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Several elements in this were used in later submarine movies

posted 9 years ago by pt100
7 replies | jump to latest

Several other submarine warfare films borrowed from this film. E.g., torpedoing submarine nets; sending flotsam up through the torpedo tubes to fool the enemy into thinking the sub had been sunk; a seemingly neutral cargo ship's turning out to be an enemy warship; and even the captain's being knocked out and the lieutenant's having to take over.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. -- A. Einstein

[–] SashaDabinski 9 years ago

I cannot remember the title but I think there was the same scenario about a Japanese sub base in the Pacific.

[–] Big G-2 8 years ago

The classic STAR TREK episode "Balance of Terror" had a Romulan ship releasing debris (and even dead bodies) to fool their advisories to whom they were in battle with (the Enterprise). Very similar to what Dana Andrews did on his submarine.

[–] tarmcgator 8 years ago

RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP (1958)

[–] tarmcgator 8 years ago

Actually, there are some elements in CRASH DIVE that were derived from an even earlier submarine film, HELL BELOW, released in 1933 by MGM, with Walter Huston, Robert Montgomery, and Robert Young. There's a scene in the earlier movie in which the submarine sends out a small boat to board an enemy ship, only to suddenly have the little boat endangered and the men aboard padding back to the sub as fast as they can. There's also a triangle relationshipin HELL BELOW between the CO and the XO, except that the woman is the CO's daughter, who's married to a third man.

SPOILER: Some of the shots from CRASH DIVE's shore raid sequence were used ten years later in another 20th Century Fox submarine film, HELL AND HIGH WATER (1954).

[–] Jason_Radley 7 years ago

sending flotsam up through the torpedo tubes to fool the enemy into thinking the sub had been sunk

;

I've definitely seen 'playing possum', as Dana Andrews puts it, in one or more other films, but was this a tactic known to have been to have been used in combat, or, at least, taught in training?

[–] pt100 7 years ago

I have never read an account of its actually happening in real life. Of course, we'll never know if it was tried unsuccessfully by a submarine that was sunk with all hands lost. My hunch is that releasing debris would only attract more depth charges, because it would signal the exact location of the submarine, which the attackers might think was only damaged, not sunk. 😱

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.–J.B. Haldane

[–] chrissso 7 years ago

Wow so it is a total sub movie cliche! Great contribution!

BTW ... I thought this movie was really bad!