the "Man overboard", that was a real accident while filming. The actor broke a rib. But Grönemeyers cry "Man over board!" was so in character, they left it in.
Speaking softly would help, since the destroyer is tracking the sub by noise, and the submarine's crew is in a steel resonance chamber of a tube. Killing the lights helps by preserving electricity, since they're running on batteries, and don't know how long they're going to have to remain under.
turn off the lights doesnt do much, that little electricity that the light use in 24 hours, use the e-motors in a few seconds. Its like turn off the speedometer light in a car, to extend the range.
The reason that a French girl having a German's baby was risky is that the Germans were occupying most of France during the war. The French resisstance would have seen her as a traitor.
yeah that was a cute question 😅 "What's the problem having a french girlfriend?" At that time it was a problematic, remember WWII was going on ... Germany (the nazis) invaded France😪 It was quite interesting seeing your reaction to the movie. Thank you!
@@thomasgangl8990 Collaborators/traitors like her would've kept the Nazi war machine going for years. My grandpa died over there fighting these bastards and as far as I'm concerned anyone sympathizing with the Nazis is the same as a Nazi and deserve the same punishment. Period.
German here. I feel really sorry for you, this movie deserves far better subtitles. There is plenty of marine jargon and slang speech along with different local dialects that get lost in translation.
The author of the novel, Lothar G Buchheim, was a reporter on a submarine, like Lieutenant Werner, and has incorporated his experiences and those of other reporters into the novel.
Respect to those real tears, damn. Thanks for honoring (even tho U96 survived IRL) the seamen who got caught up in the war with your tears of compassion! And I LOVE the section at the end where you looked up things that you were not sure of, very well done.
Trivia: U96 really existed and while the movie was filmed the chief engineer of the real submarine U96, Friedrich Grade, was present to support with his knowledge of the submarines technology. He died late 2023 at 107 years. The real commander of U96, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, also visited while the film was made. After the war he went to the merchant marine and became in the 1960’s Captain of Germanys only nuclear powered ship, Otto Hahn. He died in 1986.
the sparks in the u-boat pen scene were a tool to disguise how they filmed that scene. They only could use one of the pens at La Rochelle, so they shot different scenes of the same pen and disguised it to make it look like it was one continuous shot. Even if you know it it doesn't really show.
One more Thing about the ASDIC and how to escape it... When a destroyer makes a deth charge run it has to go at top speed, otherwise it riscs being damaged by its own deth charges. During that time the ASDIC system will not be able to pick up a signal from the u-boat. The desroyer has to find the boat again afterwards. That is why the crew of U-96 was so terrified when the sonar reported a second destroyer... because in this case one destroyer can keep track of the position of the boat while the other does its deth charge run. This is very deadly for the u-boat.
The technology shown inside is super accurate. The sit down merry go around attack periscope. During the surface attack showing the analog computer and so on.
The destroyer has to guess where the submarine went, if the sub loses fuel, oil or air it may reveal it's position. Submarines are always slower then destroyers, so it will never outpace a destroyer. The faster it goes the louder it will be, the slower it moves away, the higher the chance to get hit by the next charges. If the destroyer goes slower it can listen better.
14:25 I used to work with engines like that as a Sailor. Basically in that shot, he's checking for any signs of the piston being asymmetrical. Its quite important to check sometime cause if its asymmetrical, it can lead to serious problems. 16:15 Yes, because its active Sonar, the guy uses passive sonar in the Uboat, he can hear quite far with it. Lot of Uboat Vets talked about not even dropping a pen in those situations because that could be fatal, the destroyer can hear you and it can be all over. 20:33 Yeah thats an actual footage, during this scene, each scene about 3 tons of water was thrown at them. The actor haad a few broken ribs and he had to go a hospital for about a month. 22:31 Basically you use the calculator, you use that thing to measure your longitude and latitude, mark the location. then you go a certain direction, certain time passed and you do the same thing again. You measure the distance of how far you can go in x amount of hours. In XY conditions
16:15 Sonar is so much more advanced and useful than I initially thought it was. It's awesome and scary at the same time, depending on whether you're the hunter or hunted. 20:33 Fracturing your bones hurt like hell. I can't imagine how much pain he was in when he broke his ribs 😨 22:31 Ah, an important skill to have for a navigator 👍 or should I say, the most basic skill a navigator should have. Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellow No problem man! I was more than happy to answer your questions. At least something stuck to me in my time as a sailor, besides oil and grease, and occasional seagull droppings lol Das boot is an excellent piece of cinematography. I can fully recommend watching the 1987 miniseries cut. 5 and a half hours, but it is the superior version. Even the actors admitted that the movie version sucked. The miniseries cut really explains most of the situations. Since as Lt. Werner, the viewer is new to a submarine. So every question gets answered.
And yeah, sonar is a wild thing. Now this is an 80 year old representation of it. Im sure some submariners would be more than happy to explain how it works today. They love to talk about it.
@@Krisz98 I'm not confident in understanding sonar if it's explained to me with all the technical terms and jargon 😂 It should be enough to know it's functions and the amazing things it can do 👍
@@henryellow Well basicaly theres active and passive sonar. Passive sonar only "reads" while active is sending out signals and reading them. The guy in the movie using that device is using passive sonar. While the destroyers use active sonar. Sonar is quite usefull in civilian use. Locating animals, shipwrecks and of course ships and submarines. You can hear a lot of things on sonar. Like low frequency whale songs, and other sea mammal noises. Its rather interesting. And it can melt your brain if youre close enough.
For info, this kind of depth charge had to explode within the range of less than 5 m (of course it also depends on the depth) to seriously damage a submarine. The submarine can move to avoid but it causes noise that can disclose her position.
German commanders reported their U-Boats surviving crash dives up to 920ft/280m depths, so the movie's "God gave us a shovelful of sand" 280m+ bottoming out scene was quite possible. I remain astonished how effectively the filmmakers used a series of model subs to simulate surface and submerged U-Boat actions. The kill radius of enemy depth charges was reduced in proportion to the one atmosphere worth of increased water pressure per every 10m of depth a sub dived, until the the sea itself crushed the U-Boat 's pressure hull. Submarines flooded water tanks and compressed the displaced onboard air into tanks in order to submerge, and used the compressed air tanks to displace the water they'd flooded their dive tanks with in order to re-surface.
Bomber crews had a terrible survival rate during that war. 45% were killed and many more were severely injured or taken prisoners. But submarine crews had it way worse, especially German ones. They ended up with 70% killed at the end. Once the British had perfected submarine destroyers and anti-submarine planes, pretty much every mission on a German submarine was a suicide mission.
The crew is actually not eager to go into battle. They are eager to shoot their torpedoes and down some tonnage of enemy ships, because only then they are allowed to go back home.
If that's the case, then I have misunderstood their excitement 🤔 Their true wish is to go back home, but to do that, they had to take down many enemy ships...
Although as I've heard from a lot of veterans sometimes you wish for combat, because nothing is happening otherwise and you'll go crazy through that constant waiting, perhaps in fear as well
They were eager to get more living space. The enlisted men lived in the bow torpedo room and with a full load of torpedos, two of them were stored above the floor plate between the bunks, so they had to climb over them everytime they go to or from the bunks., and when maintaining the torpedos they had to move them out of the way, to get to the torpedos below the floor plates or for pulling the torpedos from the lower torpedo tubes. And if they were only allowed to go back home when the shot their torpedos, a lot of u-boats would be still out there. They did go home when they run out of fuel and food or the boat was damaged, no matter if there where still some or all torpedos on board. If they shot all the torpedos, they could go home early.
They also died of boredom, as depicted pretty here. Crossword puzzles, books, dumb jokes and insults just to pass the time somehow. So naturally they get excited, if they get some action. The mindset wasn't "Let's kill some Brits.", but "Let's sink some ships.". That's why the Captain was furious, when he saw people still on that tanker.
So at around 31:00 they have several reasons to fire an additional torpedo: 1. the Allies were rather good in salvaging ships, anything that was still afloat was basically still of value. There were tankers who burned for days and stayed barely afloat but were towed back to port, repaired and went back out later .... you just couldn't count anything as sunk as long as it was still on the surface. That's also the reason why there were still men aboard that burning wreck, they still tried to save it. 2. Limited torps is a good point, but it also works the other way around: a boat that still had torps couldn't come back home (as long as they also had fuel and rations), so every torpedo you could justify to fire brought you closer to returning home.
14:15 He is checking if the bearings are good and the flame its to check if the engine is burning fuel cleanly. Had an old timer mechanic do the same thing with an osthetoscope to check which bearing in my car was going bad. Also in the UBOATs there wasn't enough beds for everyone so they had to "Hot bunk", meaning they had to sleep in turns and when it came your hour to sleep you had to wake up the guy in your bed, therefore the bed was still warm from the other person there. This is why a thing like crabs(basically genital lice) spread so quickly
Cool 😄 I've never seen a mechanic do that with my car before (though I've never had problems with my bearings). I wonder if there are alternative methods to check that now. I know they need to save space on the U-Boat. Hygiene isn't a top priority when you're in a war...
I used to wonder about that wall of valves myself. The book made it a bit clearer IIRC. They stopped underwater and trimmed the boat. Depending how everything inside (the foodstuffs, the fuel and everything else) was distributed, a submerged submarine would tilt towards one way or the others. Those valves were (I think) for flooding little tanks that were all over the boat until it stayed leveled.
"a submerged submarine would tilt towards one way or the others" I didn't even think about that. I do recall the crew reporting to the captain that the submarine is "level". The submarine has so many complicated mechanisms to make it operate so smoothly. Whoever thought of the details and created the submarine blueprint is a genius. Thanks for sharing! 😊
These valves, one big hand wheel on top and many small in two rows below, are the main compressed air manifolds, one for high pressure the other for low pressure, they distribute the compressed air through the whole boat to other manifolds, for all kind things, blowing the ballast tanks, firering the torpedos, starting the diesel, ect. For trimming the "tilt" there were only 2 trimtanks, one in the bow and one in the stern, for trimming the weight of the boat, for neutral buoyancy they had 2 main regulating tanks and 2 reserve fuel oil regulationg tanks. While the trim tanks could be drained with compressed air, they usually trimmed the boat with the pump and used compressed air only when it had to be done quickly, but the trim tanks were inside the pressure hull and couldnt take much pressure.
full speed during depth charge exploding is tryin to leave position + get away as long as the destroyers cant closely watch / hear you due to explosion noise
Also they sank the ship for two reasons. One is because to claim the tonnage it must sink. This is hard to verify because they are usually trying to get away underwater and can't look to verify. The second reason is because the back "keel" is broken but tankers are hard to sink by design. If it's still floating it can be towed or repaired and used again. Tankers were a prime target because the whole armed forces ran on it.
@@henryellow no problemo. WW2 era submarines are a thing I'm kinda obsessed with. Don't know why. Some people like modal trains so I guess it's not that weird
A very good reaction to the imo best German movie ever made and one of my all time favourites, too. I like that you took time to look up some trivia like the real injury of Jan Fedder and other things. Sadly, some parts get lost due to the quite bad subtitles, but still way better than the awful dubbing. I have quite a tight connection to submarines, always loved the tech behind it, and in fact I live in the German city with the last remaining boat of this type VII C , placed on shore as a museum. For another awesome German war movie, I can recommend "Downfall" , and even the new "Im Westen nichts Neues" . Keep up the good work and greetings from Germany!
Awesome 😊 Sure, I'll add Downfall (2004) to my list. I've watched "Im Westen nichts Neues" (All Quiet on the Western Front), you can find my reaction to it on my channel 👍
However, be sure to watch the 1930 Louis Milestone Film, not the 2022 atrocity. "All quiet on the western front" in that old version, made in the USA but you couldn't tell, is absolutely marvellous in a very disturbing way.
I think the new "All quiet on the Western front" was really disappointing. The original from 1930 was way better! I have not watched the one from the 1970s, only a few scenes from it, so I can't say much about it.
42:15 those things are not oxygen tanks. They are called "diving lung" they have potash cartridge. The CO2 is getting filtered out of their breath and oxygen is getting pushed in, so the air get's thiner over time, but they won't sufficate from Co2 poisening and can last longer with the air they have left.
20:34 This was actually not scripted originally, the actor (Jan Fedder) lost his grip because of the force of the water and some other crew member shouted "Mann über Bord!" out of reflex. And yes, he did actually crack 2 of his ribs and had to go to hospital to be patched up. Petersen decided to put it in the film because it looked awesome, but, contrary to an urban legend about this movie, he did not actually ask Fedder to re-do the fall for an alternative take (he was not that evil LOL)
I toured a US WWII submarine docked in Portland, OR several years ago. If you're claustrophobic, don't go in there. I'm not, so it was an interesting tour. They kept huge cans of food on the floor so you walked on them everywhere, until the cook used them to prepare meals. Terrific reaction, and I enjoyed your research and comments. Speaking of WWII, have you ever seen Band of Brothers?
Was the inside of the submarine similar to the U-Boat we see in the movie? Equipment, narrow space, etc. And the smell, was it bad? 😂 I'm sure they must've cleaned thoroughly since it's open for visitors. I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😊 Nope, I haven't seen Band of Brothers~
Are you talking about the USS Blueback? The one at the Oregon Museum of Science and Technology? If so, that is not a WW2 sub...it entered service with the US Navy in 1959, and stayed in service until 1990...she was the last non-nuclear powered sub the Navy built and was the last to be in service. Although she was a diesel electric submarine like the U-Boats were, she was vastly more advanced in too many ways to count. The two biggest differences being the teardrop hull shape optimized for underwater performance and not surface, and the fact that Blueback had a very capable snorkel system that allowed her to run her diesel engines while submerged at shallow depth.👍
I've been on USS Pamapnito (US WW II Balao-Class sub) in San Francisco and n the set used to film "Das Boot" in Munich and I have to say US subs were way more spacious and better shower factilities (i.e. some at all). They keep the dirty laundry of the entire studio staff on the set to give visitors the full authentic experience.
@@henryellow German subs were superior in many ways. The cramped size meant that they weren't as easily spotted and also helped them to reach over twice the depth of most other nations. The small size also led to greater maneuver ability and was of course cost effective and resource effective. The Americans could however afford to use another approach against Japan as long range and long trips were more important in the Pacific than in the Atlantic and as neither fuel or building resources was that much of a problem for the US, they simply built larger subs in general. Also Japanese destroyers weren't as much of a threat as the allied ones. However there were several sizes of German boats as well, this one is the middle and most successful size.
I play a game on PC called Silent Hunter III. It's basically this movie, but a U-boat simulator. When you manually aim the torpedoes you must solve a trigonometry puzzle. The triangle consists of the ships location and angle on bow, it's speed and it's draft. The second point is you, this is where the targets range to you is relevant. The third point is where the ship and torpedo will intersect. Each torpedo can take anywhere between 30 seconds to two and some minutes.
@@henryellow if I were a history teacher I would assign it as homework. I mean yeah you could spend 4+ real hours being depth charged by destroyers just to get hit and die anyway. But when you escape and make it back to port.... No PvP even comes close to that feeling.
depth charges were mechanical, they used to set a timer for it at an estimated time according to sonar checkst to blow up before dropping them. also, good reaction.
lol, my bad you all, what i remembered was; 'they measured the time it would sink to the estimated point for' some reason. i somehow had a a misinfo about the amount of misfiring was the cause of heat changes with currents or something in the atlantic. what i remembered was wrong. cheers.
A completely innocent reaction. Interesting to see what someone who hasn't grown up with this history makes of one the greatest war films made. Like watching my little cousins😂
51:00 The type D was a WW1 depth charge. The WW2 Type D Mk VII had a maximum depth of 900ft (270m), which was in 99% of cases enough, as historically almost all submarines imploded long before reaching such a depth.
Allied submarines imploded befor reaching that depth (thats why the UK used the WW1 depth charges with a maximum depth settig of 150m, until they found out german u-boats could go much deeper), German Typ VII and Typ IX did not, there are serval reports of u-boat passing 300m and still survived. While in WW2 the pessimistic calculated 250m as crush depth for the Typ VII, modern calculations showed the crush depth was around 300m
2:10 They *ARE* peeing on the car. Later on in the bar at 2:40 , the 1st Warrant Officer reports to the Kaleun that the boat is ready to sail and tells him that some of the crew harassed him, to which the Kaleun responds "Me too", this initiation is the aforementioned peeing on. Thompsen and the Kaleun are critical over the man with the funny mustache and the rest of the command structure because they know how things really are going. In a later scene where, again, the 1st W.O. is saying how they'll force Churchill to kneel, the Kaleun scolds him by saying he's pretty far from being on his knees, especially when the Luftwaffe (German Airforce) isn't cooperating with the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), because of hostility between the branches. 4:25 U-Boots are not TRUE submarines, they're more like a submersible boat. Modern submarines fit the term better since they can operate indefinitely underwater, only limited by how much food they have brought onboard. WW2 submarines were limited heavily by battery power and air which wouldn't last more than 1-2 days. 5:14 At the time of the film's shooting, if I remember correctly, steady cams had not been invented yet, which posed a massive problem for production. The Director Of Photography came up with a specialized rig that basically acted as a gyrostabilizer. This ended up being extremely loud, which meant that for almost ALL of the interior shots, the actors had to dub their own voices as the audio from the cameras was unusable. Most, if not all of the actors, also dubbed their own characters in English, since they spoke fluent English. 5:20 Non-canned food, especially meats, in the boat was a COMMODITY. Food would be spread all over the boat with meat hanging almost everywhere. The good food would be eaten first, so as to not go bad while on patrol and lost, with canned and less tasty food being eaten afterwards, while the patrol dragged on. The food you see on set is real food the production team hang, in order to give the actors a realistic working and *smelling* environment while shooting the movie. 5:51 Johann was the Chief Mechanic of the boat, basically second to the Chief Engineer. Mechanics and engineers were usually the most pale looking members of the crew as they rarely ever went on watch outside. The actors were also forbidden from going into direct sunlight for extended periods of time while filming, in order to maintain their paleness on film. 6:07 Patrols would last anywhere from 2-6 months, depending on which year of the war it was, duties, etc. With very little clean water available on the boat, sailors would rarely wash or shave, resulting in them growing beards and a very distinct, uh, "musk" (usually diesel smell, mixed with skin oils, sweat and salt water). 6:29 Yes, shown earlier, in the scene where they go and see Johann, they pass by the galley which has a small kitchen, and I mean SMALL kitchen. 10:37 This is what is called torpedo maintenance. Depending on the model of the torpedo, you have to maintain them every so often to keep them operational. Maintenance includes heating them up so that their guidance system doesn't fail in the freezing waters, greasing up with vaseline, making sure the tubes are clear, the control surfaces of the torpedo work, etc. 11:30 You'd ABSOLUTELY get cabin fever, especially when you're on patrol for MONTHS without any action/orders. Being a submarine sailor was an extremely taxing, both physically and mentally, job for both sides of the conflict. 11:35 from what I remember the notebook says "20th day at sea. My head feels foggy and I'm overfed. This whole thing seems so crazy." 11:44 This device/room is called the hydrophone. It's basically a big ass rotating microphone that picks up and amplifies audio from the water. Remember that sound propagates around 5x faster in water, making it much easier to spot/detect ships than eyes and ears while on the surface. 12:07 You are correct. Lemons, oranges and limes were a big part of submarine meals, giving sailors much needed vitamin C to fight off scurvy. 12:53 For a typical Type VIIc U-Boot, the one depicted in the movie, 24-48 hours with very good crew discipline, is the accepted time that a Type VIIc could remain submerged. 13:41 Submarines, and other boats, have 2 compartments where water can enter; The bilges and the ballast. The ballast is a compartment that is at the bottom of a ship that can be flooded to decrease buoyancy or emptied, to increase it. On the other hand, water would slowly accumulate in the bilges of a submarine and could be expelled via the use of pumps, however, the deeper underwater you are, the harder time the pumps have expelling the water. There is an infamous story about a U-Boot that was sunk because of a toilet, ask me about it if you are interested. (1/2)
14:13 Here, Johann is listening for engine issues. When you work with the same engine over a long period of time, you become so accustomed to how a normal working engine sounds, that you can spot issues before they become more severe. Johann is most likely listening for engine knocking in this scene. 15:21 Uh, no, not that I am aware of. Water and metal are REALLY good at absorbing kinetic forces. The submarine will give way before your body/organs do. The way depth charges work is not by relying on the explosion blowing up the submarine, rather relying on the difference in pressure when water rushes back into the cavity that was created by the explosion. This massive difference in pressure creates a shockwave that will twist and warp the submarine. If it happens close or often enough, it will ultimately result in permanent damage to the pressure hull of a submarine. A damaged pressure hull results in a shallower crush depth, leaks and other various problematic things. 15:25 The Kaleun insinuates that it is basically impossible to spot a periscope in such heavy seas. Unbeknownst to German sailors, Allied ships had started using radar that could spot a U-Boot's periscope even in very rough seas. This is most likely the case here. 16:18 Not in the way you think. The order to kill the lights was given in case the U-Boot gets damaged to the point where they lose electricity, their eyes won't need to adjust to the difference in brightness, giving them a faster reaction time in doing damage control. Speaking softly DOES help. As mentioned before, sound travels much farther and faster in water and sailors speaking, coughing, sneezing or dropping tools could be heard by skilled and keen eared hydrophone operators. 17:47 Kriechbaum is counting # of depth charges expended by the enemy. If you manage to identify (possible for a skilled hydrophone operator, by listening to the ship's propellers and engine sound) what kind of destroyer is hunting you, you can guesstimate how many depth charges the enemy has. 18:48 It is possible to crawl by but remember that just like the U-Boot, the destroyer also has hydrophones that can hear you and the destroyer doesn't need air/battery power in order to remain hidden, but the submarine does. This was a very common tactic in WW2, where destroyers would literally wait out submarines while shadowing them and when they surfaced in order to replenish oxygen or recharge their batteries, they'd come under heavy attack with little to no chance of escape. 19:45 Remember, most men share a bunk with another man! It would be very easy for diseases like Crabs to transmit from one man to another. 20:28 This part was actually not in the script. However, it wasn't Jan Fedder, the actor that plays Pilgrim, that broke his ribs. It was actor Bernd Tauber that plays Kriechbaum instead, with 2 broken ribs. Bernd had to spent a lot of the film's shooting going in and out of the hospital. The director liked the genuine panicked scream of "Mann über Bord!" from the actors and he decided to keep it in the movie and make it a small plot-line. 22:27 Astronavigation, this is shown later in the movie when Werner is on the bridge with Kriechbaum and they chat about their orders to break through Gibraltar, Kriechbaum is holding a sextant and is taking measurements. 24:30 They are excited because they are there to sink the ships and the materiel, not to kill the people on the ships. Also, this is their first chance, since they set out to sea, where they get to attack something, any one of us would be hyped and itching for a fight. 25:37 In essence, kinda. Sonar is basically seeing with sound. Sonar works by sending an acoustic pulse in a direction. If this pulse hits something, an "echo" reflects back, with varying intensity based on the object/surface it hit. The metal hull of a submarine/ship is naturally more "reflective" than sand/rock. So you know that in this spot it took 10s for the echo to reach you, on this spot it took 4s and then it took 10 seconds again. That means that in the 2nd spot, something is much closer to the surface than the surrounding area. You don't know EXACTLY how close to the surface unless you know the exact depth of the area you are at but it's enough, with the help of your hydrophone operator, to get an idea of where a submarine is and guide your depth charge attack. 30:56 Yes. The ship has not sunk. Your job is to make sure the ship sinks. A sunken ship is a ship that won't be recovered by your enemy, repaired and put back into action. This is a tactic that was taught to tank crews, on both sides. You keep shooting until the vehicle explodes or catches fire. In the aspect of ships, you keep firing until the ship sinks. The name of the game is equipment denial. 31:15 Usually, you'd be correct. In situations like this where the ship hasn't sunk but is near sinking, they would use their 88mm deck gun to "motivate" it to sink. However, they are in an active zone with enemy destroyers about and you don't have the luxury of setting up the deck gun and taking shots at the ship. One torpedo is more than enough to do the job, and quickly. 33:33 This is the scene I mentioned earlier ( 22:27 ), where Kriechbaum is using a sextant for navigation. 42:41 As mentioned earlier, this is a misconception. It's not Jan Fedder that broke his ribs, it was actually Bernd Tauber (Kriechbaum, the Navigator who was shot at Gibraltar) 51:36 The US' Mk 9 teardrop shaped depth charge could reach depths of 300m (~1000ft). This type of depth charge was introduced in late spring of 1943. And finally, the film is pronounced Das Boh-oht, not Boot as in boot (footwear). The 2 "o"s combine and form an elongated one. (2/2)
I believe you've answered all the questions I asked in this video (and then some more) 😂 2:10 Oh, I see. So the harassment was actually peeing on the car. Interesting, I didn't know that the German Airforce wasn't cooperating with the German Navy. 5:14 The interior scenes were dubbed?! I barely even noticed that. They did a great job dubbing themselves. 5:20 Yup, the smell of rotting meat and moldy bread would not be pleasant. 6:07 It's already tough enough with little clean water. They have to put up with dirty clothes and the smells too. 6:29 Extra emphasis on the SMALL because I didn't even notice it 😂 11:35 Overfed? How did that happen? 11:44 to 15:21 Thanks for clarifying and explaining these. A U-Boat sunk because of a toilet. Did it explode from the pressure? 15:25 No wonder the destroyer was right upon them so quickly. 16:18 Emergency lights would most likely still work, right? Regarding the sound, I found out later. Someone mentioned that even walking loudly could be heard by a skilled hydrophone operator. 17:47 That's a smart procedure. You can estimate how many "bullets" the enemy has to shoot at you. Thanks for explaining elaborately for the rest of the points. For the Jan Fedder/Bernd Tauber thing, the article said it was either one of them, but didn't specify which one. Once again, thanks for taking the effort to answer my questions! 😊 You sure know a lot about this 👍🏻
@@henryellow The toilet incident. The submarine in question was U1206, also a Type VIIc U-Boot. As I mentioned in my original comment, the deeper underwater you go, the more pressure is exerted on your craft. This in turn means your pumps lose efficiency. When people go to the toilet while submerged, sometimes this meant that they couldn't flush said toilet and things, well, they piled on. For this specific reason, the Kriegsmarine invented a new pressurised toilet that could be operated even deep underwater, but required a skilled operator to use valves in the correct order, to flush it. On U1206, it is disputed as to who it truly was, crewmember or the captain, misuse of the valves caused the toilet to malfunction and flood with seawater. This isn't particularly problematic since most of the water would end up in the bilges, however, this was the forward toilet that is right above the main battery cluster. Seawater is particularly the issue here because when it comes in contact with the batteries, it creates CHLORINE GAS. Chlorine gas forced U1206 on the surface where they were spotted by RAF patrols, as they were right off the coast of Scotland, and in turn were bombed heavily. The captain decided to scuttle the boat and surrender. Out of all of its crew compliment, 1 sailor fell sick and passed 1 day before the incident and 3 others drowned in the heavy seas. This all happened 20 days before the war ended.
@@henryellow The Luftwaffe was competing for resources and fame against the Kriegsmarine (mainly, although they did clash with the Wehrmacht -- the German army, as well) and were very stingy with their equipment. Had the two branches been more cooperative, they'd have had much more success in the Battle Of The Atlantic. I'd just go out on a limb and say most of the movie was re-dubbed, interior or exterior shots. When Thompsen is waving at U-96 from dock and yelling at them, you can kind of see that his voice is dubbed. Some of the parts that I noticed looked and sounded proper were the segment in the brothel and the one right after that, where Werner, the Kaleun and the L.I. are walking to the boat where the Kaleun introduces Werner to the crew and gives a short speech. Werner most likely just ate too much and got food coma, lol. Remember that early on in the patrol you'd eat the tastiest food and this was 3 weeks after they put to sea. I am unsure if WW2 U-Boots had emergency lights. I know for a fact they had white and red, each doing different things; White was for navigation and normal day-day use. Red was used at night, to help eyes adjust to the darkness and see better. It's also used as a way to indicate an ongoing alarm. Blue light, however, is disputed as a creation of Das Boot. Some sailors say they had blue lights in their submarines in the 60s and 70s, before the movie was made but some others are disputing it. The most prevalent idea about blue lights is that it helps you relax and to indicate silent running to the crew. Take this point with a grain of salt. Some other fun facts; The production team went to Kiel, one of the shipyards that would build submarines for Germany in WW2 and asked them to make a 1:1 exact replica of a Type VIIc U-Boot. This replica was empty on the inside, bar an engine and controls for a diver to use the ship. The original diver quit 3 days into production because, quote: I have been a diver for over 20 years and never before have I experienced seasickness. In the opening scene where Thompsen is introduced, Otto Sander, the actor, really was inebriated, HEAVILY. There were multiple sizes of sets, both for internal shots and external ones. When U-96 comes across Thompsen's boat in the Atlantic, the figures you see on the conning tower waving at the crew were Barbie and Ken dolls. Apart from the 1:1 replica of the exterior, production had also created a 1:1 interior set, with every valve, pipe and bolt placed as accurately as possible. The whole set was then placed on mechanical arms that would rock it side to side, back and forth, to simulate heavy seas or depth charges. When you see the actors being thrown around during the depth charge attacks, it's the real deal. Near the end of production, Wolfgang Petersen had rented the exterior replica to Steven Spielberg, for shots in Raiders of the Lost Arc, without notifying production or the crew. They woke up one day to find the replica missing from where it was moored, with all the ropes neatly set aside, much to their confusion. Glad to have been of help. Although I am quite new to submarines myself, Das Boot instantly rose to be in my Top #3 movies of all time.
@@Pawniac I see. So it was due to someone operating the valves incorrectly. Ah yes, chlorine gas. I believe this was also a concern (during the movie) when the crew were trying to fix the battery leak. Seems like the captain acted decisively. Good thing they surrendered, since it was near the end of the war. I wonder if the rest of the crew were eventually released, or they were all charged for war crimes.
dont blame it to all germans..most of them had to follow the orders,like any other soldier from any country.im sure about 98% of any soldier in any war from any country,didnt want to be there. if you are interested in another sub/dest movie,watch The Enemy Below (1957).
Yes, I know. Soldiers are there to follow orders. Most of them don't have a choice in the matter. Sure, I'll add that to my list~ Thanks for your suggestion! 😊
Hi Henry, watching someone else watch my favourite movies is always a bit like seeing it for the first time again myself. My pet-peeve with the movie is the depiction of depth charges, which is a lot more elaborately explained in the book (the one written by the real-life Werner). In the movie, they go off right next to the boat, so you start to wonder firstly why the Tommies tickle the boat to death with these little firecrackers rather than using a proper bomb, and secondly why the Fritzes are even bothering to try to escape. However, according to the book any bomb going off within a radius of about 70 metres around the boat would crack it, depending a bit on its position to the vulnerable bits of the boat and also on depth. The pressure of the ocean would contain the explosions of the bombs a bit, so depth is your friend (by going below 200 metres the captain was maybe banking on the British simply not believing it).
Oh, I see. Right, the depth charges relied more on the shockwaves to damage the U-Boat, isn't it? When the captain dived below 200m, I thought the depth charges couldn't go that deep. But I was wrong. Thanks for the explanation! 😊
@@henryellow Yes, even charges going off further away shake up the boat and cause damage to the more fragile parts, like valves. You see a lot of this sort of damage in the movie. In the book there was talk of a boat that got hit directly by a depth charge. Thus it didn't reach the depth at which it was set to explode and still sat on the deck when they surfaced. They had to go full speed ahead and kick it over board.
@@PortCharmers at 70m a u-boat was relative save, at this distance depth charges could only do minor damage, to crack the hull the depth charge had to be withing 7m.
@@henryellow Later in the war the UK invented the Hedgehog, a mortar like depth charge thrower, these depth charges were a lot smaller but had contact fuses and therefor were far more deadly, one or two hits were enough to sink an u-boat or force it to the surface, because of the damage and flooding.
Legendary Movie which accurately depicts the pointlessness and horrors of war. To your question as to why they sank the burned out cargo ship with a torpedo: The large modern cargo ships of WW2 were made almost entirely of steel and made of multiple watertight compartments. Even if a significant number of these compartments were penetrated, these ships would be able to stay afloat. Thus, just hitting a cargo ship with a torpedo would not guarantee it being lost to the enemy. The ship may burn out and its cargo be lost, but the floating hull could be towed to port and refitted rather quickly. As a consequence, cargo ships had to be confirmed sunk with another torpedo. Even german surface ships usually carried a substantial amount of torpedoes purely for this task, as the main role of the german Kriegsmarine was to function as commerce/cargo raiding forces.
A burned out tanker with a broken keel is only scrap metall, fixing it would cost more than build a new one. They were sunk for safety, a drifting wreck is a huge hazard for shipping.
They would want to go to battle because the sooner they go to battle, the sooner they used their torpedoes and complete their mission....the sooner they can go home! Make sense doesn't it?
16:20 Yes, it does help. 1) The depth charge barrel takes longer to get to the submarine, so the submarine has more time to move away. 2) The pressure limits the power of the explosion, reducing the blast of the depth charge.
You want to be below the exploding depth charge, as the explosive force mainly moves upwards (the direction of lowest pressure). So as long as the depth charge explodes above the submarine it has a good chance of survival, baring a direct hit. If the charge explodes below the sub, it's like being hit by a "hammer" from below. Bascially no chance of survival.
@@mathiasfischbach4843 On a depth charge that explodes close enough to damage the pressure hull, it doesnt matters if its above or below the u-boat, the "explosion" moves toward the next hard surface, no matter if its up, down or sideways. Also it isnt the blast that damages the u-boat, its the shockwaves from the osscilating expanding and imploding "bubble"
Well, during 95% of the time the life on this boat is pure boredom and routine. The rest of the time the men had to face claustrophobia, terror and extreme pressure with only a few inches of metal between them and the water.
@@henryellow Down Periscope is a bit of a joke...I should be honest...it is a comedy movie, and submariners love to joke that it is the MOST accurate sub movie ever made, but it is not. It is pretty funny, but you should probably watch Red October and Crimson Tide before you look at Down Periscope. 😂
The thing is: most of the crews wanted to shoot as soon as possible all their torpedoes because so they could go faster back to the base. There were not many members on board which wanted to kill a lot of sailors.
Your google search showed the duration under water from the late war model Typ XXI, those U-Boats didn't saw any war actions, because they weren't ready. The U-Boot in this film was a Type VII, the most built U-Boot of all times. Their duration under water was much shorter.
Most of the crew had to share a bunk so even if they had no crabs when they shipped out they could pick them up from another man without having sex. Normally of course they got crabs from prostitutes before the patrol.
For context...the U-Boat in the film is a Type VIIC...which makes it 67.1 meters long...but inside that length, the pressure hull for the crew is only 50.5 meters long. Many British ships were equipped with ASDIC...the ping type of sonar system that most folks think of when you say "sonar"...so I do not know why they chose for the first destroyer the U-96 gets attacked by to not have it? But all the escort ships would have had pretty much the same kind of directional underwater listening device...called a hydrophone...that you saw the U-Boat using to locate ships nearby. Turning off the lights saves battery power...which is all the sub has for electrical power when it is submerged, and the motors use the same batteries...so saving power in other ways keeps the propellers turning. The two things that limited the time a sub could stay down were battery capacity and how long they could keep the air breathable. The most common nickname for submarines in WW2, as far as I know, was "pig boats"...I believe that is what the Germans, British, and American crews all called their own vessels...among other names. The origin of the name was how the crews looked and smelled when they goat back from a long patrol...if I am not mistaken. There was a galley and a cook...it was most often a tiny space on German subs...probably no more than 40 or 50 square feet. US subs were generally larger than German ones, and I think the galley on US subs was something like 6 or 8 feet wide and 10 feet long...approximately. You wondered about the depth charges being able to still damage the sub at below the 300ft max depth of the Type D depth charge. The Allies were constantly developing and improving their anti submarine systems and weapons, and in late 1940 the British introduced new modifications to the standard depth charge that increased the maximum detonation depth to 900 feet.
Thanks for sharing! 😊 You're right, the first destroyer didn't seem to have the sonar system. The ASDIC allows the destroyer to accurately pinpoint the U-Boat's location, right? So that's why they turned off the lights. A submarine uses fuel when surfaced, and uses batteries when underwater. Now I get it. "Pig boats" 😂 my gosh. I can only imagine the type of smells trapped inside a submarine. They increased the max detonation depth from 300ft (91m) to 900 ft (274m)!? Even if the U-Boat dives to their max depth, they wouldn't be able to escape from the depth charges!
@@henryellow Exactly...there was a back and forth with a lot of the tech, so as soon as the Allies figured out the U-Boats were avoiding their attacks by going deeper than the depth charges could reach, they began to work on ways to reach down deeper with their charges. And on the ASDIC, the answer is yes and no...because the use of the system was complex. It is not like sonar is today, where digitized systems "show" you exactly where the enemy is on a screen. ASDIC was very directional, so it was quite hard to initially find the sub with it, to search 360 degrees around the ship was a very laborious process. You needed a very skilled operator to get the most out of the system. In addition, ASDIC had a blind spot in that it could not detect a sub that was very close or under the ship...so when attacking enemy subs, ASDIC would actually lose sight for the last moments, and ASDIC was also blinded by the explosions of the depth charges...this gave skilled sub captains a chance to evade detection briefly, and perhaps escape. Anyway, that is a brief description of how complicated ASDIC was to use...I tried to find a video to explain it, but did not see a really good one...will keep looking.
@@iKvetch558 "as soon as the Allies figured out the U-Boats were avoiding their attacks by going deeper than the depth charges could reach, they began to work on ways to reach down deeper with their charges" That is indeed a smart (and very direct) solution. That's alright, you explained it well enough for me to understand 😊 It's probably similar to the little spinning antennae we see outside the sub, which can allow someone to hear in a 360 degree direction (except directly above or below it).
@@iKvetch558 They didnt really turn off the light to save battery power, the e-motors would suck up the power of all lights would use in a day in a few seconds. They did turn down the voltage and turn off some light to save light bulbs. A light bulb at full power does more likely gets "blown out" due concussion than a turned off light bulb. Read the KTB from the 7th patrol of the real U96 (the patrol and boat the movie is inspired by), they got serval times attacked by escorts without ASDIC and without having a clue were the u-boat is, intense depth charge hunts like in the movie didnt happend on that patrol.
The reporter is an actual historical figure, who wrote the book "Das Boot" after the war. He was as a propaganda officer on multiple patrols. There is also a great making of on youtube: "Behind the Scences - The Story of Cult Films: Das Boot (The Boat)" In the book it is written, that during their time in France, they all went to the same prostitutes. So no wonder, that they all got crabs. Also two or three guys are sharing the same bunk bed. The torpedos had a top speed of around 55-60 km/h. So it really took a while. Also they were not steerable like today. They just took a straight line. So you had to precalculate the distance of the ship, the speed of the target and the time the torpedo needed. The boat had a range of about 15000 km. So these patrols took some months. But with the batteries they could only dive for a couple of hours due to Oxygen resources. The info about the diving time you found refers to a much later class, the Type 21 boats, which were quite ahead of their time. They had a snorkel for fresh air supply and the diesl under water. The boat in the movie is a type VII boat. They had no washing machines on board. According to a veteran they changed their underwear only every 4 weeks. They only had 3l of fresh waters per day and person. For showering they had a saltwater shower on the deck, which could only be used in calm and safe conditions. So the smell on the boat must have been very special. One of those boats has survived the war and is on display in Kiel. It is really hard to imagine how 50 people could live inside of that for months. The drowning before Gibraltar did really happen, also the return to La Rochelle. Only the air attack at the end didn't happen at that point. But the boat was sunk by aircrafts at the end of the war. And there were other attacks on La Rochelle and the other U Boat bunkers in France. This is why they built the bunkers in the first place. The bunkers were so sturdy, that they are still existing today. It would be too expensive to tear them down. So they could film this movie on the original location. Funny side note: The actor of Lt. Werner didn't make many more movies. Instead he started a singing career. He is by far the most successful German speaking artist with around 20 mio. sold records. 🙂
If they all went to the same prostitutes, then it goes without saying 😂. Yea, hard to avoid crabs when they share the same bed. I didn't even realize you could steer torpedoes nowadays. Valuable calculation skills to learn for them. If their oxygen supply could only last for a few hours, it's even more miraculous they survived the seafloor ordeal. Every 4 weeks! 😱 3 litres of drinking water isn't considered much, but still manageable. Oh, it must've been "special" indeed. Life in a submarine isn't for claustrophobic people, that's for sure 😅 Great for him! I guess singing is his thing then 👍🏻 Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellowYes, Herbert Grönemeyer is one of the best know singer-songwriters of Germany. You may check out his songs Männer (Men), an ironic apppraisal of the male condition, or his heartbreaking love song Ich hab dich lieb (I Love You) about a man singing to the woman who left him.
@@henryellow Their oxygen supply could last for up to 72 hours and the destilling unit could produce 240 liter of fresh water per day, and they left port with nearly 4m³ fresh water (1m³=1000L). They could and did wash their underwear by and in a bowl and sometimes the did wash their clothes by soaping it with salt water soap, tie it to a rope and tow it behind the boat for some time. In warmer waters they even did go for a swim in the ocean, when there was no enemy expected. Some boats also installed a showerhead in the engine room, feed by the warm cooling water from the diesel engines.
Running out of torpedos means Harbour Main Base for reload weapons and fuel. With some days Off for Repair...thats Why they are eager took get rid of the torpedos
For the best "realism" you should watch this with a pile of mildew riddled clothes, some old fuel oil, and rotting food. all contained in the room with you.
the air raid at the end might not have been bad luck as we had broken the german naval codes and if they had radioed in their location the attack could have been planned to catch them
Oh boy...this is such a great movie, so I am really looking forward to your comments. BTW...1st to comment...LOL Great reaction...I tried to answer a lot of your questions, but I did not want to write too long a comment. Please let me know if there is anything else you are still curious about, and I will answer as many questions as I can.
On the french GF being pregnant: Resistance didn't like collaborators and women in sexual relationships with germans were easy targets. Doesn't matter if it's just two young people falling in love and nothing more. It was also a somewhat chauvinistic way of coping with losing to the german Army. On crabs: I'd assume it doesn't help that so many people share the same bed, so if one has it, another guy gets it from lying in the same bed, but they also are known to jump from host to host I think. 43:50 The subtitles for what Werner is saying are pretty bad, he's is talking about being drunken on the idea of fame and bravery to be out in reality once and now he understands how horrifying it can be and yes it scares him shitless, understandably so. This version in general has some questionable subtitles, there's better ones out there. 50:55 That was on a US sub in the 80s, in the 40s there were no washing machines or dryers.
Well, a love between two sides is tough during war... Now that you mention it, they DO share the same bed. No one can escape the crab infestation 😂 Is that so 🤔 thanks for correcting the subtitles~ You mean to say they don't wash their clothes AT ALL for months? 😨 That's tough. Thanks for sharing! 😊
No clothes and almost no chance at cleaning yourself, it's why the first officer sticks out so much, he wastes part of his water ration to remain presentable and blocks the one toilet they have to clean himself, which is an asshole move with a toilet ratio of 1 for 50 men. And of course the contrast of the scene on the resupply-vessel, though I've read that it wouldn't have happened like that, the U-boatr officers would cleaned themselves on board the bigger ship before going to dinner. Apparently the USA had submarines with washing machines in WW2, theirs were bigger due to needing to cross the Pacific.@@henryellow
There is a scene in the book, that wasn't filmed, where after they return from Gibraltar come accross a cruise ship and identify it as American and try to sink it, but the Topedo tubes fail, before they can fix them, the Captain of the other ship rows over and claims it to be a Spanish ship. After some back and forth they find out that the first officer missed the addendum to their identification book and said ship was indeed sold to a spanish company. So they barely avoiced a Laconia incident. I think they excluded it, because it didn't really serve a purpose for the main narrative and the first officer is already portrait negatively enough as the (seemingly) only real Nazi on board.@@henryellow
The deeper you go the less time the air lasts, the air in sub compresses under the pressure - so gets used up faster, same applies to air in a divers cylinder. WWII subs were way slower than the destroyers, less powerful engines and much more drag. Couldnt even out run them on the surface where they were faster (using deisel.)
No, the air does not got used up faster, the air inside the sub stays at around 1 atmosphere, the crew isnt exosed to the outside pressure like a diver and even if, the air stays in the boat and isnt lost like a scuba diver. also most of the escorts where corvettes and u-boats could outrun them on the surface.
U-Boote were smaller and more maneuverable. Depth charges are set to a depth and take a while to reach that depth, the destroyers have to calculate that in advance. If you manage to steer the boat so that you are not where the destroyers predicted you would be when they dropped the depth charges, you are lucky. Sonar (ASDIC) was introduced in 41, but only became fully practical in combination with radar in 43. At that time, the submarines' successes also declined sharply and they suffered heavy losses. A game changer was the Type XXI boats, which were faster underwater than the detection speed of the destroyers. In addition, the torpedoes could be fired without going to sea tube depth. However, none of these boats were used in combat again. But they were still used after the war. For example, the "Wilhelm Bauer" U 2540 from 1960-1968 is now a museum ship in Wilhelmshaven.
ASDIC was introduced at the end of WW1, in '41 RADAR became more common on escorts, so u-boats couldnt operate so freely on the surface anymore and ASDIC became more usefull
the destroyers did have sonar (or ASDIC) to detect the submarines, _but_ it was pretty much useless when moving at high speed. on the other hand they basically _had_ to move at high speed to throw the depth charges or else they would have risked damaging their own ship. so, what they did is keeping the ship relatively still, locate the submarine and then rush forward towards the location of the submarine to throw the depth charges. during this 'rush' (called "Anlauf" by the german radio operator) the destroyer was more or less 'blind' and this was the time the submarine usually had the chance to change position. it was basically 'a deathly game' between the captains of the submarine and the destroyer: the submarine captain changed position (left/right, up/down, forward/backward) and the destroyer captain had to guess, where the submarine would change to, to unload his charges to the right location. this is why the crew of the u-boat panicked, when they realized there was a second destroyer. because that meant that one destroyer could focus on locating the submarine and radioing the position to the second destroyer, which could then focus on throwing the depth charges. in this situation it was really hard for the submarine to get a away and 'hide'.
It wasnt because of the risk being damaged by the own depth charges, even without increasing the speed, at the setting for 100m, the detonation would be 50-100m behind the destroyer. Depth charges needed some time to reach the set depth, they had a sink rate of around 7m/s, depending on the type a little more or less. The reason for the sprint was, the ASDIC couldnt be pointed down, so it had a minimum range and would lose the contact befor the destroyer was above the u-boat. The more time the destroyer needed between losing contact and being in position to drop the depth charges, the more time the u-boat had for evasive manoevers.
@@wolf310ii _"The destroyer could only run at low speed for a functioning location, but had to enter the “extreme force” (AK) speed level before throwing depth charges so as not to run the risk of being damaged by its own depth charges."_ (translated from the german wikipedia article about ASDIC)
@@montanus777 Just because someone wrote that on Wiki doesnt make it true, anyone can write anything there. The max speed for ASDIC was around 16kt. The Mk 6 depth charge had a sink rate of 2,8m/s, that means it needed 18 seconds to reach an u-boat at 50m. At 16kt the destroyer travels ~150m, for the depth charge to be a danger for the destroyer it would need to be a small nuclear warhead, and not just 135kg TNT. At 150m distance it isnt even a danger for the u-boat. Not speeding up only gave the the u-boat 20-30 seconds more time to react, plus the time the depth charges need to sink. And yes, the u-boat would know when the destroyer lost contact, because the ASDIC isnt hitting the hull anymore. It was even a tactic of the hunter killer groups, 2 or 3 destroyers tracking the u-boat, pointing a search light in the direction of the contact, while anothe one dropped the depth charges, without using his own ASDIC and without speeding up, to not give away the start of the attack run.
@@wolf310ii just because you wrote an answer under a YT-comment doesn't make it true, anyone can write anything here. ;) the tactic of the hunter killer groups was more or less, what i described above. but it would be unnecessary to hunt in a 'pack', if what you claim were true. there wouldn't be an attack run to begin with, if the depth-charging destroyer could just stay pretty much above the u-boat and 'fire' from right there.
My uncle showed me the "trick" to listen to the valves moving below the crank shaft with a long screwdriver held next to the spark plug. If you can hear scratching noises, the clearance between the crank shaft and the valve isn't right, and that means do not buy this car!!! You don't know how long this already goes and you don't want to pay for getting this fixed. If you can't hear scratching sounds the car might be alright, but no guarantees ofc.
@@henryellow Exactly. the metal piece just acts as a travel agent for the sound... Try it out, you'll be amazed how clearly you can hear everything what's going on inside. But, please take care while doing this. The engine is running, there are moving parts. If you happen to have long hair secure them in a bun, before leaning into a running engine, okay!!! And no scarfs!
He didn't say damn bad weather. He was more irate and said actually. Goddamn washkitchen/laundry room!!!, which is the room, where the clothes have been washed in former times and in this room there is always humidity, fog just as it is outside, when it is foggy/rainy. German is very accurate and simple in their wording. Even if you don't speak it and you see a compound word, you can deconstruct this into separate words, translate them and you get what is meant in most cases...or you can make an educated guess.
Depth charges were statistically extremely unreliable, because they needed a direct hit to cause potential killing damage and the destroyers' crews had no idea if they were hitting anything. Destroyers couldn't tell if they got a kill unless they spotted an oil slick or debris float to the surface from inside the submarine. A depth charge's function is to create a reverberating pocket of air, which if close enough to a sub, would cause damage to the metal frame and loosen it, causing leaks inside. A destroyer would have to guess how deep a sub is, how fast it is moving,which direction it's going and figure out what timer the charge should have before firing a pattern at its location. The fact this sub in this movie survived as many charges as it did is plausible, because destroyers fired blind and had little success. The Hedgehog weapon system (water mortars) , which replaced depth charges, was far more effective - it sprayed a pattern of smaller charges, which detonated upon impact with a sub. Until this replacement, destroyer crews had to guess if they even were dropping charges in the right location, but after hedgehogs were put in place, it was close to 90% certainty if the weapon hit or not (if we take duds into account). The combination of sonar and hedgehog weapons turned the tide for the Allies so dramatically, the german u-boot fleet turned from hunter to prey in 1 year. Look up historical videos about u-boot use in the Atlantic. Germany's losses were staggering.
minute 12:50 your question: how long can there dive? In real Typ 7C can dive on batterie for round about 5 hour. Then they have recharge the batteries on surface.
45:40 Actually that is acompletely wrong move. Before surfacing a good 360° scan through the periscope is needed. You don't want to surface close to any other ship.
@@henryellow They look pretty conscious. And a captain has to be on his feet all the time. And because the boat is rising there is no technical requirement to break the surface like an idiot. Again a Hollywoodesque scene.
Ah, you mean that they could have surfaced gradually rather than break the surface like that. I'm sure the scene was intentionally done like that to bring more emotion to it.
stopping the u-boat at periscope depth wasn't possible due to the damage they took. They had to use pressurized air to get the water out of the diving tanks to get the boat lifted from the ground. That means they weren't able to control the way they would surface.
@@frankschrewe4302 Why can't they control the air pressure? Its is not an "on" or "off". Once the boat started to lift everything was okay. No need for hurry among all the enemies. Whether it took them 10 minutes or 20 to the surface didn't make a difference. This is again typical Hollywood where you want dramatic action instead of thoughtfully executed decisions. That's what a captain differentiates from a go-hung sailor.
it doesn't necessarily take that long to grow a beard depends on the individual. and subs could stay submerged for around 48 hours which i think was based on the battery charge so it could be less
8:52 At that time period, the enmity between French and Germans had been much deeper than "just" the two countries being at war. It has grown for centuries with the role of aggressor and victim switching back and forth - so the hatred was very mutual. Children on both sides were conditioned to hate each other from a young age to supposedly make them more effective as soldiers for when the next war would inevitably break out. Therefore, neither side even regarded the other as people if individual people didn't happen to have formed personal experiences to prove the contrary. It was an ever escalating cycle of hatred that would have inevitably resulted in both countries wiping each other off the map if some politicians didn't find a way to put an end to this in the 1960s. Now, I can't give you the full picture without mentioning the German occupation of France having been a horrendous affair in and of itself, so the hatred the French felt for the Germans in that regard was absolutely justified despite them having to carry their share of blame for the history of both nations prior to that. It started off with the Germans demolishing WW1 Memorials because they felt insulted by them (you know: WW1, when France beat back a prior German invasion). An early Resistance Organization formed to gather intel, sabotage German supply lines and prepare the eventual liberation of the country. Some of these attacks of course ended up killing German personnel and French collaborators. Entire villages were slaughtered in revenge for these attacks. The Collaboration Government was forced to round up and hand over all Jews living in France (and those who escaped other parts of German-occupied Europe), French households had to accomodate soldiers privately who often abused that situation in more than one way. So to the French Resistance, every German was a beast. Every French Civilian cooperating with them to any extent was a collaborator and a French woman expecting the child of a German soldier (especially when it was the result of a consenting relationship) was the worst kind of traitor. When France was finally liberated in 1944, many women who were in such relationships faced severe reprisals, even down to lynchings in some cases.
5:22 Yep, it would indeed smell! Plus there's diesel fumes from the engine, so all the food would get a diesel-y aftertaste as time went on. During the making of this film, the director actually had the poor actors stand knee-deep in cold water in some scenes, with the rotting food swimming in it and everything. Enforced method acting, if you will. One prop-master went and bought a huge bottle of eau de cologne and poured it out in a feeble attempt to mask the stench. If you ever visit Munich, Germany, there's a themepark called Bavaria Filmstadt close by where you can take a guided tour of the U-boat they buildt as a set for this film - the space is insanely confined, like you see here, and the idea of being stuck in such a tiny space for months on end with no fresh food and no fresh air is horrifying!
One if my favourite war movies, maybe even THE favourite. Buuuuuut the english translation is mostly inacurate/quite vague. Never the less as a non german speaking person you get the idea.
I tell you something: You are young still and time already flies by like it's not there? Wait until you turn 50...then it feels like. It's January and you blink and it's fall...
The English subtitles are abysmal. Most of the time, they have nothing to do with what is actually said on screen. The translator had no clue of at least one of the languages.
One of the best Warfilms ever made
Stalingrad by Josef Vilsmaier is a German classic too
@@thomasstorch4266 yes a masterpeace
Never forget "Die Brücke" (The Bridge") from Bernhard Wicki from 1959!
One of the best movies period.
One of the best anti war films ever made.
the "Man overboard", that was a real accident while filming. The actor broke a rib. But Grönemeyers cry "Man over board!" was so in character, they left it in.
Speaking softly would help, since the destroyer is tracking the sub by noise, and the submarine's crew is in a steel resonance chamber of a tube. Killing the lights helps by preserving electricity, since they're running on batteries, and don't know how long they're going to have to remain under.
turn off the lights doesnt do much, that little electricity that the light use in 24 hours, use the e-motors in a few seconds. Its like turn off the speedometer light in a car, to extend the range.
The reason that a French girl having a German's baby was risky is that the Germans were occupying most of France during the war. The French resisstance would have seen her as a traitor.
yeah that was a cute question 😅 "What's the problem having a french girlfriend?" At that time it was a problematic, remember WWII was going on ... Germany (the nazis) invaded France😪 It was quite interesting seeing your reaction to the movie. Thank you!
I think the more accurate word would be collaborator.
And rightly so!!
@@robertzapata5395It is attitudes like these that prevent humanity from terminating wars for good
@@thomasgangl8990 Collaborators/traitors like her would've kept the Nazi war machine going for years. My grandpa died over there fighting these bastards and as far as I'm concerned anyone sympathizing with the Nazis is the same as a Nazi and deserve the same punishment. Period.
German here. I feel really sorry for you, this movie deserves far better subtitles. There is plenty of marine jargon and slang speech along with different local dialects that get lost in translation.
Many people have mentioned that. I didn't realize I got the "wrong" subtitles. I still enjoyed the movie though 😊
The author of the novel, Lothar G Buchheim, was a reporter on a submarine, like Lieutenant Werner, and has incorporated his experiences and those of other reporters into the novel.
Respect to those real tears, damn. Thanks for honoring (even tho U96 survived IRL) the seamen who got caught up in the war with your tears of compassion!
And I LOVE the section at the end where you looked up things that you were not sure of, very well done.
Trivia: U96 really existed and while the movie was filmed the chief engineer of the real submarine U96, Friedrich Grade, was present to support with his knowledge of the submarines technology. He died late 2023 at 107 years. The real commander of U96, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, also visited while the film was made. After the war he went to the merchant marine and became in the 1960’s Captain of Germanys only nuclear powered ship, Otto Hahn. He died in 1986.
Cool, thanks for the trivia! 😊
the six hour Tv version is even better
Very glad that you didn't cut out your tears at the end. I can't blame you at all for crying. It's such a heart-breaking end.
Well done, young man. Your review is insightful and sensitive. Here's wishing you more success.
Thank you 😊 same to you!
yes
the sparks in the u-boat pen scene were a tool to disguise how they filmed that scene. They only could use one of the pens at La Rochelle, so they shot different scenes of the same pen and disguised it to make it look like it was one continuous shot. Even if you know it it doesn't really show.
Oh, that's interesting. I didn't notice it at all.
yes, they are peeing on the car. that´s what the 1WO was so pissed about. (pun intended).
U-Boot means Unterseeboot (under-sea boat, literally)
I liked the fact that you did not cut the scene with your tears.
thx.
One more Thing about the ASDIC and how to escape it... When a destroyer makes a deth charge run it has to go at top speed, otherwise it riscs being damaged by its own deth charges. During that time the ASDIC system will not be able to pick up a signal from the u-boat. The desroyer has to find the boat again afterwards. That is why the crew of U-96 was so terrified when the sonar reported a second destroyer... because in this case one destroyer can keep track of the position of the boat while the other does its deth charge run. This is very deadly for the u-boat.
I see. Now I'm even more surprised they got out of that deadly situation!
Thanks for sharing! 😊
The technology shown inside is super accurate. The sit down merry go around attack periscope. During the surface attack showing the analog computer and so on.
The destroyer has to guess where the submarine went, if the sub loses fuel, oil or air it may reveal it's position. Submarines are always slower then destroyers, so it will never outpace a destroyer. The faster it goes the louder it will be, the slower it moves away, the higher the chance to get hit by the next charges. If the destroyer goes slower it can listen better.
Like walking a fine line between life and death...
The english dubbed version of the movie is the actors in the movie, dubbing themselves.
14:25 I used to work with engines like that as a Sailor.
Basically in that shot, he's checking for any signs of the piston being asymmetrical. Its quite important to check sometime cause if its asymmetrical, it can lead to serious problems.
16:15 Yes, because its active Sonar, the guy uses passive sonar in the Uboat, he can hear quite far with it. Lot of Uboat Vets talked about not even dropping a pen in those situations because that could be fatal, the destroyer can hear you and it can be all over.
20:33 Yeah thats an actual footage, during this scene, each scene about 3 tons of water was thrown at them. The actor haad a few broken ribs and he had to go a hospital for about a month.
22:31 Basically you use the calculator, you use that thing to measure your longitude and latitude, mark the location. then you go a certain direction, certain time passed and you do the same thing again. You measure the distance of how far you can go in x amount of hours. In XY conditions
16:15 Sonar is so much more advanced and useful than I initially thought it was. It's awesome and scary at the same time, depending on whether you're the hunter or hunted.
20:33 Fracturing your bones hurt like hell. I can't imagine how much pain he was in when he broke his ribs 😨
22:31 Ah, an important skill to have for a navigator 👍 or should I say, the most basic skill a navigator should have.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellow No problem man!
I was more than happy to answer your questions. At least something stuck to me in my time as a sailor, besides oil and grease, and occasional seagull droppings lol
Das boot is an excellent piece of cinematography. I can fully recommend watching the 1987 miniseries cut. 5 and a half hours, but it is the superior version. Even the actors admitted that the movie version sucked. The miniseries cut really explains most of the situations. Since as Lt. Werner, the viewer is new to a submarine. So every question gets answered.
And yeah, sonar is a wild thing. Now this is an 80 year old representation of it. Im sure some submariners would be more than happy to explain how it works today. They love to talk about it.
@@Krisz98 I'm not confident in understanding sonar if it's explained to me with all the technical terms and jargon 😂
It should be enough to know it's functions and the amazing things it can do 👍
@@henryellow Well basicaly theres active and passive sonar. Passive sonar only "reads" while active is sending out signals and reading them. The guy in the movie using that device is using passive sonar.
While the destroyers use active sonar. Sonar is quite usefull in civilian use. Locating animals, shipwrecks and of course ships and submarines. You can hear a lot of things on sonar. Like low frequency whale songs, and other sea mammal noises. Its rather interesting. And it can melt your brain if youre close enough.
For info, this kind of depth charge had to explode within the range of less than 5 m (of course it also depends on the depth) to seriously damage a submarine.
The submarine can move to avoid but it causes noise that can disclose her position.
Thanks for clarifying 😊
One of the best war ( anti war) movies.
Really liked your reaction, especially you looking up things at the end.
German commanders reported their U-Boats surviving crash dives up to 920ft/280m depths, so the movie's "God gave us a shovelful of sand" 280m+ bottoming out scene was quite possible.
I remain astonished how effectively the filmmakers used a series of model subs to simulate surface and submerged U-Boat actions.
The kill radius of enemy depth charges was reduced in proportion to the one atmosphere worth of increased water pressure per every 10m of depth a sub dived, until the the sea itself crushed the U-Boat 's pressure hull. Submarines flooded water tanks and compressed the displaced onboard air into tanks in order to submerge, and used the compressed air tanks to displace the water they'd flooded their dive tanks with in order to re-surface.
Thank you for sharing! 😊
Bomber crews had a terrible survival rate during that war. 45% were killed and many more were severely injured or taken prisoners.
But submarine crews had it way worse, especially German ones. They ended up with 70% killed at the end.
Once the British had perfected submarine destroyers and anti-submarine planes, pretty much every mission on a German submarine was a suicide mission.
The crew is actually not eager to go into battle. They are eager to shoot their torpedoes and down some tonnage of enemy ships, because only then they are allowed to go back home.
If that's the case, then I have misunderstood their excitement 🤔
Their true wish is to go back home, but to do that, they had to take down many enemy ships...
Although as I've heard from a lot of veterans sometimes you wish for combat, because nothing is happening otherwise and you'll go crazy through that constant waiting, perhaps in fear as well
They were eager to get more living space. The enlisted men lived in the bow torpedo room and with a full load of torpedos, two of them were stored above the floor plate between the bunks, so they had to climb over them everytime they go to or from the bunks., and when maintaining the torpedos they had to move them out of the way, to get to the torpedos below the floor plates or for pulling the torpedos from the lower torpedo tubes.
And if they were only allowed to go back home when the shot their torpedos, a lot of u-boats would be still out there. They did go home when they run out of fuel and food or the boat was damaged, no matter if there where still some or all torpedos on board. If they shot all the torpedos, they could go home early.
They also died of boredom, as depicted pretty here. Crossword puzzles, books, dumb jokes and insults just to pass the time somehow. So naturally they get excited, if they get some action.
The mindset wasn't "Let's kill some Brits.", but "Let's sink some ships.". That's why the Captain was furious, when he saw people still on that tanker.
@@brozy5720 Wouldn't a large part of the atlantic merchant marine at this time of the war actually be Norwegians and not Brits?
So at around 31:00 they have several reasons to fire an additional torpedo:
1. the Allies were rather good in salvaging ships, anything that was still afloat was basically still of value. There were tankers who burned for days and stayed barely afloat but were towed back to port, repaired and went back out later .... you just couldn't count anything as sunk as long as it was still on the surface.
That's also the reason why there were still men aboard that burning wreck, they still tried to save it.
2. Limited torps is a good point, but it also works the other way around: a boat that still had torps couldn't come back home (as long as they also had fuel and rations), so every torpedo you could justify to fire brought you closer to returning home.
Thanks for the explanation 😉
3:13 kudos to you, you're the first reaction i watched that immediately picks up on him being very sarcastic in his speech there 👍
the best submarine themed film ever made
The reason they are so eager to go into battle everytime is that the voyage will end and they will go back to home port, once all Torpedos are fired.
14:15 He is checking if the bearings are good and the flame its to check if the engine is burning fuel cleanly. Had an old timer mechanic do the same thing with an osthetoscope to check which bearing in my car was going bad.
Also in the UBOATs there wasn't enough beds for everyone so they had to "Hot bunk", meaning they had to sleep in turns and when it came your hour to sleep you had to wake up the guy in your bed, therefore the bed was still warm from the other person there.
This is why a thing like crabs(basically genital lice) spread so quickly
Cool 😄
I've never seen a mechanic do that with my car before (though I've never had problems with my bearings). I wonder if there are alternative methods to check that now.
I know they need to save space on the U-Boat. Hygiene isn't a top priority when you're in a war...
I used to wonder about that wall of valves myself.
The book made it a bit clearer IIRC. They stopped underwater and trimmed the boat. Depending how everything inside (the foodstuffs, the fuel and everything else) was distributed, a submerged submarine would tilt towards one way or the others. Those valves were (I think) for flooding little tanks that were all over the boat until it stayed leveled.
"a submerged submarine would tilt towards one way or the others"
I didn't even think about that. I do recall the crew reporting to the captain that the submarine is "level".
The submarine has so many complicated mechanisms to make it operate so smoothly. Whoever thought of the details and created the submarine blueprint is a genius.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
These valves, one big hand wheel on top and many small in two rows below, are the main compressed air manifolds, one for high pressure the other for low pressure, they distribute the compressed air through the whole boat to other manifolds, for all kind things, blowing the ballast tanks, firering the torpedos, starting the diesel, ect.
For trimming the "tilt" there were only 2 trimtanks, one in the bow and one in the stern, for trimming the weight of the boat, for neutral buoyancy they had 2 main regulating tanks and 2 reserve fuel oil regulationg tanks. While the trim tanks could be drained with compressed air, they usually trimmed the boat with the pump and used compressed air only when it had to be done quickly, but the trim tanks were inside the pressure hull and couldnt take much pressure.
full speed during depth charge exploding is tryin to leave position + get away as long as the destroyers cant closely watch / hear you due to explosion noise
Also they sank the ship for two reasons. One is because to claim the tonnage it must sink. This is hard to verify because they are usually trying to get away underwater and can't look to verify. The second reason is because the back "keel" is broken but tankers are hard to sink by design. If it's still floating it can be towed or repaired and used again. Tankers were a prime target because the whole armed forces ran on it.
Thanks for clarifying 😉
@@henryellow no problemo. WW2 era submarines are a thing I'm kinda obsessed with. Don't know why. Some people like modal trains so I guess it's not that weird
Nothing wrong with having deep interest in submarines 😉
@@henryellow I see what you did there
A very good reaction to the imo best German movie ever made and one of my all time favourites, too. I like that you took time to look up some trivia like the real injury of Jan Fedder and other things. Sadly, some parts get lost due to the quite bad subtitles, but still way better than the awful dubbing. I have quite a tight connection to submarines, always loved the tech behind it, and in fact I live in the German city with the last remaining boat of this type VII C , placed on shore as a museum. For another awesome German war movie, I can recommend "Downfall" , and even the new "Im Westen nichts Neues" . Keep up the good work and greetings from Germany!
Awesome 😊
Sure, I'll add Downfall (2004) to my list.
I've watched "Im Westen nichts Neues" (All Quiet on the Western Front), you can find my reaction to it on my channel 👍
However, be sure to watch the 1930 Louis Milestone Film, not the 2022 atrocity. "All quiet on the western front" in that old version, made in the USA but you couldn't tell, is absolutely marvellous in a very disturbing way.
Oh, I've only watched the 2022 version so far. I guess "Im Westen nichts Neues" is referring to the 1930 one. Haven't watched that yet 😊
I think the new "All quiet on the Western front" was really disappointing. The original from 1930 was way better!
I have not watched the one from the 1970s, only a few scenes from it, so I can't say much about it.
Sehe ich auch so, Grüße aus Leipzig 🫡
crabs.... are tiny literal crabs. they move...and breed. on human bodies. yes.
Lice.
42:15 those things are not oxygen tanks.
They are called "diving lung" they have potash cartridge.
The CO2 is getting filtered out of their breath and oxygen is getting pushed in, so the air get's thiner over time, but they won't sufficate from Co2 poisening and can last longer with the air they have left.
Oh, is that so. Thanks for clarifying 😊
@@henryellow it was especially developed for Submarines, i also only learend about it when i watched the movie.
The cooking area is to the right, before you get to the engine room.
20:34 This was actually not scripted originally, the actor (Jan Fedder) lost his grip because of the force of the water and some other crew member shouted "Mann über Bord!" out of reflex. And yes, he did actually crack 2 of his ribs and had to go to hospital to be patched up. Petersen decided to put it in the film because it looked awesome, but, contrary to an urban legend about this movie, he did not actually ask Fedder to re-do the fall for an alternative take (he was not that evil LOL)
Its interesting almost all of the actors become quite famous the years later, one even become a super star singer ...
I toured a US WWII submarine docked in Portland, OR several years ago. If you're claustrophobic, don't go in there. I'm not, so it was an interesting tour. They kept huge cans of food on the floor so you walked on them everywhere, until the cook used them to prepare meals.
Terrific reaction, and I enjoyed your research and comments. Speaking of WWII, have you ever seen Band of Brothers?
Was the inside of the submarine similar to the U-Boat we see in the movie?
Equipment, narrow space, etc. And the smell, was it bad? 😂 I'm sure they must've cleaned thoroughly since it's open for visitors.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😊
Nope, I haven't seen Band of Brothers~
Are you talking about the USS Blueback? The one at the Oregon Museum of Science and Technology? If so, that is not a WW2 sub...it entered service with the US Navy in 1959, and stayed in service until 1990...she was the last non-nuclear powered sub the Navy built and was the last to be in service. Although she was a diesel electric submarine like the U-Boats were, she was vastly more advanced in too many ways to count. The two biggest differences being the teardrop hull shape optimized for underwater performance and not surface, and the fact that Blueback had a very capable snorkel system that allowed her to run her diesel engines while submerged at shallow depth.👍
I've been on USS Pamapnito (US WW II Balao-Class sub) in San Francisco and n the set used to film "Das Boot" in Munich and I have to say US subs were way more spacious and better shower factilities (i.e. some at all). They keep the dirty laundry of the entire studio staff on the set to give visitors the full authentic experience.
I'm not surprised. I believe the US had more resources to build a better sub.
I can't believe they would leave dirty laundry there 😂
@@henryellow
German subs were superior in many ways.
The cramped size meant that they weren't as easily spotted and also helped them to reach over twice the depth of most other nations.
The small size also led to greater maneuver ability and was of course cost effective and resource effective.
The Americans could however afford to use another approach against Japan as long range and long trips were more important in the Pacific than in the Atlantic and as neither fuel or building resources was that much of a problem for the US, they simply built larger subs in general.
Also Japanese destroyers weren't as much of a threat as the allied ones.
However there were several sizes of German boats as well, this one is the middle and most successful size.
"Where's water when you need it??" 😆😅🤣
I play a game on PC called Silent Hunter III. It's basically this movie, but a U-boat simulator. When you manually aim the torpedoes you must solve a trigonometry puzzle. The triangle consists of the ships location and angle on bow, it's speed and it's draft. The second point is you, this is where the targets range to you is relevant. The third point is where the ship and torpedo will intersect. Each torpedo can take anywhere between 30 seconds to two and some minutes.
Wow, this is one of the times where games really do teach you something. Sounds like you need a lot of patience (and math knowledge) to play it.
@@henryellow if I were a history teacher I would assign it as homework. I mean yeah you could spend 4+ real hours being depth charged by destroyers just to get hit and die anyway. But when you escape and make it back to port.... No PvP even comes close to that feeling.
@@henryellow also you can turn on crew assist which lets them call the shots. Not as rewarding but makes it more friendly to pick up
depth charges were mechanical, they used to set a timer for it at an estimated time according to sonar checkst to blow up before dropping them. also, good reaction.
Oh, so the depth charges ran on a timer, not based on the sea depth/pressure?
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it 😊
No, they didnt use a timer, they "measured" the pressure
lol, my bad you all, what i remembered was; 'they measured the time it would sink to the estimated point for' some reason. i somehow had a a misinfo about the amount of misfiring was the cause of heat changes with currents or something in the atlantic. what i remembered was wrong. cheers.
A completely innocent reaction. Interesting to see what someone who hasn't grown up with this history makes of one the greatest war films made. Like watching my little cousins😂
51:00 The type D was a WW1 depth charge. The WW2 Type D Mk VII had a maximum depth of 900ft (270m), which was in 99% of cases enough, as historically almost all submarines imploded long before reaching such a depth.
Allied submarines imploded befor reaching that depth (thats why the UK used the WW1 depth charges with a maximum depth settig of 150m, until they found out german u-boats could go much deeper), German Typ VII and Typ IX did not, there are serval reports of u-boat passing 300m and still survived. While in WW2 the pessimistic calculated 250m as crush depth for the Typ VII, modern calculations showed the crush depth was around 300m
31:18 If the Vessel burns out or is getting repaired, it could still be used or salvaged.
Better sink it for good is the idea there.
2:10 They *ARE* peeing on the car. Later on in the bar at 2:40 , the 1st Warrant Officer reports to the Kaleun that the boat is ready to sail and tells him that some of the crew harassed him, to which the Kaleun responds "Me too", this initiation is the aforementioned peeing on.
Thompsen and the Kaleun are critical over the man with the funny mustache and the rest of the command structure because they know how things really are going. In a later scene where, again, the 1st W.O. is saying how they'll force Churchill to kneel, the Kaleun scolds him by saying he's pretty far from being on his knees, especially when the Luftwaffe (German Airforce) isn't cooperating with the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), because of hostility between the branches.
4:25 U-Boots are not TRUE submarines, they're more like a submersible boat. Modern submarines fit the term better since they can operate indefinitely underwater, only limited by how much food they have brought onboard. WW2 submarines were limited heavily by battery power and air which wouldn't last more than 1-2 days.
5:14 At the time of the film's shooting, if I remember correctly, steady cams had not been invented yet, which posed a massive problem for production. The Director Of Photography came up with a specialized rig that basically acted as a gyrostabilizer. This ended up being extremely loud, which meant that for almost ALL of the interior shots, the actors had to dub their own voices as the audio from the cameras was unusable. Most, if not all of the actors, also dubbed their own characters in English, since they spoke fluent English.
5:20 Non-canned food, especially meats, in the boat was a COMMODITY. Food would be spread all over the boat with meat hanging almost everywhere. The good food would be eaten first, so as to not go bad while on patrol and lost, with canned and less tasty food being eaten afterwards, while the patrol dragged on. The food you see on set is real food the production team hang, in order to give the actors a realistic working and *smelling* environment while shooting the movie.
5:51 Johann was the Chief Mechanic of the boat, basically second to the Chief Engineer. Mechanics and engineers were usually the most pale looking members of the crew as they rarely ever went on watch outside. The actors were also forbidden from going into direct sunlight for extended periods of time while filming, in order to maintain their paleness on film.
6:07 Patrols would last anywhere from 2-6 months, depending on which year of the war it was, duties, etc. With very little clean water available on the boat, sailors would rarely wash or shave, resulting in them growing beards and a very distinct, uh, "musk" (usually diesel smell, mixed with skin oils, sweat and salt water).
6:29 Yes, shown earlier, in the scene where they go and see Johann, they pass by the galley which has a small kitchen, and I mean SMALL kitchen.
10:37 This is what is called torpedo maintenance. Depending on the model of the torpedo, you have to maintain them every so often to keep them operational. Maintenance includes heating them up so that their guidance system doesn't fail in the freezing waters, greasing up with vaseline, making sure the tubes are clear, the control surfaces of the torpedo work, etc.
11:30 You'd ABSOLUTELY get cabin fever, especially when you're on patrol for MONTHS without any action/orders. Being a submarine sailor was an extremely taxing, both physically and mentally, job for both sides of the conflict.
11:35 from what I remember the notebook says "20th day at sea. My head feels foggy and I'm overfed. This whole thing seems so crazy."
11:44 This device/room is called the hydrophone. It's basically a big ass rotating microphone that picks up and amplifies audio from the water. Remember that sound propagates around 5x faster in water, making it much easier to spot/detect ships than eyes and ears while on the surface.
12:07 You are correct. Lemons, oranges and limes were a big part of submarine meals, giving sailors much needed vitamin C to fight off scurvy.
12:53 For a typical Type VIIc U-Boot, the one depicted in the movie, 24-48 hours with very good crew discipline, is the accepted time that a Type VIIc could remain submerged.
13:41 Submarines, and other boats, have 2 compartments where water can enter; The bilges and the ballast. The ballast is a compartment that is at the bottom of a ship that can be flooded to decrease buoyancy or emptied, to increase it. On the other hand, water would slowly accumulate in the bilges of a submarine and could be expelled via the use of pumps, however, the deeper underwater you are, the harder time the pumps have expelling the water. There is an infamous story about a U-Boot that was sunk because of a toilet, ask me about it if you are interested.
(1/2)
14:13 Here, Johann is listening for engine issues. When you work with the same engine over a long period of time, you become so accustomed to how a normal working engine sounds, that you can spot issues before they become more severe. Johann is most likely listening for engine knocking in this scene.
15:21 Uh, no, not that I am aware of. Water and metal are REALLY good at absorbing kinetic forces. The submarine will give way before your body/organs do. The way depth charges work is not by relying on the explosion blowing up the submarine, rather relying on the difference in pressure when water rushes back into the cavity that was created by the explosion. This massive difference in pressure creates a shockwave that will twist and warp the submarine. If it happens close or often enough, it will ultimately result in permanent damage to the pressure hull of a submarine. A damaged pressure hull results in a shallower crush depth, leaks and other various problematic things.
15:25 The Kaleun insinuates that it is basically impossible to spot a periscope in such heavy seas. Unbeknownst to German sailors, Allied ships had started using radar that could spot a U-Boot's periscope even in very rough seas. This is most likely the case here.
16:18 Not in the way you think. The order to kill the lights was given in case the U-Boot gets damaged to the point where they lose electricity, their eyes won't need to adjust to the difference in brightness, giving them a faster reaction time in doing damage control. Speaking softly DOES help. As mentioned before, sound travels much farther and faster in water and sailors speaking, coughing, sneezing or dropping tools could be heard by skilled and keen eared hydrophone operators.
17:47 Kriechbaum is counting # of depth charges expended by the enemy. If you manage to identify (possible for a skilled hydrophone operator, by listening to the ship's propellers and engine sound) what kind of destroyer is hunting you, you can guesstimate how many depth charges the enemy has.
18:48 It is possible to crawl by but remember that just like the U-Boot, the destroyer also has hydrophones that can hear you and the destroyer doesn't need air/battery power in order to remain hidden, but the submarine does. This was a very common tactic in WW2, where destroyers would literally wait out submarines while shadowing them and when they surfaced in order to replenish oxygen or recharge their batteries, they'd come under heavy attack with little to no chance of escape.
19:45 Remember, most men share a bunk with another man! It would be very easy for diseases like Crabs to transmit from one man to another.
20:28 This part was actually not in the script. However, it wasn't Jan Fedder, the actor that plays Pilgrim, that broke his ribs. It was actor Bernd Tauber that plays Kriechbaum instead, with 2 broken ribs. Bernd had to spent a lot of the film's shooting going in and out of the hospital. The director liked the genuine panicked scream of "Mann über Bord!" from the actors and he decided to keep it in the movie and make it a small plot-line.
22:27 Astronavigation, this is shown later in the movie when Werner is on the bridge with Kriechbaum and they chat about their orders to break through Gibraltar, Kriechbaum is holding a sextant and is taking measurements.
24:30 They are excited because they are there to sink the ships and the materiel, not to kill the people on the ships. Also, this is their first chance, since they set out to sea, where they get to attack something, any one of us would be hyped and itching for a fight.
25:37 In essence, kinda. Sonar is basically seeing with sound. Sonar works by sending an acoustic pulse in a direction. If this pulse hits something, an "echo" reflects back, with varying intensity based on the object/surface it hit. The metal hull of a submarine/ship is naturally more "reflective" than sand/rock. So you know that in this spot it took 10s for the echo to reach you, on this spot it took 4s and then it took 10 seconds again. That means that in the 2nd spot, something is much closer to the surface than the surrounding area. You don't know EXACTLY how close to the surface unless you know the exact depth of the area you are at but it's enough, with the help of your hydrophone operator, to get an idea of where a submarine is and guide your depth charge attack.
30:56 Yes. The ship has not sunk. Your job is to make sure the ship sinks. A sunken ship is a ship that won't be recovered by your enemy, repaired and put back into action. This is a tactic that was taught to tank crews, on both sides. You keep shooting until the vehicle explodes or catches fire. In the aspect of ships, you keep firing until the ship sinks. The name of the game is equipment denial.
31:15 Usually, you'd be correct. In situations like this where the ship hasn't sunk but is near sinking, they would use their 88mm deck gun to "motivate" it to sink. However, they are in an active zone with enemy destroyers about and you don't have the luxury of setting up the deck gun and taking shots at the ship. One torpedo is more than enough to do the job, and quickly.
33:33 This is the scene I mentioned earlier ( 22:27 ), where Kriechbaum is using a sextant for navigation.
42:41 As mentioned earlier, this is a misconception. It's not Jan Fedder that broke his ribs, it was actually Bernd Tauber (Kriechbaum, the Navigator who was shot at Gibraltar)
51:36 The US' Mk 9 teardrop shaped depth charge could reach depths of 300m (~1000ft). This type of depth charge was introduced in late spring of 1943.
And finally, the film is pronounced Das Boh-oht, not Boot as in boot (footwear). The 2 "o"s combine and form an elongated one.
(2/2)
I believe you've answered all the questions I asked in this video (and then some more) 😂
2:10 Oh, I see. So the harassment was actually peeing on the car. Interesting, I didn't know that the German Airforce wasn't cooperating with the German Navy.
5:14 The interior scenes were dubbed?! I barely even noticed that. They did a great job dubbing themselves.
5:20 Yup, the smell of rotting meat and moldy bread would not be pleasant.
6:07 It's already tough enough with little clean water. They have to put up with dirty clothes and the smells too.
6:29 Extra emphasis on the SMALL because I didn't even notice it 😂
11:35 Overfed? How did that happen?
11:44 to 15:21
Thanks for clarifying and explaining these. A U-Boat sunk because of a toilet. Did it explode from the pressure?
15:25 No wonder the destroyer was right upon them so quickly.
16:18 Emergency lights would most likely still work, right? Regarding the sound, I found out later. Someone mentioned that even walking loudly could be heard by a skilled hydrophone operator.
17:47 That's a smart procedure. You can estimate how many "bullets" the enemy has to shoot at you.
Thanks for explaining elaborately for the rest of the points.
For the Jan Fedder/Bernd Tauber thing, the article said it was either one of them, but didn't specify which one.
Once again, thanks for taking the effort to answer my questions! 😊 You sure know a lot about this 👍🏻
@@henryellow The toilet incident. The submarine in question was U1206, also a Type VIIc U-Boot. As I mentioned in my original comment, the deeper underwater you go, the more pressure is exerted on your craft. This in turn means your pumps lose efficiency. When people go to the toilet while submerged, sometimes this meant that they couldn't flush said toilet and things, well, they piled on. For this specific reason, the Kriegsmarine invented a new pressurised toilet that could be operated even deep underwater, but required a skilled operator to use valves in the correct order, to flush it.
On U1206, it is disputed as to who it truly was, crewmember or the captain, misuse of the valves caused the toilet to malfunction and flood with seawater. This isn't particularly problematic since most of the water would end up in the bilges, however, this was the forward toilet that is right above the main battery cluster. Seawater is particularly the issue here because when it comes in contact with the batteries, it creates CHLORINE GAS.
Chlorine gas forced U1206 on the surface where they were spotted by RAF patrols, as they were right off the coast of Scotland, and in turn were bombed heavily. The captain decided to scuttle the boat and surrender. Out of all of its crew compliment, 1 sailor fell sick and passed 1 day before the incident and 3 others drowned in the heavy seas.
This all happened 20 days before the war ended.
@@henryellow The Luftwaffe was competing for resources and fame against the Kriegsmarine (mainly, although they did clash with the Wehrmacht -- the German army, as well) and were very stingy with their equipment. Had the two branches been more cooperative, they'd have had much more success in the Battle Of The Atlantic.
I'd just go out on a limb and say most of the movie was re-dubbed, interior or exterior shots. When Thompsen is waving at U-96 from dock and yelling at them, you can kind of see that his voice is dubbed. Some of the parts that I noticed looked and sounded proper were the segment in the brothel and the one right after that, where Werner, the Kaleun and the L.I. are walking to the boat where the Kaleun introduces Werner to the crew and gives a short speech.
Werner most likely just ate too much and got food coma, lol. Remember that early on in the patrol you'd eat the tastiest food and this was 3 weeks after they put to sea.
I am unsure if WW2 U-Boots had emergency lights. I know for a fact they had white and red, each doing different things;
White was for navigation and normal day-day use.
Red was used at night, to help eyes adjust to the darkness and see better. It's also used as a way to indicate an ongoing alarm.
Blue light, however, is disputed as a creation of Das Boot. Some sailors say they had blue lights in their submarines in the 60s and 70s, before the movie was made but some others are disputing it. The most prevalent idea about blue lights is that it helps you relax and to indicate silent running to the crew. Take this point with a grain of salt.
Some other fun facts;
The production team went to Kiel, one of the shipyards that would build submarines for Germany in WW2 and asked them to make a 1:1 exact replica of a Type VIIc U-Boot. This replica was empty on the inside, bar an engine and controls for a diver to use the ship. The original diver quit 3 days into production because, quote: I have been a diver for over 20 years and never before have I experienced seasickness.
In the opening scene where Thompsen is introduced, Otto Sander, the actor, really was inebriated, HEAVILY.
There were multiple sizes of sets, both for internal shots and external ones. When U-96 comes across Thompsen's boat in the Atlantic, the figures you see on the conning tower waving at the crew were Barbie and Ken dolls.
Apart from the 1:1 replica of the exterior, production had also created a 1:1 interior set, with every valve, pipe and bolt placed as accurately as possible. The whole set was then placed on mechanical arms that would rock it side to side, back and forth, to simulate heavy seas or depth charges. When you see the actors being thrown around during the depth charge attacks, it's the real deal.
Near the end of production, Wolfgang Petersen had rented the exterior replica to Steven Spielberg, for shots in Raiders of the Lost Arc, without notifying production or the crew. They woke up one day to find the replica missing from where it was moored, with all the ropes neatly set aside, much to their confusion.
Glad to have been of help. Although I am quite new to submarines myself, Das Boot instantly rose to be in my Top #3 movies of all time.
@@Pawniac I see. So it was due to someone operating the valves incorrectly.
Ah yes, chlorine gas. I believe this was also a concern (during the movie) when the crew were trying to fix the battery leak.
Seems like the captain acted decisively. Good thing they surrendered, since it was near the end of the war. I wonder if the rest of the crew were eventually released, or they were all charged for war crimes.
the best submarine movie ever made! i always preferred the director's cut, even though i usually hate those.
oranges were rare in Germany at the time being an import mainly. ergo... lemons.
Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying 😊
I read about one patrol where they lost the whole watch in rough weather.
iirc the journalist took thousands of photos on that patrol.
dont blame it to all germans..most of them had to follow the orders,like any other soldier from any country.im sure about 98% of any soldier in any war from any country,didnt want to be there. if you are interested in another sub/dest movie,watch The Enemy Below (1957).
Yes, I know. Soldiers are there to follow orders. Most of them don't have a choice in the matter.
Sure, I'll add that to my list~ Thanks for your suggestion! 😊
Hi Henry, watching someone else watch my favourite movies is always a bit like seeing it for the first time again myself.
My pet-peeve with the movie is the depiction of depth charges, which is a lot more elaborately explained in the book (the one written by the real-life Werner). In the movie, they go off right next to the boat, so you start to wonder firstly why the Tommies tickle the boat to death with these little firecrackers rather than using a proper bomb, and secondly why the Fritzes are even bothering to try to escape. However, according to the book any bomb going off within a radius of about 70 metres around the boat would crack it, depending a bit on its position to the vulnerable bits of the boat and also on depth. The pressure of the ocean would contain the explosions of the bombs a bit, so depth is your friend (by going below 200 metres the captain was maybe banking on the British simply not believing it).
Oh, I see.
Right, the depth charges relied more on the shockwaves to damage the U-Boat, isn't it?
When the captain dived below 200m, I thought the depth charges couldn't go that deep. But I was wrong.
Thanks for the explanation! 😊
@@henryellow Yes, even charges going off further away shake up the boat and cause damage to the more fragile parts, like valves. You see a lot of this sort of damage in the movie. In the book there was talk of a boat that got hit directly by a depth charge. Thus it didn't reach the depth at which it was set to explode and still sat on the deck when they surfaced. They had to go full speed ahead and kick it over board.
@@PortCharmers Oh, wow. They're lucky the depth charge doesn't explode upon contact (or run on a timer).
@@PortCharmers at 70m a u-boat was relative save, at this distance depth charges could only do minor damage, to crack the hull the depth charge had to be withing 7m.
@@henryellow Later in the war the UK invented the Hedgehog, a mortar like depth charge thrower, these depth charges were a lot smaller but had contact fuses and therefor were far more deadly, one or two hits were enough to sink an u-boat or force it to the surface, because of the damage and flooding.
Best war movie ever made.
Legendary Movie which accurately depicts the pointlessness and horrors of war. To your question as to why they sank the burned out cargo ship with a torpedo: The large modern cargo ships of WW2 were made almost entirely of steel and made of multiple watertight compartments. Even if a significant number of these compartments were penetrated, these ships would be able to stay afloat. Thus, just hitting a cargo ship with a torpedo would not guarantee it being lost to the enemy. The ship may burn out and its cargo be lost, but the floating hull could be towed to port and refitted rather quickly. As a consequence, cargo ships had to be confirmed sunk with another torpedo. Even german surface ships usually carried a substantial amount of torpedoes purely for this task, as the main role of the german Kriegsmarine was to function as commerce/cargo raiding forces.
So that's why they had to sink it.
Thanks for your explanation! 😊
A burned out tanker with a broken keel is only scrap metall, fixing it would cost more than build a new one.
They were sunk for safety, a drifting wreck is a huge hazard for shipping.
They would want to go to battle because the sooner they go to battle, the sooner they used their torpedoes and complete their mission....the sooner they can go home!
Make sense doesn't it?
This is tough to watch but such a good movie.
great review, i liked the research part at the end
16:20 Yes, it does help.
1) The depth charge barrel takes longer to get to the submarine, so the submarine has more time to move away.
2) The pressure limits the power of the explosion, reducing the blast of the depth charge.
Thanks for clarifying 😉
You want to be below the exploding depth charge, as the explosive force mainly moves upwards (the direction of lowest pressure). So as long as the depth charge explodes above the submarine it has a good chance of survival, baring a direct hit. If the charge explodes below the sub, it's like being hit by a "hammer" from below. Bascially no chance of survival.
@@mathiasfischbach4843 On a depth charge that explodes close enough to damage the pressure hull, it doesnt matters if its above or below the u-boat, the "explosion" moves toward the next hard surface, no matter if its up, down or sideways. Also it isnt the blast that damages the u-boat, its the shockwaves from the osscilating expanding and imploding "bubble"
Well, during 95% of the time the life on this boat is pure boredom and routine. The rest of the time the men had to face claustrophobia, terror and extreme pressure with only a few inches of metal between them and the water.
Top 3 submarine movies:
1. Das Boot
2. The Hunt for Red October
3. Crimson Tide
You started from the top.
I would replace Crimson Tide on that list with Down Periscope...but I may hold a minority view on that issue. LOL
Ooo is that so. I'll add them to my movies list then 😉
@@henryellow Down Periscope is a bit of a joke...I should be honest...it is a comedy movie, and submariners love to joke that it is the MOST accurate sub movie ever made, but it is not. It is pretty funny, but you should probably watch Red October and Crimson Tide before you look at Down Periscope. 😂
@@iKvetch558 Yea I could see that it's a comedy movie 😂
Watch Destination Tokyo. Brilliant film.
Operation Petticoat is also worth a watch as a comedy.
The thing is: most of the crews wanted to shoot as soon as possible all their torpedoes because so they could go faster back to the base. There were not many members on board which wanted to kill a lot of sailors.
Oh, I didn't see it that way. You're right, they have to return to base to resupply once the torpedoes are used up.
@@henryellowYou are mis-pronouncing the title. It is pronounced as if it were spelled "Das Boat".
Your google search showed the duration under water from the late war model Typ XXI, those U-Boats didn't saw any war actions, because they weren't ready. The U-Boot in this film was a Type VII, the most built U-Boot of all times. Their duration under water was much shorter.
Thanks for clarifying 😉👍
Most of the crew had to share a bunk so even if they had no crabs when they shipped out they could pick them up from another man without having sex. Normally of course they got crabs from prostitutes before the patrol.
For context...the U-Boat in the film is a Type VIIC...which makes it 67.1 meters long...but inside that length, the pressure hull for the crew is only 50.5 meters long.
Many British ships were equipped with ASDIC...the ping type of sonar system that most folks think of when you say "sonar"...so I do not know why they chose for the first destroyer the U-96 gets attacked by to not have it? But all the escort ships would have had pretty much the same kind of directional underwater listening device...called a hydrophone...that you saw the U-Boat using to locate ships nearby.
Turning off the lights saves battery power...which is all the sub has for electrical power when it is submerged, and the motors use the same batteries...so saving power in other ways keeps the propellers turning. The two things that limited the time a sub could stay down were battery capacity and how long they could keep the air breathable.
The most common nickname for submarines in WW2, as far as I know, was "pig boats"...I believe that is what the Germans, British, and American crews all called their own vessels...among other names. The origin of the name was how the crews looked and smelled when they goat back from a long patrol...if I am not mistaken.
There was a galley and a cook...it was most often a tiny space on German subs...probably no more than 40 or 50 square feet. US subs were generally larger than German ones, and I think the galley on US subs was something like 6 or 8 feet wide and 10 feet long...approximately.
You wondered about the depth charges being able to still damage the sub at below the 300ft max depth of the Type D depth charge. The Allies were constantly developing and improving their anti submarine systems and weapons, and in late 1940 the British introduced new modifications to the standard depth charge that increased the maximum detonation depth to 900 feet.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
You're right, the first destroyer didn't seem to have the sonar system.
The ASDIC allows the destroyer to accurately pinpoint the U-Boat's location, right?
So that's why they turned off the lights. A submarine uses fuel when surfaced, and uses batteries when underwater. Now I get it.
"Pig boats" 😂 my gosh. I can only imagine the type of smells trapped inside a submarine.
They increased the max detonation depth from 300ft (91m) to 900 ft (274m)!?
Even if the U-Boat dives to their max depth, they wouldn't be able to escape from the depth charges!
@@henryellow Exactly...there was a back and forth with a lot of the tech, so as soon as the Allies figured out the U-Boats were avoiding their attacks by going deeper than the depth charges could reach, they began to work on ways to reach down deeper with their charges.
And on the ASDIC, the answer is yes and no...because the use of the system was complex. It is not like sonar is today, where digitized systems "show" you exactly where the enemy is on a screen. ASDIC was very directional, so it was quite hard to initially find the sub with it, to search 360 degrees around the ship was a very laborious process. You needed a very skilled operator to get the most out of the system. In addition, ASDIC had a blind spot in that it could not detect a sub that was very close or under the ship...so when attacking enemy subs, ASDIC would actually lose sight for the last moments, and ASDIC was also blinded by the explosions of the depth charges...this gave skilled sub captains a chance to evade detection briefly, and perhaps escape.
Anyway, that is a brief description of how complicated ASDIC was to use...I tried to find a video to explain it, but did not see a really good one...will keep looking.
@@iKvetch558 "as soon as the Allies figured out the U-Boats were avoiding their attacks by going deeper than the depth charges could reach, they began to work on ways to reach down deeper with their charges"
That is indeed a smart (and very direct) solution.
That's alright, you explained it well enough for me to understand 😊
It's probably similar to the little spinning antennae we see outside the sub, which can allow someone to hear in a 360 degree direction (except directly above or below it).
@@iKvetch558 They didnt really turn off the light to save battery power, the e-motors would suck up the power of all lights would use in a day in a few seconds.
They did turn down the voltage and turn off some light to save light bulbs. A light bulb at full power does more likely gets "blown out" due concussion than a turned off light bulb.
Read the KTB from the 7th patrol of the real U96 (the patrol and boat the movie is inspired by), they got serval times attacked by escorts without ASDIC and without having a clue were the u-boat is, intense depth charge hunts like in the movie didnt happend on that patrol.
@@wolf310ii Wow...great comment...really interesting information...thank you. 👍
The reporter is an actual historical figure, who wrote the book "Das Boot" after the war. He was as a propaganda officer on multiple patrols.
There is also a great making of on youtube: "Behind the Scences - The Story of Cult Films: Das Boot (The Boat)"
In the book it is written, that during their time in France, they all went to the same prostitutes. So no wonder, that they all got crabs. Also two or three guys are sharing the same bunk bed.
The torpedos had a top speed of around 55-60 km/h. So it really took a while. Also they were not steerable like today. They just took a straight line. So you had to precalculate the distance of the ship, the speed of the target and the time the torpedo needed.
The boat had a range of about 15000 km. So these patrols took some months. But with the batteries they could only dive for a couple of hours due to Oxygen resources. The info about the diving time you found refers to a much later class, the Type 21 boats, which were quite ahead of their time. They had a snorkel for fresh air supply and the diesl under water. The boat in the movie is a type VII boat.
They had no washing machines on board. According to a veteran they changed their underwear only every 4 weeks. They only had 3l of fresh waters per day and person. For showering they had a saltwater shower on the deck, which could only be used in calm and safe conditions. So the smell on the boat must have been very special.
One of those boats has survived the war and is on display in Kiel. It is really hard to imagine how 50 people could live inside of that for months.
The drowning before Gibraltar did really happen, also the return to La Rochelle. Only the air attack at the end didn't happen at that point. But the boat was sunk by aircrafts at the end of the war. And there were other attacks on La Rochelle and the other U Boat bunkers in France. This is why they built the bunkers in the first place. The bunkers were so sturdy, that they are still existing today. It would be too expensive to tear them down. So they could film this movie on the original location.
Funny side note: The actor of Lt. Werner didn't make many more movies. Instead he started a singing career. He is by far the most successful German speaking artist with around 20 mio. sold records. 🙂
If they all went to the same prostitutes, then it goes without saying 😂. Yea, hard to avoid crabs when they share the same bed.
I didn't even realize you could steer torpedoes nowadays. Valuable calculation skills to learn for them.
If their oxygen supply could only last for a few hours, it's even more miraculous they survived the seafloor ordeal.
Every 4 weeks! 😱
3 litres of drinking water isn't considered much, but still manageable. Oh, it must've been "special" indeed.
Life in a submarine isn't for claustrophobic people, that's for sure 😅
Great for him! I guess singing is his thing then 👍🏻
Thanks for sharing! 😊
@@henryellowYes, Herbert Grönemeyer is one of the best know singer-songwriters of Germany. You may check out his songs Männer (Men), an ironic apppraisal of the male condition, or his heartbreaking love song Ich hab dich lieb (I Love You) about a man singing to the woman who left him.
@@henryellow Their oxygen supply could last for up to 72 hours and the destilling unit could produce 240 liter of fresh water per day, and they left port with nearly 4m³ fresh water (1m³=1000L).
They could and did wash their underwear by and in a bowl and sometimes the did wash their clothes by soaping it with salt water soap, tie it to a rope and tow it behind the boat for some time. In warmer waters they even did go for a swim in the ocean, when there was no enemy expected.
Some boats also installed a showerhead in the engine room, feed by the warm cooling water from the diesel engines.
@wolf310ii Thanks for explaining. I see you've left a lot of comments on this video 😊
Nice reactions. Das Boot is an absolute film classic. If you like this kind of war movies, I recommend the finnish war movie: Unknown Soldier (2017)
Sure, I'll add that to my list.
Thanks for suggesting! 😊
Running out of torpedos means Harbour Main Base for reload weapons and fuel. With some days Off for Repair...thats Why they are eager took get rid of the torpedos
For the best "realism" you should watch this with a pile of mildew riddled clothes, some old fuel oil, and rotting food. all contained in the room with you.
I probably wouldn't be able to make it through the movie 😂
great reaction to an intense movie!!!!!
take pictures from returning crew....
because then they have WORTH(not beards! Bärte(beards) Werte(worth))
the translation you watched of the movie is not the best.
the air raid at the end might not have been bad luck as we had broken the german naval codes and if they had radioed in their location the attack could have been planned to catch them
So it was an unavoidable fate, then...
Oh boy...this is such a great movie, so I am really looking forward to your comments.
BTW...1st to comment...LOL
Great reaction...I tried to answer a lot of your questions, but I did not want to write too long a comment. Please let me know if there is anything else you are still curious about, and I will answer as many questions as I can.
Sure, thanks! 😊
About the crabs, they share bunks so...
On the french GF being pregnant: Resistance didn't like collaborators and women in sexual relationships with germans were easy targets. Doesn't matter if it's just two young people falling in love and nothing more. It was also a somewhat chauvinistic way of coping with losing to the german Army.
On crabs: I'd assume it doesn't help that so many people share the same bed, so if one has it, another guy gets it from lying in the same bed, but they also are known to jump from host to host I think.
43:50 The subtitles for what Werner is saying are pretty bad, he's is talking about being drunken on the idea of fame and bravery to be out in reality once and now he understands how horrifying it can be and yes it scares him shitless, understandably so. This version in general has some questionable subtitles, there's better ones out there.
50:55 That was on a US sub in the 80s, in the 40s there were no washing machines or dryers.
Well, a love between two sides is tough during war...
Now that you mention it, they DO share the same bed. No one can escape the crab infestation 😂
Is that so 🤔 thanks for correcting the subtitles~
You mean to say they don't wash their clothes AT ALL for months? 😨 That's tough.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
No clothes and almost no chance at cleaning yourself, it's why the first officer sticks out so much, he wastes part of his water ration to remain presentable and blocks the one toilet they have to clean himself, which is an asshole move with a toilet ratio of 1 for 50 men.
And of course the contrast of the scene on the resupply-vessel, though I've read that it wouldn't have happened like that, the U-boatr officers would cleaned themselves on board the bigger ship before going to dinner. Apparently the USA had submarines with washing machines in WW2, theirs were bigger due to needing to cross the Pacific.@@henryellow
Yes, I noticed that he keeps himself shaved and looking smart. I see, no wonder the rest of the crew weren't too fond of him.
There is a scene in the book, that wasn't filmed, where after they return from Gibraltar come accross a cruise ship and identify it as American and try to sink it, but the Topedo tubes fail, before they can fix them, the Captain of the other ship rows over and claims it to be a Spanish ship. After some back and forth they find out that the first officer missed the addendum to their identification book and said ship was indeed sold to a spanish company. So they barely avoiced a Laconia incident.
I think they excluded it, because it didn't really serve a purpose for the main narrative and the first officer is already portrait negatively enough as the (seemingly) only real Nazi on board.@@henryellow
@@HDreamer I see. They might have added this scene in the TV mini series.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
The deeper you go the less time the air lasts, the air in sub compresses under the pressure - so gets used up faster, same applies to air in a divers cylinder. WWII subs were way slower than the destroyers, less powerful engines and much more drag. Couldnt even out run them on the surface where they were faster (using deisel.)
Thanks for clarifying 😉
No, the air does not got used up faster, the air inside the sub stays at around 1 atmosphere, the crew isnt exosed to the outside pressure like a diver and even if, the air stays in the boat and isnt lost like a scuba diver.
also most of the escorts where corvettes and u-boats could outrun them on the surface.
U-Boote were smaller and more maneuverable. Depth charges are set to a depth and take a while to reach that depth, the destroyers have to calculate that in advance. If you manage to steer the boat so that you are not where the destroyers predicted you would be when they dropped the depth charges, you are lucky.
Sonar (ASDIC) was introduced in 41, but only became fully practical in combination with radar in 43. At that time, the submarines' successes also declined sharply and they suffered heavy losses.
A game changer was the Type XXI boats, which were faster underwater than the detection speed of the destroyers. In addition, the torpedoes could be fired without going to sea tube depth. However, none of these boats were used in combat again. But they were still used after the war. For example, the "Wilhelm Bauer" U 2540 from 1960-1968 is now a museum ship in Wilhelmshaven.
Thanks for sharing these fun facts 😊
ASDIC was introduced at the end of WW1, in '41 RADAR became more common on escorts, so u-boats couldnt operate so freely on the surface anymore and ASDIC became more usefull
the destroyers did have sonar (or ASDIC) to detect the submarines, _but_ it was pretty much useless when moving at high speed. on the other hand they basically _had_ to move at high speed to throw the depth charges or else they would have risked damaging their own ship. so, what they did is keeping the ship relatively still, locate the submarine and then rush forward towards the location of the submarine to throw the depth charges. during this 'rush' (called "Anlauf" by the german radio operator) the destroyer was more or less 'blind' and this was the time the submarine usually had the chance to change position. it was basically 'a deathly game' between the captains of the submarine and the destroyer: the submarine captain changed position (left/right, up/down, forward/backward) and the destroyer captain had to guess, where the submarine would change to, to unload his charges to the right location.
this is why the crew of the u-boat panicked, when they realized there was a second destroyer. because that meant that one destroyer could focus on locating the submarine and radioing the position to the second destroyer, which could then focus on throwing the depth charges. in this situation it was really hard for the submarine to get a away and 'hide'.
Thanks for clarifying that scene! 😊
It wasnt because of the risk being damaged by the own depth charges, even without increasing the speed, at the setting for 100m, the detonation would be 50-100m behind the destroyer. Depth charges needed some time to reach the set depth, they had a sink rate of around 7m/s, depending on the type a little more or less.
The reason for the sprint was, the ASDIC couldnt be pointed down, so it had a minimum range and would lose the contact befor the destroyer was above the u-boat. The more time the destroyer needed between losing contact and being in position to drop the depth charges, the more time the u-boat had for evasive manoevers.
@@wolf310ii _"The destroyer could only run at low speed for a functioning location, but had to enter the “extreme force” (AK) speed level before throwing depth charges so as not to run the risk of being damaged by its own depth charges."_
(translated from the german wikipedia article about ASDIC)
@@montanus777 Just because someone wrote that on Wiki doesnt make it true, anyone can write anything there.
The max speed for ASDIC was around 16kt.
The Mk 6 depth charge had a sink rate of 2,8m/s, that means it needed 18 seconds to reach an u-boat at 50m.
At 16kt the destroyer travels ~150m, for the depth charge to be a danger for the destroyer it would need to be a small nuclear warhead, and not just 135kg TNT.
At 150m distance it isnt even a danger for the u-boat.
Not speeding up only gave the the u-boat 20-30 seconds more time to react, plus the time the depth charges need to sink.
And yes, the u-boat would know when the destroyer lost contact, because the ASDIC isnt hitting the hull anymore.
It was even a tactic of the hunter killer groups, 2 or 3 destroyers tracking the u-boat, pointing a search light in the direction of the contact, while anothe one dropped the depth charges, without using his own ASDIC and without speeding up, to not give away the start of the attack run.
@@wolf310ii just because you wrote an answer under a YT-comment doesn't make it true, anyone can write anything here. ;)
the tactic of the hunter killer groups was more or less, what i described above. but it would be unnecessary to hunt in a 'pack', if what you claim were true. there wouldn't be an attack run to begin with, if the depth-charging destroyer could just stay pretty much above the u-boat and 'fire' from right there.
Its go radar,germany dont now that its radar killing them
Ausserdem wurde eine Enigma - Verschlüsselungsmaschine ("Funk-Codes") aus einem U-Boot erbeutet.
My uncle showed me the "trick" to listen to the valves moving below the crank shaft with a long screwdriver held next to the spark plug.
If you can hear scratching noises, the clearance between the crank shaft and the valve isn't right, and that means do not buy this car!!!
You don't know how long this already goes and you don't want to pay for getting this fixed.
If you can't hear scratching sounds the car might be alright, but no guarantees ofc.
Wow, so it works with any long screwdriver?
@@henryellow It works with any piece of metal that you hold against the block and your ear.
It transmits the sound inside...
Oh, I see.
So the long screwdriver acts as a medium for the sound to travel. I thought it was a special thing that only works with screwdrivers 😂
@@henryellow Exactly. the metal piece just acts as a travel agent for the sound...
Try it out, you'll be amazed how clearly you can hear everything what's going on inside.
But, please take care while doing this. The engine is running, there are moving parts.
If you happen to have long hair secure them in a bun, before leaning into a running engine, okay!!!
And no scarfs!
@@Kivas_Fajo Haha, alright. Thanks for the tip 😉👍
For clarificaton: Heil und fette Bräute. Means good fortune and fat chicks, as opposed to Heil und fette Beute, means good fortune and much booty.
Thanks for clarifying 😊
21:30 it goes faster every year, trust me lol.
He didn't say damn bad weather. He was more irate and said actually. Goddamn washkitchen/laundry room!!!, which is the room, where the clothes have been washed in former times and in this room there is always humidity, fog just as it is outside, when it is foggy/rainy.
German is very accurate and simple in their wording.
Even if you don't speak it and you see a compound word, you can deconstruct this into separate words, translate them and you get what is meant in most cases...or you can make an educated guess.
Depth charges were statistically extremely unreliable, because they needed a direct hit to cause potential killing damage and the destroyers' crews had no idea if they were hitting anything. Destroyers couldn't tell if they got a kill unless they spotted an oil slick or debris float to the surface from inside the submarine.
A depth charge's function is to create a reverberating pocket of air, which if close enough to a sub, would cause damage to the metal frame and loosen it, causing leaks inside.
A destroyer would have to guess how deep a sub is, how fast it is moving,which direction it's going and figure out what timer the charge should have before firing a pattern at its location.
The fact this sub in this movie survived as many charges as it did is plausible, because destroyers fired blind and had little success.
The Hedgehog weapon system (water mortars) , which replaced depth charges, was far more effective - it sprayed a pattern of smaller charges, which detonated upon impact with a sub.
Until this replacement, destroyer crews had to guess if they even were dropping charges in the right location, but after hedgehogs were put in place, it was close to 90% certainty if the weapon hit or not (if we take duds into account).
The combination of sonar and hedgehog weapons turned the tide for the Allies so dramatically, the german u-boot fleet turned from hunter to prey in 1 year.
Look up historical videos about u-boot use in the Atlantic. Germany's losses were staggering.
I see. The creativity and innovation for the weapons of war is truly astounding.
Thanks for sharing! 😊
minute 12:50 your question: how long can there dive? In real Typ 7C can dive on batterie for round about 5 hour. Then they have recharge the batteries on surface.
45:40 Actually that is acompletely wrong move. Before surfacing a good 360° scan through the periscope is needed. You don't want to surface close to any other ship.
I suppose they don't have enough oxygen to even consider that anymore...
@@henryellow They look pretty conscious. And a captain has to be on his feet all the time. And because the boat is rising there is no technical requirement to break the surface like an idiot. Again a Hollywoodesque scene.
Ah, you mean that they could have surfaced gradually rather than break the surface like that.
I'm sure the scene was intentionally done like that to bring more emotion to it.
stopping the u-boat at periscope depth wasn't possible due to the damage they took. They had to use pressurized air to get the water out of the diving tanks to get the boat lifted from the ground. That means they weren't able to control the way they would surface.
@@frankschrewe4302 Why can't they control the air pressure? Its is not an "on" or "off". Once the boat started to lift everything was okay. No need for hurry among all the enemies. Whether it took them 10 minutes or 20 to the surface didn't make a difference. This is again typical Hollywood where you want dramatic action instead of thoughtfully executed decisions. That's what a captain differentiates from a go-hung sailor.
it doesn't necessarily take that long to grow a beard depends on the individual. and subs could stay submerged for around 48 hours which i think was based on the battery charge so it could be less
8:52 At that time period, the enmity between French and Germans had been much deeper than "just" the two countries being at war. It has grown for centuries with the role of aggressor and victim switching back and forth - so the hatred was very mutual. Children on both sides were conditioned to hate each other from a young age to supposedly make them more effective as soldiers for when the next war would inevitably break out. Therefore, neither side even regarded the other as people if individual people didn't happen to have formed personal experiences to prove the contrary. It was an ever escalating cycle of hatred that would have inevitably resulted in both countries wiping each other off the map if some politicians didn't find a way to put an end to this in the 1960s.
Now, I can't give you the full picture without mentioning the German occupation of France having been a horrendous affair in and of itself, so the hatred the French felt for the Germans in that regard was absolutely justified despite them having to carry their share of blame for the history of both nations prior to that. It started off with the Germans demolishing WW1 Memorials because they felt insulted by them (you know: WW1, when France beat back a prior German invasion). An early Resistance Organization formed to gather intel, sabotage German supply lines and prepare the eventual liberation of the country. Some of these attacks of course ended up killing German personnel and French collaborators. Entire villages were slaughtered in revenge for these attacks. The Collaboration Government was forced to round up and hand over all Jews living in France (and those who escaped other parts of German-occupied Europe), French households had to accomodate soldiers privately who often abused that situation in more than one way.
So to the French Resistance, every German was a beast. Every French Civilian cooperating with them to any extent was a collaborator and a French woman expecting the child of a German soldier (especially when it was the result of a consenting relationship) was the worst kind of traitor. When France was finally liberated in 1944, many women who were in such relationships faced severe reprisals, even down to lynchings in some cases.
I see. Thanks for the explanation 😊
Switching to dimm red light helped to save akku, the lightbulbs need less power
Difficult to be sure but it looks like in the thumbnail you might be holding the binocular upside down.
😊👍🇩🇪 Meine Empfehlung von Filmen aus Deutschland: "Im Westen nichts Neues" (2022 / Anti-Kriegsfilm), "Das Boot" (1981 / Kinoversion = "Cinema-Version"
I will add them to my list. Thanks for your suggestions! 😊
5:22 Yep, it would indeed smell! Plus there's diesel fumes from the engine, so all the food would get a diesel-y aftertaste as time went on. During the making of this film, the director actually had the poor actors stand knee-deep in cold water in some scenes, with the rotting food swimming in it and everything. Enforced method acting, if you will. One prop-master went and bought a huge bottle of eau de cologne and poured it out in a feeble attempt to mask the stench. If you ever visit Munich, Germany, there's a themepark called Bavaria Filmstadt close by where you can take a guided tour of the U-boat they buildt as a set for this film - the space is insanely confined, like you see here, and the idea of being stuck in such a tiny space for months on end with no fresh food and no fresh air is horrifying!
Horrifying indeed....
It's always sad to see when the subtitles aren't translated correctly, especially in _that_ movie/limited series.
The English subtitles are terrible. Maybe 40% is right.
One if my favourite war movies, maybe even THE favourite. Buuuuuut the english translation is mostly inacurate/quite vague.
Never the less as a non german speaking person you get the idea.
I tell you something: You are young still and time already flies by like it's not there?
Wait until you turn 50...then it feels like. It's January and you blink and it's fall...
Time doesn't discriminate 😂 it flies along regardless of our age.
"It's January and you blink and it's fall". Indeed. Where has the time gone...?
The English subtitles are abysmal.
Most of the time, they have nothing to do with what is actually said on screen.
The translator had no clue of at least one of the languages.
Weird censorship in this versions subtitles...
How about oranges? In war time Germany?
directors cut is the best version it transportes at best what the the makers wanted regie and writer hated the first cut