 Originally Posted by acealive1
reminded me of I,Robot. then i saw james cromwell is in it. kinda odd
Aye, I had the same feeling when I was watching it too.
Originally Posted by blind2d
I will now be sure to rent this.
U-571 raped history? Guess it's been a while for me too...
*flies off to teh intarwebz for a moment, comes back*
* It was British personnel from HMS Bulldog who first captured a naval Enigma machine, from U-110 in the North Atlantic May 1941, before the United States entered the war.
* The real U-571 was never involved in any such events, was not captured, and was in fact sunk in January 1944, off Ireland, by a Short Sunderland flying boat from No. 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force.
...
"Americanization" of real historical events:
America's direct participation in World War II commenced in 1941 with Lend-Lease and the Attack on Pearl Harbor, but the history of capturing Enigma machines and breaking their codes had already begun in Europe.
An earlier military Enigma machine had been captured by Polish Intelligence in 1928; Polish intelligence broke the Enigma code in 1932 and gave their findings to Britain and France in 1939, just before the German invasion of Poland.[3]
The first capture of a Naval Enigma machine and associated cipher keys from a U-boat was made on May 9, 1941 by HMS Bulldog of Britain's Royal Navy, commanded by Captain Joe Baker-Cresswell. The U-boat was U-110. In 1942, the British seized U-559, capturing additional Enigma codebooks. "The captured codebooks provided vital assistance to the British cryptographers, led by Alan Turing, at the code-breaking hothouse of Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes."[3]
There were some 15 captures of Naval Enigma material during World War II, all but two by the British. The Canadian Navy captured U-774; the U.S. Navy seized U-505 in June 1944. By this time the Allies were already reading Naval Enigma routinely.
The film caused irritation and anger in Britain. At Prime Minister's Questions, Tony Blair agreed with questioner Brian Jenkins MP that the film was "an affront" to British sailors.[4] In response to a letter from Paul Truswell, MP for the Pudsey constituency (which includes Horsforth, a town proud of its connection with HMS Bulldog), U.S. president Bill Clinton wrote assuring that the film's plot was only a work of fiction.[5]
A written acknowledgment does appear on-screen that the Royal Navy captured the first, and subsequently the vast majority, of the Naval Enigma devices.[6]
David Balme, the British Naval officer who led the boarding party aboard the U-110, expressed positive feedback about the U-571, calling it "a great film"[6] and arguing that the movie would not have been financially viable without being Americanised. The film's producers ignored his request for a message making it clear that the film was a work of fiction, but they did agree to include a message at the film's end mentioning the Royal Navy's role in the capture of U-110.[5]
In 2006, screenwriter David Ayer admitted that U-571 distorted history and stated that he would not do it again.[7] Ayer told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting Americans captured the Naval Enigma cipher rather than the British:[7]
“It was a distortion...a mercenary decision...to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience. Both my grandparents were officers in World War II, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements."
...
Falsely negative portrayal of U-boat sailors:
The movie portrays a scene in which the U-boat sailors kill the Allied merchant crewmen who have survived their ship's sinking, in compliance with naval policy and so that the survivors do not report the U-boat position. In contrast to the negative depiction of U-boat men in the movie as well as wartime propaganda, U-boat crewmen in reality were known to assist survivors with food, directions and occasionally medical aid.[8] Assistance to survivors only stopped after Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the "Laconia order" following a U.S. air attack on U-boats transporting injured survivors under a Red Cross flag in 1942. Some U-boats still occasionally provided aid to their victims. In fact, out of several thousand sinkings of merchant ships in World War II, there is only one documented case of a U-boat crew deliberately attacking the ship's survivors: that of the U-852, whose crew attacked survivors of the Greek ship Peleus.
...
General inaccuracies:
The real U-571, captained by Oberleutnant zur See Gustav Lüssow, was lost with all hands on 28 January 1944, west of Ireland.[10] 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). 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. "D for Dog", which was crewed partly by Royal Air Force (RAF) personnel, was based at RAF Pembroke Dock, in Wales.
Another inaccuracy was the presence of the German destroyer in the Atlantic Ocean, as most of the surface fleet of the Kriegsmarine never ventured that far west, and none did so from 1942 onwards. The few exceptions were their capital ships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, and Bismarck.[11]
In addition, a surfaced U-boat could never engage a destroyer at point blank range and survive, let alone escape. Although the script claimed the destroyer could not aim her main guns at U-571 due to the extremely close range, the destroyer could have still inflicted serious damage on U-571 with her considerable secondary armament of anti-aircraft cannon. In these situations the destroyer captain would also have the option of sinking the submarine through simple ramming.
During the destroyer's depth charge attack more than 80 depth charges are detonated in the film, despite the fact that German destroyers rarely carried more than 30 depth charges during the war.[12]
The German resupply U-boat would most likely not have been sunk by U-571. The only instance of a submerged submarine sinking another submerged vessel was in February 1945 when HMS Venturer sank the U-864 with torpedoes.[citation needed] This would have also been difficult for a German U-boat to achieve, as German sonar was not as advanced as British sonar at any time during the war.[13]
Furthermore German Type XIV supply U-boats didn't have torpedo tubes and thus could not have attacked S-33.[14]
The real S-33 was stationed in the Pacific Ocean from June 1942 till the end of the war. She was not sunk during World War II and was sold for scrap in 1946.[15] The S-26 did not sink in a test dive, instead sinking in a collision with a patrol combatant, PC-460, in January 1942.[15]
The German reconnaissance aircraft was a 1940s-era Swiss attack trainer; the same type of aircraft was used in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Fuck "U-571".
So yeah ... Surrogates is way better than T3 and U-571.
Some more stuff:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/07/0..._article.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/...1-reel-history
I love this bit from the second link:
At the time of its release, Tony Blair condemned U-571 in parliament as an insult to the Royal Navy. A far more entertaining response would have been for Britain to fund a big-budget revenge epic, in which a small platoon of foppish yet plucky Brits swans over to Vietnam in 1968, defeats the Viet Cong, and wins the war. Moreover, it would be nearly as accurate as this.
|
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks