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Wallymanowar -> (2/10/2001 9:10:00 AM)
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IMO U571 does a great disservice to all the servicemen who participated in the 'Battle of the Atlantic'. Its attempt to condense a part of the war, which actually covered several events over several years, in one single episode is insulting. The non-historical presentation of an important historical event trivializes the roles of the actual participants.
The Enigma story WRT the 'Battle of the Atlantic' begins with the pioneering efforts of Polish mathematicians in 1932. By 1939, the Poles had already BUILT fifteen German Enigma machines and gave one each to Britain and France. The problem facing the codebreakers was getting the daily settings of the wheels - this is where the brave acts on the high seas come in.
The first captureof a U-Boat was the capture of U-110 on May 9, 1941. A boarding party from HMS Bulldog boarded the U-110 after its crew had abandoned her and the scuttling charges had failed to go off. The U-Boat captain, after noticing the failure of the charges, attempted to swim back to his boat whereupon he was shot by the boarding party (isn't this similar to the desperate attempts of the U-Boat captain in U-571 to destroy his own ship?). The boarding party removed an Enigma machine (although they didn't know what it was, they assumed it had to be a cryptographic machine of some sort) and all the documents they could find (the much more valuable event). The actual capture of the first Naval Enigma machine had been done in March 1941 during the British raid on the Norwegian Lofoten Islands when one was captured from the armed trawler 'Krebs'. This only allowed the British a 'window' for a few months where they were able to decipher the German transmissions. Capturing more documents from the vulnerable German weatherships provided the British with a more easily accessible source of cipher material and helped extend this window. This continued until February 1942 when the Germans altered their Enigma machine by adding another cipher wheel.
The second capture of a U-Boat was the U-570 (that's pretty close to U-571 isn't it?) by a Coastal Command Hudson bomber on August 27, 1941. After being damaged with depth charges, the U-Boat surrendered to the bomber via signal lights. The Hudson circled the U-Boat until relieved by a Catalina and later an armed trawler.
The third and final capture of a U-Boat was the U-505 by the USS Pillsbury (a destroyer, not a submarine)on June 4, 1944 (finally the Americans get involved). This capture was effected by the boarding party actively defusing the scuttling charges and securing the boat. Although the decoding machine and cipher documents were captured intact, the actual effect of this was to confirm that the Allies were ahead of the Germans - The Allies were in possession of decoded German documents that the U-505 had not recieved yet. I don't mean to minimize the brave efforts of these sailors in capturing this vessel, but their accomplishment at this time only confirmed what the Allies already knew.
You find that the movie is thus a conglomeration of several events with some very active 'creative writing'. This additional 'Hollywood' effect detracts from any merit the movie has by creating totally unbelievable conditions -ie. having a 1/2 dozen English speaking sailors able to fully operate a German submarine which is normally run by 44 fully trained men. Thus instead of honoring the men of any one of the actual events I've outlined above by historically depicting that event, they create myths that todays children will believe for years to come. This is exactly the sort of thing that leads to those people who say that events like the Holocaust never happened.
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'Bitter Mike'
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