assumtion.


2. Their base gets bombed! Isnt it supposed to be Lorient-ish or even Brest-ish? I thought these bases wouldnt be under air attack until after 43 at the very least.

Bonus question: The fighter aircraft shown in the movie were..?
My guess are Brewster Buffalos?

In a movie where such painstaking attention to detail prevailed how could they make such easy boo boos? Or am I way outta' wack here?

Oh and BTW I gave up using the search engine a long time ago because no matter what query I used it just listed every post on the site. :rotfl:
So if this has come before.. so sorry

[Rhodes]

No, the year of the movie is 1941, the patrol is from late october untill december! The kaleunt says when announcing the heading to la spezia, that christmas is not in france or something (talking from memory).

The end of the movie is diffrent from the book, I think they use footage from other movie or something for the airplanes scene! Or I read it here someware!

[KeybdFlyer]

quote> Bonus question: The fighter aircraft shown in the movie were..?
My guess are Brewster Buffalos?

I don't have a copy of the film to refer to (refuse to buy the edited-down US version), but in the vast majority of "war" films, they tend to use painted-up AT-6 Texans (Harvard when in British use). I guess I'll have to go & rent the movie now to find out.

[GoldenRivet]

bombing scene of Das boot... use full screen for best results



good view of the T-6 at 2:02

good view of Mosquito bomber stock footage at 2:19 (though the DVD version is much clearer)

[Brag]

I don't remember seeing skeeters on the original cut version.
But definetely there were T-6s on the attack of the base.

I've noticed a number of things in the movie which were done to satisfy political correctness.

On this type of film one has to give a bit of slack to producer and director.

I've seen it on TV in
France , and that was the best version. All in all, I've seen it like seven times.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by Hanomag

1. The year in the movie is 1942, dont they get harrased a little too much for that early in the war? Aircraft attacks, DD detection etc. (besides the Gibraltar bombing) Being that my only knowledge about this is from the history channel and Das GWX, I could be wrong in this assumtion.

The date in the film states is "Autumn 1941"

this leads me to believe that we are talking about October - November of 41.

I would think things were just starting to get tough then.

Originally Posted by Hanomag

2. Their base gets bombed! Isnt it supposed to be Lorient-ish or even Brest-ish? I thought these bases wouldnt be under air attack until after 43 at the very least.

La Rochelle actually

U-boat pens were bombed by air attack as early as the first three months of '42

Originally Posted by Hanomag

Bonus question: The fighter aircraft shown in the movie were..?
My guess are Brewster Buffalos?

Looks like stock footage of Mosquito bombers as the formation splits.

the intial attack looks to be the standard war movie fighter the T-6 Texan

Rhodes is correct in that this is the film adaptation of a book - so some creative licensing was no doubt used to make the film a bit more "hollywood" than the book

[FIREWALL]

I never payed that much attention to all that till I read some other books myself.

One thing I noticed and then read in the different books " Iron Coffins" for example is the heads were locked and only Kpt and Exec had keys when boat was Deep and being DC'd.

But not in Das Boot. All in tho a good flick.

[Zilch]

I'm finishing the book now. If you enjoy the movie, you won't be able to put the book down, either.

There are, as always, differences, but it's a good adaptation, as they go.

Also, compared to what happened to the Old Man and U-96 in the book and movie, real life played out a bit differntly. The Old Man survived until 1980 and went to to captain other vessels. The U-96 itself was destroyed by air attack, but not until 1945, under a different commander. You can check these and other fun facts out at the wonderful www.uboat.net . You can easily kill an entire afternoon gettin' your learn on at that site.

[PappyCain]

You might enjoy this read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot


I have the Director's cut and a special cut given to me last month when in Germany.

There are many interviews and sites on the filming and interviews. Many pictures of surviving memorabilia too.

[Hanomag]

Well I knew I could count on you guys...

I still think its too early in the war for all the drama....

La Rochelle....gotcha

Bah the T-6 Texan..I am ashamed.. I should have guessed it..werent the Texans 2 seater trainers?

[GoldenRivet]

they are 2 seat trainers

pictured below are the T6 Texan (bottom formation) and the "Texan II" the current basic trainer

[Flippo84]

In late 1941 the "happy times" were over. Convoys were much better protected by ASW escort vessels, as you can recognize yourself, when playing GWX.

Another point is, when watching the movie, you always can get an idea of how deep they dive. When evading from destroyers, they just hit the 200m mark one time. In this situation they get hit by DC badly and have to blow ballast to come up and stop the water running into the boat. Most of the time, performing evasive maneuvers, the boat runs at 120 - 160m depth. In these areas it's quite possible to get picked up by ASDIC, even in '41.

Ok, you can say that this kind of evasion is unprofessional. I wouldn't order "all stop" and silent running, while being at 120m only, after the destroyer pinging me several times. Also the destroyers in the film are very good at aiming the dc's. They seem to hit nearly every run.

But, as far as I know, the film was produced among the advice of several u-boat war veterans. I think I remenber Jürgen Oesten was involved in the project. In my opinion, these influences award the film with the great atmosphere of realism.

Further more I think, that most commanders didn't feel very good while hitting the red area on the depth indicator. They didn't struggle with long loading times of SH III, but with the instinct to survive and responsibility for the men. They didn't order 240m before getting a new coffee and mock on the destroyer commander on the surface

[PappyCain]

"Even though the beginning and the end of the film occur in the port of La Rochelle, it does not correspond historically. The submarine base in La Rochelle was not functional before November 1941, and at the time of the film the port was dried up.[2] Moreover, none of the British fighter-bombers of late 1941 to early 1942 had the range to bomb La Rochelle from bases in the U.K.; however, it is possible the fighters were carrier-based and not land based. While Saint-Nazaire was the base used in the novel, the film was changed to La Rochelle because its appearance had not changed to such a large degree in the years following World War II."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Boot

Commander Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (December 11, 1911 – April 18, 1986) was a German naval officer, and a submarine commander during World War II. He was among the top ten Aces of the Deep during the Second Battle of the Atlantic against the Allies, in terms of tonnage of merchant ships sunk. He commanded four subs, most notable and successful of which was his tour commanding the U-96, a Type VII U-boat, which gained large recognition when one of its patrols was documented and publicized by an accompanying war correspondent Lothar-Günther Buchheim. It eventually would be made into a mini-series and film called Das Boot, where he was portrayed by Jürgen Prochnow. He was a consultant on the movie and on the set.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Hanomag

1. The year in the movie is 1942, dont they get harrased a little too much for that early in the war? Aircraft attacks, DD detection etc. (besides the Gibraltar bombing) Being that my only knowledge about this is from the history channel and Das GWX, I could be wrong in this assumtion.

In the book they get attacked by aircraft several times, but it is always by Sunderlands. After the emergency dive at Gibraltar the Old Man complains that he can't believe they were actually caught by a "Bee". "Tired Bee" was the German slang for the Sunderland.

2. Their base gets bombed! Isnt it supposed to be Lorient-ish or even Brest-ish? I thought these bases wouldnt be under air attack until after 43 at the very least.

The real U-96 was destroyed during an American high-altitude bombing raid on Wilhelmshaven on March 30, 1945.
http://uboat.net/boats/u96.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill...06/u96/u96.htm

Patrol #7 was the one with Bucheim aboard.

Bonus question: The fighter aircraft shown in the movie were..?
My guess are Brewster Buffalos?

Yes they are Texans. The T-6 has always been popular with WW2 filmmakers since it bears a generic resemblance to the radial-engined monoplanes of that era. Tora! Tora! Tora! used a number of Texans heavily modified to resemble all the Japanese fighters and attack planes used at Pearl Harbor, and they did an outstanding conversion job.

In a movie where such painstaking attention to detail prevailed how could they make such easy boo boos? Or am I way outta' wack here?

There were probably no Swordfish and no Sunderlands available for Petersen to use for the film, so he had to go with what he could get. Today they would use something similar in size, the CGI the correct aircraft. They would also use CGI to make the foam look correct for the u-boat models - one of my few complaints about the movie.