MovieChat Forums > Crash Dive (1943) Discussion > Tactical flaw in the early story

Tactical flaw in the early story


I realize it was to set up the subsequent story line on the sub, but the handling of the Q-ship was so wrong. By 1943, sub commanders were a pretty savvy bunch. Presenting your beam to an unknown ship would be a recipe for disaster. The sub should have been positioned with its stern toward the unknown ship. The deck gun could still be employed, while also making the stern torpedo tubes available for attack, plus presenting a much smaller target to the Q-ship and being in a position to depart at high speed while still firing the deck gun and stern tubes.

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Thank you. I will pass that one to the High Command.

As you were.

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Yeah, that was pretty sloppy skippering. Similar careless things happen in a few other otherwise good submarine films, and it seems to be done in order to increase suspense and/or further the plot. But I'm sure that real submariners roll their eyes whenever a skipper does something stupid like that.

There's an old saying among aircraft pilots: There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. I think the same thing can be said for submarine commanders. Some of the boldest sub commanders in WWII ended up getting their crews killed. One was commander of the Wahoo, Dudley "Mush" Morton.

In 1960, Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, Jr., ComSubPac during the war, was asked to write the foreword for former Wahoo crewmember Forest Sterling's book, Wake of the Wahoo. He wrote about Morton, "When a natural leader and born daredevil such as Mush Morton is given command of a submarine, the result can only be a fighting ship of the highest order, with officers and men who would follow their skipper to the Gates of Hell…. And they did."

This sentence is false. -- The Zurich Gnome

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OMG ... this film is filled with so many ... "tactical flaws" ... that it is a freakin cartoon! My favorite is the secret Nazis base in Iceland or was it Greenland or was it Canada or was it Ireland! Or how about the Germans who cannot hit anything from the deck guns of the Q boat ... or the marksmanship of the German soldiers at the secret base or the fact the sub suffers a direct hit from heavy artillery and keeps going or the captain riding the sub like a dolphin ...

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