American History

Werner said the depth charges were wrong and the boat would have been destroyed by the force of so many near explosions. In the boats during these attacks, nobody was thrown around, no rivets flying (subs were welded, not riveted). In reality, depth charges would have exploded below the boat and caused cracks that would have been enough to sink the boat very quickly. Also, Healy and Werner agreed that it would have been impossible for an American crew to operate a German sub so quickly, even if some of the crew could read German. Also, subs were not used to attack other subs in World War II. The movie fails to portray how a sub smelled, how everyone shared a single toilet, ate spoiled food, suffered weeks of boredom before sighting a convoy. The young actors in the film quickly lost their Navy haircuts and only the Germans grew beards after weeks at sea without being able to use scarce fresh water for shaving or bathing. Tonya Allen in the uboat.net review is critical of the film for perpetuating the myth of German submarines machine-gunning helpless liferafts. However, the film accurately portrays the poor condition in 1942 of American S-class subs that dated from World War I, the service on Navy ships of African-Americans.

Factual errors: The German recon aircraft appears to be a Messerschmidt 109. However, the head on view is that of another aircraft (wrong wings). The big question is: What is a German fighter doing in the middle of the Atlantic? There were no German aircraft carriers. Recon aircraft were float planes, launched from catapults.