# U-571 (film)

U-571 is a 2000 submarine film directed by Jonathan Mostow from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sam Montgomery and David Ayer. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Jon Bon Jovi, Jake Weber and Matthew Settle. The film follows a World War II German U-boat boarded by American submariners to capture her Enigma cipher machine.
Although the film was financially successful and received generally positive reviews from critics, winning the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, the fictitious plot was subject to substantial controversy and criticism.

## Plot

In May 1942, during the Battle of the Atlantic, after sinking a British merchant ship, German U-boat U-571 has her engines badly damaged by depth charges from a British destroyer, with all of her engineers and mechanics killed in a flash fire. U-571's skipper Kapitänleutnant Günther Wassner makes a distress call that is intercepted by Allied intelligence. The US Navy has its submarine S-33 modified to resemble a German resupply U-boat in order to steal the Enigma machine coding device and sink the U-571. Before the crew of S-33 receives its assignment, the submarine's executive officer Lieutenant Tyler is unhappy about a recommendation for command of his own submarine being blocked by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Dahlgren who tells Tyler that even though he has the qualifications, Tyler cannot make immediate, even questionable, orders without hesitation, which Dahlgren believes is a crucial quality that a submarine captain needs to have. The group are joined by Lt. Hirsch from Naval Intelligence who is fluent in German, who speaks with Radioman Wentz, also fluent in German due to his immigrant parents. A Marine named Coonan arrives loaded with high explosives.
During a storm, S-33's boarding party surprises and overwhelms the crew of U-571, though the mission is nearly jeopardized when Hirsch hesitates to speak in German to the crew, forcing Wentz to initiate the conversation after Tyler tries to tend to a mortally wounded Griggs. After securing U-571, the American S-33 is torpedoed by the arriving German resupply submarine; the resulting explosion kills Coonan while Emmett and Larson drown. Dahlgren, in the sea and dying, orders Tyler on the captured U-boat to dive, along with the remaining crew on board: Chief Keough, a World War I vet, Hirsch, and seamen Mazzola, Tank, Rabbit, Trigger, and Wentz. Tyler dives U-571 below the surface, where they subsequently engage and destroy the resupply submarine.
The men find two survivors from the destruction of the S-33: the cook from the S-33, Eddie, and Wassner, who disguises himself as an electrician. After Tank makes repairs and gets the sub operating again, Tyler decides to route the disabled submarine toward Land's End. They are spotted by a German reconnaissance plane and Mazzola, dubious of Tyler as a leader, tries to convince Rabbit to fire on the plane with the flak gun against Tyler's orders, to which Tyler punches Mazzola. As a German destroyer approaches and the crew attempt to dive, Wassner escapes captivity, sabotages the starboard motor and shoots Mazzola twice but Mazzola shoots Wassner back and takes the gun away before he dies, leading to Wassner being subdued by Eddie. The destroyer sends over some crew, but the crew are forced back by Tyler who orders Wentz and Rabbit to fire a shot from the deck gun which destroys the ship's radio room, preventing it from reporting the situation and revealing that the Allies have the Enigma machine. The submarine then dives beneath the destroyer, which begins to drop depth charges. Tyler attempts to deceive the destroyer into stopping its attack by ejecting debris and Mazzola's corpse out of a torpedo tube, faking their own destruction. U-571 goes down to 200 metres (660 ft) and is damaged by high water pressure. They start to sink deeper, and can only reverse this by ascending uncontrollably. Tyler orders Trigger to submerge himself in the bilge underwater to repressurize the single remaining torpedo tube.
Trigger uses an air hose to breathe inside the flooded compartment; he closes the air valve to the stern tube, but finds a second leak, which he can not reach. The crew finds that Wassner, despite being shackled, is using Morse Code to tap out a signal for the submarine to be destroyed, so Hirsch bludgeons him to death with a wrench. U-571 surfaces but is unable to fire her last torpedo. The pursuing destroyer fires with her main guns; the damage pins Trigger's legs when he is beyond reach of the air hose. Though he drowns, he manages to close the valve. Tyler orders Tank to fire the torpedo; the destroyer is unable to take evasive action and is sunk. With the submarine heavily damaged and flooding, the crew abandons her with the Enigma in their possession as they watch U-571 sink. They are found by a US Navy PBY Catalina flying boat.

## Cast

* Matthew McConaughey as Lieutenant Andrew Tyler
* Bill Paxton as Lieutenant Commander Mike Dahlgren
* Harvey Keitel as Chief Gunner's Mate Henry Keough
* Jon Bon Jovi as Lieutenant Pete Emmett
* David Keith as Major Matthew Coonan
* Jake Weber as Lieutenant Michael Hirsch
* Jack Noseworthy as Seaman Bill Wentz
* Tom Guiry as Seaman Ted "Trigger" Fitzgerald
* Will Estes as Torpedoman Ronald "Rabbit" Parker
* T. C. Carson as Seaman Eddie Carson
* Erik Palladino as Seaman Anthony Mazzola
* Dave Power as Motor Machinist Charles "Tank" Clemens
* Derk Cheetwood as Seaman Herb Griggs
* Matthew Settle as Ensign Keith Larson
* Thomas Kretschmann as Kapitänleutnant Günther Wassner
* Gunter Würger as Oberleutnant zur See Kohl
* Oliver Stokowski as Elektro-Obermaschinist Hans
* Burnell Tucker as Admiral Duke
* Paul McEvoy (uncredited) as German Captain

## Production

U-571 was filmed in the Mediterranean, near Rome and Malta. Footage, sets and models from the movie have been reused for other productions, including Submerged, depicting the loss of USS Sailfish, and the fictional Ghostboat. A non-diving replica of the US submarine S-33 is located in Grand Harbour, Valletta.
In the US the film was originally rated "R", because of a scene where Lt. Emmett is beheaded by flying debris. To get a "PG-13", the shot was redone with Emmett instead knocked overboard. A death scene was also filmed for Major Coonan, but the effect did not work well, so it was cut. This leaves the character vanishing during the explosion.

## Critical reception

The film was generally well received by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 68% based on 117 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The consensus reads: "Excellent cinematography and an interesting plot accompanied by a talented cast and crew make U-571 a tense thriller." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 35 critics. It performed well at the box office.
However, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two out of four, writing, "U-571 is a clever wind-up toy of a movie, almost a trailer for a video game. Compared to Das Boot or The Hunt For Red October, it's thin soup. The characters are perfunctory, the action is recycled straight out of standard submarine formulas, and there is one shot where a man is supposed to be drowning and you can just about see he's standing on the bottom of the studio water tank." Reviewer George Perry gave the film two stars out of five, comparing it negatively with Das Boot, praising the acting but criticised the "cardboard characters", and "chaotic" action sequences. Reviewing the DVD release,myReviewer.com felt the cast to be underused and criticised the story. Philip Sledge felt the film to be entertaining.
Alex von Tunzelmann of The Guardian ranked the film with a "C-" stating that the "only honest thing about "U-571 is its tagline: "Nine men are about to change history."

### Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for two awards at the 73rd Academy Awards: Best Sound (Steve Maslow, Gregg Landaker, Rick Kline and Ivan Sharrock) and Best Sound Editing. It won the sound editing award, while losing the sound award to Gladiator.

## Historical inaccuracies

The film's story and characters are fictional. The film sparked controversy during its production and release. Anger over the film's inaccuracies reached the House of Commons. Labour MP Brian Jenkins used Prime Minister's Questions in June 2000 to state that the film was an "affront to the memories of the British sailors who lost their lives on this action." Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "I agree entirely with what you say... we hope that people realise these are people that, in many cases, sacrificed their lives in order that this country remained free." Paul Truswell, for the constituency of Pudsey, a town closely associated with HMS Aubrietia, wrote to the US president Bill Clinton, who acknowledged that the film's plot was only a work of fiction. The director of the local Horsforth Museum lamented the rewriting of history, saying: "You can't rewrite history and we have to pass on the facts to the younger generation through the schools." In 2009, the film was first on a list of "most historically inaccurate movies" in The Times.
Sub Lt. David Balme, the Royal Navy officer who led the boarding party on U-110, called U-571 "a great film" and that "young people will love it" and said that it would not have been financially viable without being "americanised". The film's producers did not agree to his request for a statement that it was a work of fiction, but the end credits dedicate the film to the "Allied sailors and officers who risked their lives capturing Enigma materials" during the Second World War. The credits acknowledge the Royal Navy's role in capturing Enigma machines and code documents from U-110, U-559 and the US Navy's capture of U-505.
Author Hugh Sebag argues that while the media may have made reports on the fact that the British made the most crucial captures, the Americans role was also unjustly downgraded, noting that they made an important part in breaking the Enigma code. However in 2006 screenwriter David Ayer expressed regret over making U-571, stating that the film had distorted history, and said that he would not do it again. He told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting that Americans, rather than the British, had captured the naval Enigma cipher: "It was a distortion...a mercenary decision...to create this parallel history in order to drive the film for an American audience. Both my grandparents were officers in the Second World War, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements."
The first captured (three-cylinder) military Enigma was examined by Polish Intelligence in 1928; the Polish Cipher Bureau broke the Enigma code in 1932 and gave their findings to Britain and France in 1939, just before the German invasion of Poland. Gordon Welchman, head of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, wrote: "Hut 6 Ultra would never have got off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."
The first capture of a (five-cylinder) naval Enigma machine with its cipher keys from a U-boat, designation U-110, was made on 9 May 1941 by HMS Bulldog of the Royal Navy, commanded by Captain Joe Baker-Cresswell assisted by HMS Aubrietia, seven months before the United States entered the war. The United States's involvement in the European theatre of the Second World War did not commence until mid-1941 with Lend-Lease, and direct, open participation did not begin until the US Navy began engaging the Kriegsmarine in the fall of 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, by which time Enigma machines had already been captured and their codes broken in Europe.
In 1942, the Royal Navy also seized U-559, capturing additional Enigma codebooks. According to Britain's Channel 4, "the captured codebooks provided vital assistance to British cryptographers such as Alan Turing, at the code-breaking facility of Bletchley Park." The Allies captured Enigma-related codebooks and machines about fifteen times during the War. All but two of these by British forces, the exceptions being the Royal Canadian Navy capture of U-744 in March 1944, and the US Navy Coast Guard Cutter USS Campbell's seizure of U-505 in June 1944: by this time, the Allies were already routinely decoding German naval Enigma traffic.
The actual U-571, captained by Oberleutnant zur See Gustav Lüssow, was never involved in any such events, was not captured, and was in fact lost with all hands on 28 January 1944, west of Ireland. She was hit by depth charges, dropped from a Short Sunderland Mk III flying boat, EK577, callsign "D for Dog", belonging to No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and based at RAF Pembroke Dock in Wales. The aircraft's commander, Flt Lt Richard Lucas, reported that most of the U-boat's 52 crew managed to abandon ship, but all died from hypothermia.
The film portrays the U-boat sailors machine-gunning British merchant crewmen of the ship they sank; although Wassner clearly dislikes giving the order, and some of his men are just as unhappy as he is, Wassner argues that because the boat is so badly crippled, short on crew members and supplies, with sensitive information aboard, it is too risky to leave the British survivors to possibly to report the U-boat's position. The shooting of survivors could also be seen more as mercy killings rather than leaving them to die. As shown later with Taylor and his crew keeping Wassner alive; sabotage is a possibility as well. In reality, U-boat crewmen are far more often known to have assisted survivors with food, directions and occasionally medical aid. Such assistance only stopped after Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the "Laconia order" following a US air attack on U-boats transporting injured survivors under a Red Cross flag in 1942. German U-boat crews were thereafter under War Order No. 154 not to rescue survivors, which parallelled Allied policy. Afterward, U-boats still occasionally provided aid for survivors. In fact, out of several thousand of sinkings of merchant ships in World War II, there is only one verifiable case of a U-boat's crew deliberately attacking the survivors: that of U-852 after the sinking of the Greek ship Peleus in 1944.
The real USS S-33 was stationed in the Pacific Ocean from June 1942 until the end of the war. She was sold for scrap in 1946. When Lt. Cmdr. Dahlgren orders Lt. Tyler to take down the captured German U-boat, he cries out "Take her down!" These were the last words of Lieutenant Commander Howard W. Gilmore who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his self-sacrifice in saving his boat, USS Growler (SS-215). Mazzola mentions that S-26 sank in a test dive. The real S-26 did not sink in a test dive, instead sinking in a collision with a patrol combatant, PC-460, in January 1942.
The Kriegsmarine destroyer Z-49 was ordered on 12 June 1943 but never laid down, let alone completed and sailed.

### Technical inaccuracies

As in most films, the audible sonar "ping" is not accurate, and is introduced for the audience's benefit. The sound of WW2 German Gruppenhorchgerät system was more complex, whilst the more advanced ASDIC system used by the British Navy used frequencies outside the range of human hearing.
The Kriegsmarine destroyers rarely ventured out into the open Atlantic Ocean, but usually stayed in European coastal waters. During the destroyer's depth charge attack more than eighty depth charges are detonated in the film, despite the fact that they rarely carried more than thirty.
The German resupply U-boat would most likely not have been sunk by U-571. This would have been difficult for a German U-boat to achieve, as German sonar was not as advanced as British during the war. The only instance of a submerged submarine sinking another submerged vessel was in February 1945 when HMS Venturer sank U-864 with torpedoes.
German Type XIV supply U-boats or Milchkühe ("milk cows") did not have torpedo tubes or deck guns, being armed only with anti-aircraft guns for defense, and therefore could not have attacked other vessels.