U-571, as a rule, is interesting because it tries very hard to skate on the line between barely plausible and simply unbelievable.
I'm not going to say the film got everything right. It didn't. And while it's hard to imagine the crew being able to control U-571, it's not impossible--with some caveats.
In former submarine officer Michael Pacino's novels "Emergency Deep" and "America", he depicts crews of only a handful of men running nuclear submarines. In "America" in particular, Russian submariners are able to capture and run a Virginia-class submarine, the most technologically advanced submarine in existence. Clearly, Pacino believes that such a feat is possible, in not particularly plausible.
In the interwar period, naval designers were collaborating with each other on submarine design quite frequently. For example, Electric Boat worked with M.A.N (Machinen-fabrik-Augsburg-Nurnberg)to produce submarine diesels. The systems used in submarines of all the western powers were remarkably similar.
Much the same way airplanes all work under the same basic principles, so do submarines all operate in basically the same fundamental way. They maneuver using a combination of thrust from the propellers and lift from variable buoyancy (hydrostatics) and the maneuvering planes (hydrodynamics).
If a crew were to successfully dive the submarine, they would have to have a knowledge of which controls were which. This is more obvious (and standardized) on aircraft than on submarines, but its plausible that the crew could have successfully dived the submarine with a translation of the applicable controls.
The biggest problem with the scenario is that they don't have any problems with the boat's trim. While it is likely that the German would have had his submarine rigged for dive and trimmed (his only defense at that point), it can't be dismissed that some large error in trim could have been unaccounted for. If such an error had existed, the boat would have almost certainly been doomed.
If, however, they did manage to dive without a significant trim problem, there is nothing wrong with their being able to maneuver underwater as they did. The film has skirted the edge of impossible but not crossed it.
What does cross the line is the submerged torpedo duel. I can't imagine that happening and succeeding. But could they dive the boat? Yeah, I think they could. And then figure it out after the battle? Probably. I've read through the translated copy of the Type-VIIC manual, and there's nothing too outlandish in there, if someone can put it in English.
You can assume that the scenario is impossible, but really its not too far from, say, F/Lt Hendley and a blind F/Lt Blythe being able to steal, start, and fly a German trainer in which they had no experience.
"You feel the way the boat moves? The sunlight on your skin? That’s real. Life is wonderful."
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