DAS BOOT tonight!

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Never seen it, so recording. Thanks for tip off.

I wanted to watch it now, but despite my best efforts to relay the positive comments from this thread, I got a straight NO from Mrs D, so Britains Got Talent it is.

If only a Japanese Student would knock on the door, with a taxi ready and waiting to whisk me off my feet...
 
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As an aside I went in the U-Boat U-995 on Kiel beach, it's very small inside.

They're physically small to start with. But the free flood casing and ballast tanks add considerably to the apparent size.

Actual living space for the displacement is tiny. A surface vessel has most of its volume above the surface line. It's designed to be bouyant.

The U-boat has some additional volume in its casing and its ballast tanks but all these flood. So the bit that's left to live in - along with all the machinery and stores and weapons is the equivalent of what a surface vessel of equivalent displacement has *below* the water line.

I can't find numbers to hand as to what the internal volume ratio of a surface vessel is to a submarine with an equivalent displacement - but ISTR seeing a figure of something like 4:1.
 
Great movie

For those interested the book was written by the reporter on board (also a water clour painter) and was a compilation of his experiences on/in U boats and goes into quite a bit of technical detail, an interesting read.
 
My Uncle's ship was torpedoed and sunk in WWII by U508. My uncle survived to tell the story. The U508 and her crew of 53 were all lost some months later during an attack by an American Liberator. The Liberator and all her crew of then were also lost in the same attack.

The captain of U508 (Staats) surfaced the following morning and offered some assistance to my uncle and those in the lifeboats. This was in direct contradiction of the "Laconia Order" which forbade U-Boat crews from offering assistance to souls in need. Despite his experience my uncle never forgot that Staats had shown some "kindness" He apologised for having sunk them. As I said Staats and his crew were all killed. Through the uboat.net I have written and advised them of this act. Maybe Staats will have surviving family who would want to know this.

My Uncle's ship (City of Bath) was sunk almost directly on top of another ship that was sunk the previous night by the same U-Boat, sadly with a much heavier loss of life.

Having been repatriated back to Scotland he then returned to the Merchant Navy and was sunk again while in convoy in the North Atlantic. This time by a wolf pack and at night. The U-boats had surfaced (favored method of attack) and were clearly visible to to the ships that they were attacking.

My uncle described "waiting to be sunk" as the U-boat sailed past firing with it's deck gun then the inevitable firing of a single torpedo from her stern tube.
 
fell asleep

hi to all, tried to watch it too last nite! fell asleep as usual !!!!! ( must be the time difference ? were an hour ahead here in Germany ) it is a good film I agree .:(
 
Having been repatriated back to Scotland he then returned to the Merchant Navy and was sunk again while in convoy in the North Atlantic. This time by a wolf pack and at night. The U-boats had surfaced (favored method of attack) and were clearly visible to to the ships that they were attacking.

My uncle described "waiting to be sunk" as the U-boat sailed past firing with it's deck gun then the inevitable firing of a single torpedo from her stern tube.

Crickey, what an encounter.

Do you think the rationale behind the visible attack is to pre warn the merchant sailors, obviously as well as making it easier for the U boat?
 
Crickey, what an encounter.

Do you think the rationale behind the visible attack is to pre warn the merchant sailors, obviously as well as making it easier for the U boat?

When possible, and in no danger to the sub., sinking a merchantman by hitting the waterline by deck gunfire was preferable to expending an expensive torpedo.
Running out of torpedoes meant a long and often hazardous journey back to base, which Donitz frowned upon.

On the other side of the coin, Allied destroyers and corvettes would pick up blackened oil soaked U boat crew, when stopping to do so increased their vulnerability.
 
On the other side of the coin, Allied destroyers and corvettes would pick up blackened oil soaked U boat crew, when stopping to do so increased their vulnerability.

I think U-Boats didn't pick up survivors due to space limitations, they are tiny inside, I couldn't stand up or lie on the bunks, which of course were being hot-bedded to save space.
 
When possible, and in no danger to the sub., sinking a merchantman by hitting the waterline by deck gunfire was preferable to expending an expensive torpedo.
Running out of torpedoes meant a long and often hazardous journey back to base, which Donitz frowned upon.

On the other side of the coin, Allied destroyers and corvettes would pick up blackened oil soaked U boat crew, when stopping to do so increased their vulnerability.

They may have been able to offer assistance on some occasions but merchant ships and their escorts often had to by-pass their own comrades calling for help in the water. They were forbidden to stop as doing so would endanger their ship and others in the convoy. Veterans of the convoys say that the calls for help as they sailed past still haunt them to this day.
 
I think U-Boats didn't pick up survivors due to space limitations, they are tiny inside, I couldn't stand up or lie on the bunks, which of course were being hot-bedded to save space.

Agreed absolutely; and as Brucemillar has pointed out all the U boat Captains that I have read about, were honourable soldiers; not indoctrinated Nazis, that some media would have us believe.
 
Hi just to add to that the U1, a first world war U boat, can be seen at he Deutsches Museum in Munich-despite being over 40 meters long it seems impossibly small and it is cut away like a model.
 
Hi just to add the book on which the film is based by Lother Buchheim , is like both Cross of Iron and the Forgotten soldier a really great insight into the lives of the fighting men that they are german is irrelevant, I read it in a sitting on the (many) bus journeys from Bath to Ayrshire a long time ago.
 
They went through so much and managed to get home by engineering genius and hard work, ( the chief engineer ought to be a merc indie ), then to be bombed and strafed in there moment of glory. Bloody RAF :( Bloody war.
 
Crickey, what an encounter.

Do you think the rationale behind the visible attack is to pre warn the merchant sailors, obviously as well as making it easier for the U boat?

Surface attacks were perferable:

1) You could see your target.

2) Low risk of attack from your enemy.

A destroyer escort could not fire into into it's own convoy. So U-Boats would surface in the convoy lanes and use their 88mm deck guns or torpedoes to sink their targets. Torpedoes were expensive as opposed to 88m shells.

U-boat's captains would (and did) take prisoners. These would usually be officers.
 
Das Boot is a splendid piece of work, one of my favourite films. You can almost smell the diesel, sweat and fear.

Jürgen Prochnow is excellent as the Captain but for my money the best turn is from Klaus Wenneman, who played the bonkers Chief Engineer. He was a fairly well known German TV actor and got the role because he was a good friend of
Prochnow.

The best version is the full uncut directors edition: just under 5 hours!
 
Das Boot is a splendid piece of work, one of my favourite films. You can almost smell the diesel, sweat and fear.

Jürgen Prochnow is excellent as the Captain but for my money the best turn is from Klaus Wenneman, who played the bonkers Chief Engineer. He was a fairly well known German TV actor and got the role because he was a good friend of
Prochnow.

The best version is the full uncut directors edition: just under 5 hours!

Yes, I agree Jurgen was never better and has since been relegated to cardboard cut out bad guys. The real standout however was Herbert Grönemeyer who played the war correspondent in the movie. He is a hugely popular rock musician in Germany/Austria and Switzerland and if you can be bothered to listen to him on you tube etc you will wonder why however he was great in the film.
 
Surface attacks were perferable:

1) You could see your target.

2) Low risk of attack from your enemy.

A destroyer escort could not fire into into it's own convoy. So U-Boats would surface in the convoy lanes and use their 88mm deck guns or torpedoes to sink their targets. Torpedoes were expensive as opposed to 88m shells.

U-Boats were slow and short of meanouevring endurance running underwater on batteries.

If they attacked while submerged it would be hard to keep within contact with the convoy. On the surface they were much faster which gave them more flexibility.

So the optimal tactic was night attack on the surface and only submerge to hide from anything that might shoot back.

As the war progressed the U-boats lost the ability to manouevre on the surface. Air cover and escorts with radar kept constrained them. Asdic/sonar meant that once they were under the faster escorts could pin them and destroy them.

Sometimes U-boats were hunted for days - 'hunting to exhaustion' by keeping the boat down until it ran out of power and breatable air.

Strategic intelligence also meant that organised U-boat deployment could be countered. There are suggestions that later on in the war that a few convoys may have been deliberately driven into U-boat packs to bring them to battle.
 
3 nights, 4 attempts, and I'm about 3.5 hours in! Keep falling asleep.

No reflection on the film though, it's great, more a reflection of watching when everyone else is in bed!
 
3 nights, 4 attempts, and I'm about 3.5 hours in! Keep falling asleep.

No reflection on the film though, it's great, more a reflection of watching when everyone else is in bed!

Mrs Dm had no problem staying up to watch it, I think she fancied Johan.
 
Finally finished watching it. Great film.
 

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