Goofs for
Das Boot (1981) More at IMDbPro »

• Crew or equipment visible: Towards the end of the film, while the Captain is in close-up, a blonde woman's head can be seen in the lower-left corner. She is the prop girl.
  
  
• Continuity: While being depth-charged, one of the sailors marks down the total charges that have been dropped. He marks the 23rd charge down, and the next shot shows the board back to 22 charges.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the captain issues an order for a torpedo to be fired at the burning ship, he quotes a distance of 650m. Later he notes the distance as 950m in his log.
  
  

• Anachronisms: The Enigma machine shown is a 4-rotor type. The film is set in the autumn of 1941. The 4-rotor type was not introduced until the 1 February 1942. Prior to that 3-rotor types were used.
  
  
• Continuity: During the first encounter with a convoy, a lieutenant (the one who wears a sweater) gets out of bed with his hair a mess and in his face. After he climbs to the bridge in the next shot, his hair is perfectly combed and out of his face.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lt. Werner (War Correspondent) is looking through pictures from one of the other officers family in the snow, you are shown the current picture he looking at. He clearly turns over to view the next picture, only to see the same picture again.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the planes are attacking the harbor, a charge that is meant to simulate the explosion of a bomb dropped from the sky is visible on the water in a wide shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lt. Werner returns the packet of letters to Ullman that he volunteered to forward to Ullman's pregnant girlfriend, it was only half the size of the original bundle.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In one scene the Skipper goes to his cabin and retrieves his service pistol, a 9mm P.38 Walther. The weapon in the movie is actually a post-war Iterarms version sold in the sixties and seventies.
  
  
• Continuity: When they meet the other U-boat at sea, Werner and the 2nd Lt. report it off the port bow even though clearly looking and pointing to starboard.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When two crewmen get up to get to their stations, they clearly go around the cameraman who is blocking the entrance to the torpedo room.
  
  
• Continuity: At the first very deep dive (1h50m) when bolts starts bursting, one hit and break the glass of the command center clock. Later in the movie the glass is intact.
  
  
• Factual errors: This is December 1941: The RAF would not have a bomb that could penetrate the double ceiling (up to 7 metres thick) of the U-boat pens in France. They tried later, and la Rochelle, St. Nazaire and Lorient were more than 90% destroyed. But the pens were almost undamaged, even after hits by the TallBoy (12,000lbs) and Grand Slam (22,000lbs) bombs. The pens in la Rochelle and St. Nazaire were in German possession until the end of hostilities, the last U-boats leaving on 8 May 1945. Some of the pens are still in use.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first crash dive, the sky is clearly blue when the 2WO shouts "Alarm!" However, when the U-96 dives, the sky is now grey.
  
  
• Factual errors: SS Weser was built in 1922 by Norddeutscher Lloyd and was the third ship to bear that name. The SS Weser was captured by HMCS Prince Robert off the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1940 and so could not have been interned in Spain. During the war the SS Weser was thought to have been responsible for the sinking of the British ship, SS Anglo-Saxon (sunk August 21 1940), but this sinking was later attributed to the German merchantman, SS Widder.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): On the Weser, the captain says he has never had fresh figs before, but he demonstrates the correct technique of opening one to get at the flesh inside.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the U-96 surfaces after the drill and test dive the bow wake of the camera boat can be clearly seen at the bottom of the frame.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While on the Weser ship, in Spain, the Captain and the crew are offered fresh figs. This cannot be possible as fresh figs are available only during summer and the action takes place in winter.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the beginning of the movie, the voice-over narration in female voice laments that the war "is going badly for Germany." However, the movie is set in autumn/winter of 1941, when Germany was at its peak and the war was still going quite well for her; Hitler had invaded Russia, and even though he was eventually to be stopped at the gate of Moscow in December, 1941, the whole of Europe (including most of Russia west of the Urals) was under German control. The U.S. had not entered the war and its industrial might had not been brought to bear against Germany.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the uncut edition, the 2WO tells Werner that thirteen U-boats were lost in the previous month, "went down with men and mice". However, the U-boat Force did not begin suffering these kinds of losses until December 1941, when ten boats were lost.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: The historical U-96 ended similar to its movie counterpart, by being bombed by American bombers while in harbor. However, this happened in 1945 in Wilhelmshaven, not in 1941 in La Rochelle as depicted.
  
  

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