Perguntas frequentes

The crew keeps referencing in the movie that he hasn't eaten or slept in days. He's getting their names wrong because he's suffering from exhaustion.

Furthermore, it clues us in that this is his first command - he doesn't fully know his crew yet.

The helmet what is used, is the the US Navy Mk II Talker helmet.It was specially designed for communications of that time, which tend to be quite bulky in comparison with systems, what are used these days.

This over-sized helmet allowed headphones to be worn under the helmet.

If you see the 1957 destroyer-U-Boat movie."The Enemy Below" you can see several times in the movie, a U.S. communications bridge sailor wearing one of those helmets.it protects the head as that person is wearing a headset underneath the helmet.

US Navy ships in WWII had TBS (Talk Between Ships). This was a two-way voice radio using a radio frequency that was so high that it would only carry about as far as the visual horizon. Long wavelength radio, i.e. low frequency, carries farther than line-of-sight. It goes around the curvature of the Earth due to diffraction. You can pick up a long wave radio signal coming from hundreds of miles away. Shortwave radio is reflected by the ionosphere, a high altitude layer of the atmosphere. It is also reflected by the earth's surface. By getting reflected back and forth, again and again, a shortwave radio signal can travel thousands of miles. They would have called the Admiralty on shortwave radio in Morse code. German U-Boat headquarters in Brittany and the U-Boats out in the Atlantic communicated by shortwave radio.

By breaking radio silence to the Admiralty, Capt. Krause would let the german U-boats know that all of the escort ships were low on fuel and ammo.

In reality, likely not. As it would give away the sub's position. However, every time the Grey Wolf taunted the allies over the radio, they already knew where the U-Boats were. As they were surfaced and attacking the convoy. In terms of the film, it gives a "face" to the antagonists. It would have also been an effective terror tactic. While also showcasing how arrogant the Grey Wolf was.

yes, per 'A Brief History of Active Sonar', the term sonar was coined in 1942.

Sadly, as of 2025, it doesn't look like there has been any official release. Amazon and Wal-Mart have versions listed that appear to be from Sri Lanka. And therefore are likely bootlegged.

In both World Wars Germany attempted to sever the supply lines across the Atlantic to the British Isles, cutting off Britain from her empire and her eventual ally in the United States. To do this they used aircraft and surface raiding ships but above all submarines (referred to as U-boats) to torpedo and mine merchantmen which were formed into defensive groups known as 'convoys' and accompanied by a variety of escort warships and aircraft. At the beginning of World War 2 German submarines had considerable success against Britain but losses were kept to an acceptable level. However the fall of France and Norway coupled with the Irish Free State's neutrality created a catastrophic situation for the Allies, allowing the Germans to base surface ships, submarines and aircraft there thus massively extending their range and endurance whilst forbidding the Allies from doing the same on Ireland's southern coast to counter them (post war the Admiralty would calculate Southern Ireland's neutrality would cost the Allies 300 ships and over 5000 lives in addition to their cargoes of war material). This was combined with the entry of the Italian fleet on the side of the Axis and the loss of the French and other occupied countries' navies and merchant fleets to the Allied cause. The war would then expand into the Mediterranean, Arctic convoys supplying the USSR and eventually into the Far East against Japan.

Allied ships would group together in convoys making them much harder to find in the vastness of the oceans. If they had been spread out and sailing individually it allowed a U-boat to torpedo one ship and then wait for the next to come along. If a U-boat sighted a convoy it might attack and sink one or two ships but the rest of the convoy would then outrun it, limiting losses to a large degree. To counter this the Germans used long range reconnaissance aircraft ('Focke-Wolf Condors') to locate and sometimes attack convoys. They also spread lines of U-boats across the Atlantic and when one sighted a convoy it would tail it and report its' position back to German high command. Other U-boats would then be directed to intercept the convoy en masse and overwhelm its' defences in what became known as a Wolf Pack. Escorts would ring the merchantmen and use sonar ('Asdic') to locate U-boats and attack them with underwater bombs known as depth charges and occasionally by ramming. Whilst the priority was not to destroy U-boats but protect the merchant ships eventually the Allies had enough escorts to form hunting groups, leaving one group of escorts to protect the convoy whilst another pursued the enemy. German U-boats and aircraft would also sow mines around Allied ports whilst the Allies air forces would relentlessly bomb U-boat bases but to little effect and often huge losses. The United States' initial entry into the war was a disaster for the Allies, the US Navy slow to adapt to the convoy system and coastal blackouts which Britain and Canada found so essential resulting in huge losses (the U-boats referred to the 1941-2 period as the "Happy Time") but by 1943 they had adjusted and enforced the necessary countermeasures.

The decryption of German naval codes by Bletchley Park ('Enigma') allowed many convoys to be routed safely around the U-boats but this was offset by the Germans also breaking Allied naval codes. The introduction of long range land based aircraft based in Canada, Iceland and Northern Ireland and escort carriers (merchant ships converted into mini aircraft carriers carrying a handful of planes) allowed convoys to have air cover across the entire Atlantic, giving them protection from German aircraft and U-boats (it was not necessary for planes to actually sink enemy submarines, once they were driven underwater by air patrols the convoy could simply outrun them). Advances in radar and radio direction finding ('Huff-Duff') allowed escorts to pinpoint U-boats whilst Italy was knocked out of the war in 1943 and the liberation of France in 1944 denied the German navy their ports there. Ultimately however ship production by Allied shipyards out produced the Germans (one pre-fabricated 'Liberty ship was constructed in only 5 days) meaning that the Axis were never able to sink enough to make a difference.

The Allies lost over three and a half thousand ships and over 70,000 personnel in nearly six years. The Axis lost over 30,000 killed and 800 submarines sunk, the German U-boat arm having the highest casualty rates of all the German armed forces. Although a tactical victory for the Axis it was a strategic victory for the Allies.

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he is giving a non-standard helm order of "Meet her," which means using the rudder to check the swing of the ship (i.e., stop turning) with "Steady as she goes," stopping the turn and steering the course noted by the Helmsman when the order was given.