“We
Dive at Dawn” is possibly the best British sub movie. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and
released mid-war. The Admiralty gave
full cooperation and the exterior views are of two S-class boats. The interiors are reconstructions of those
boats. Star John Mills went on a
training run on a sub, much to the discomfort of his innards when the sub crash
dived. The movie has been overshadowed
by films like “49th Parallel”, “In Which We Serve”, and “The Cruel
Sea”, but belongs in their company.
The
HMS Sea Tiger returns from an uneventful patrol and the crew is looking forward
to leave. As with “In Which We Serve”,
the movie concentrates on three of the men.
Lt. Taylor (Mills) is the skipper and he has a little black book that he
plans on utilizing for recreation over rest.
That’s right – John Mills as a ladies’ man. Corrigan (Niall MacGinnis) provides comic
relief as the sailor who is scheming to avoid his impending nuptials to the Coxswain’s
sister. Hobson (Eric Portman) is
attempting to repair his broken marriage.
All this will have to wait when the sub gets an emergency mission to
sink a German battleship. “Leave? I nearly ran into myself coming back”. On their way to intercept the warship, they
have to crash dive to avoid a plane.
Taylor records the following in the log:
“Spotted plane approaching.
Looked like one of ours. So dived
immediately.” Sly smile. They rescue three German airmen from a rescue
buoy. Surely the only time this device
has appeared in a movie. I discovered
that these buoys were placed by the Germans for succor for downed crews. They were like a floating dorm room with supplies
and a radio. Interesting. The sub has to pass through a mine field with
the obligatory mine cable scraping along the side. They ram their way through a submarine
net. Another unique moment. They find their target, fire at it, get depth
charged and escape with the usual cinematic trickery. Unfortunately, running low on fuel, it looks
like they will have to scuttle the boat and accept internment. Unless some jilted seaman with no will to
live, a captured German’s uniform, and an ability to speak German comes up with
a bold plan.
“We
Dive at Dawn” is one of the better sub movies.
And it was made in 1943. Frankly,
the only weakness of the film is the sub warfare. The special effects are rudimentary. You don’t see the depth charges, but the
jostling about is nicely done. The
traversing of the minefield lacks suspense and the ramming of the net is on the
silly side. The movie’s big set piece in
the enemy harbor is equally silly, but rousing.
It is probably the best commando scene in any sub movie. The post script of the sub returning to the
acclaim of the fleet is the cherry on top.
The strengths of the movie are in its characters. The movie has an excellent cast. Everyone knows Mills’ work in war movies, but
it is easy to forget what a player Portman was back then. He was coming off of “49th
Parallel” and “One of Our Aircraft is Missing” and would later appear in “The
Colditz Story” and “The Bedford Incident”.
Hobson is a great character who goes from being a jerk to a hero
realistically. The decision to introduce
the main characters by way of the shore leave was a good one and it is a shame
the leave was cut short because those scenes are among the best in the movie. The dialogue is excellent, although unless
(and even if) you watch a lot of British films, you might wish for
subtitles. The sailor banter is fun,
provided you can decipher the accents.
Speaking of which, you can tell a lot about the intelligence level of a
movie by whether it subtitles the Germans.
This movie does not.
Although
the movie has a documentary look to it, it is not based on a true story. There was no German battleship named
Brandenburg. No German battleships were
lost to subs in WWII. The commando raid
is clearly fictional. This means the movie
is pure entertainment and achieves its goal of being a crowd-pleaser. Especially if it’s a British crowd during the
war.
GRADE = B+
Having the sub run out of fuel on a relatively short-range patrol in the North Sea and the need for the harbour raid is the clearly the most unrealistic part of the movie. In fact I would say the latter pretty much ruins the credibility the entire film.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point there. I do not know the range of this particular type of sub so I cannot say it is unrealistic. Obviously they had to create a reason for the raid and I would say it was within acceptable artistic license.
DeleteDid you watch the film? They ran out of fuel due to extending their patrol beyond the North Sea into the Baltic.
DeleteThe sub used in the movie was the P-614, a British P-611 class (modified S class originally built for the Turkish Navy) which is indicated to have a range of 2500 nautical miles (=2877 miles) at 10 knots sustained speed on the surface. Admittedly, that is pretty short for a patrol sub of that size (the indicated range of most WW 2 British patrol subs was considerably longer than that, generally exceeding 4000 nautical miles). The range could have been stretched beyond that by regularly reducing speed on the surface and while submerged to conserve fuel and battery power (less battery charge used means less fuel used to recharge the cells). The sea voyage to and from the sub's base to the patrol area would only be a matter of a few hundred nautical miles (probably less than 500 nm both ways), so that leaves a lot of fuel for patrolling.
ReplyDeleteEven so, any skipper worth his salt would have returned to base once the critical fuel level was reached. Anything less would have been grounds for immediate relief of his command and a probable court martial for unduly risking capture of the ship, its crew and classified equipment aboard.
Just saw the film. They got hit during the depth charging and were leaking fuel just after torpedoing the Brandenburg. So there is a reason to pick up fuel in the movie.
ReplyDelete