Trivia for
Das Boot (1981) More at IMDbPro »

• The bulk of the film's $15 million budget was spent on constructing U-boats. Specifications for the original Type VII-C U-boat were found at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. The plans were taken to the original builder of the subs, who was commissioned to build a full-sized, sea-going replica, their first such assignment since the war ended. A second full-sized model was built for interior filming.
  
  
• Three scale models were built for special effects work. The first, a 35 foot remote controlled model, could sail in high seas and dive; the other two, 18 feet and 8 feet in length, were used for underwater shots. Scale models of tankers, destroyers and other ships were also built to complete the armada.
  
  
• The scenes with the 35 foot (1/6th scale) model were filmed at 55 frames per second.
  
  
• Rutger Hauer was offered to play Der Alte/Capt.-Lt. Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, but turned it down to do Blade Runner
  
  
• The human figures on the 35 foot model were modified Barbie (or rather Ken) dolls.
  
  
• To help his actors convey the claustrophobic conditions found on a real U-boat, director Wolfgang Petersen insisted on filming within the actual confines of the ship (scarcely wider than a man's outstretched arms), rather than removing the model's outer wall.
  
  
• While shooting scale models in the Northern Sea, filming was disturbed by doves landing on the submarine.
  
  
• The submarine models built for Das Boot were also the ones used in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
  
  
• The cast was deliberately kept indoors continually during the shooting period in order to look as pale as a real submarine crew would on a mission at sea.
  
  
• The full-scale model was little more than a hollow shell with an engine, and could be used only in calm waters. While it was being filmed in rougher weather, it cracked in two and sank. It was later recovered, patched with wood planks and used for the final shots.
  
  
• Depth-charge explosion effects were created by detonating small explosives in a 5m-deep tank and filming them at 1500 frames per second.
  
  
• Because the original TV mini-series was severely criticized in Germany for portraying World War II Germans sympathetically, the producer greeted the first American showing of the film at the Los Angeles Film Festival with great trepidation. They weren't sure how a former enemy nation in that war would react the film, especially in a city with a large Jewish population, and their fears were reinforced when the audience applauded the opening caption saying 30,000 of 40,000 German submariners were lost in the war. However, when the film ended, the audience gave the film a standing ovation in appreciation of the artistry of the filmmakers.
  
  
• Most of the movie was shot in Geiselgasteig near Munich.
  
  
• With production costs of 31 million DM, it was for a long time the most expensive German movie ever made. It was beaten in 2006 by "Perfume: The Story of A Murderer", which, however, was a German-French-Spanish co-production shot in English.
  
  
• To simulate the storm in the Atlantic, a model of the tower was splashed with water from a large tank. Actor Jan Fedder lost his grip on the railing and was washed off the model, breaking a few ribs in the fall, one of the other actors instantly shouted "Man Overboard". At first Petersen didn't realize it was an accident but enthusiastically yelled "Good idea, Jan. We'll do that one more time!". Peterson still kept the scene and rewrote Jan Fedder's part in the film, so that his character spent a short portion of the movie in bed. The actor actually had to be brought back and forth from the hospital every day because of concussion. The painful expression on his face is real and not acted. (The scene which features him bedridden is available on the uncut edition.)
  
  
• Originally filmed in German, all of the major actors could speak English. When the movie was dubbed into English for USA and UK distribution, all of the principal actors actually dubbed their own voices into English.
  
  
• The only remaining U-boot of the VII-C class wasn't used in the movie because it is a technical monument and memorial which can not only be visited, you can actually get an inside view of the U-995. It's located in Laboe/Germany and was placed there in 1972.
  
  
• Was originally to be directed by 'Don Siegel (I)' for German producers.
  
  
• The movie was shot silent (because of exaggerated camera noise in the submarine interiors) and all German and English dialogue had to be looped.
  
  
• Unusually for a major motion picture, was filmed largely in sequence.
  
  
• To get one particular interior shot, a section of the model's wall was removed. However, Wolfgang Petersen and cinematographer Jost Vacano felt that it detracted from the film's overall authenticity, and from then on only ever filmed the interior from within the confines of the boat.
  
  
• In the scene in the La Rochelle bar, Otto Sander (Thomsen) was really drunk.
  
  
• The real Pilgrim (played by in the movie by Jan Fedder) took his own life a couple of days after the movie was released.
  
  
• Some of the model sub scenes where shot in a small custom-built pond in the back lot of the Bavaria Film Studios. The same pond was later used in Enemy Mine (1985) and the Die unendliche Geschichte (1984) (The NeverEnding Story), both also Petersen movies.
  
  
• At the end of the film, when a group of bombers attacks La Rochelle, a group of heavy bombers breaks formation. This particular shot (with German WW2 Heinkel 111 bombers) was bought from the movie Battle of Britain (1969).
  
  
• A miniature submarine was used for scenes in which we see the submarine from outside. The model was steered from the inside by a diver. After three days, the diver who was hired to steer the model had to quit. He had gotten sea sick for the first time in his two-decades-spanning career.
  
  
• When Wolfgang Petersen set out to cut down the German TV mini series version of the film to the 3 hour 26 feature director's cut, he discovered that the original music soundtrack had been lost due to film melt. Original soundtrack composer Klaus Doldinger painstakingly archived all the original soundtrack and remixed all the music cues that had been melted in 6 track format. Music editors then had the unenviable task of re-cutting the music to fit the new feature length of the film.
  
  
• The poem Lt. Werner cites when the submarine stuck in the Strait of Gibraltar is "Schlacht - Das Maß" from Rudolf G. Binding ("Einmal vor Unerbittlichem stehen...").
  
  
• Another actor was originally cast as Thomsen, but quit not long after filming began. The shot of Thomsen saying "Hail and victory and sink 'em all!" to the crew of U-96 was re-shot with Otto Sander outside the studio in Munich.
  
  
• Vigo is a coastal city in the Galician province in northern Spain. Two U-boats, U-506 and U-523, are reported to have been sunk near Vigo during the Second World War.
  
  
• La Spezia, a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy at the head of La Spezia Gulf, is one of the major Italian military and commercial harbours and is located between Genoa and Pisa. It has been a major naval base since the 1800s.
  
  
• The emblem on the U-96's conning tower is the Laughing Sawfish, the emblem of the 9th flotilla from Brest. It was usually green in colour.
  
  
• Given that the convoy is attacked under a full moon, and after this, the crew expected to be given leave for Christmas, odds are that evening is either November 3rd, 4th or 5th, or perhaps Dec. 3rd, 4th or 5th. Those were the dates for the full moon in Nov. & Dec. 1941.
  
  

• SPOILER: The film, as well as the book by Lothar G. Buchheim on which it's based, are both loosely adapted from the wartime career of the Type VIIC boat U-96, and its skipper, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock. In late 1941, Buchheim, who was then a war correspondent in the German Navy's propaganda office, joined the crew of U-96 for one tour in the Battle of the Atlantic. This tour became the basis of Buchheim's book. (In the film, the character Lt. Werner is based on Buchheim.) During the war, Capt.-Lt. Lehmann-Willenbrock ranked seventh among U-Boat skippers in terms of shipping tonnage sunk (183,223 tons on three boats, the U-5, the U-96, and the U-256). After transferring to a new skipper, the U-96 was retired on 5 February 1943, one of the few U-boats to actually survive its tour of duty in the Atlantic. Far from being killed in an air attack (as depicted in the film), Lehmann-Willenbrock survived the war, and later served as captain on various German merchant cargo ships. Lehmann-Willenbrock and Buchheim both served as technical advisers for this film (although the volatile Buchheim fell out with director Wolfgang Petersen, who refused to let the author write the script based on his book). Lehmann-Willenbrock died in Bremen in 1986. Buchheim died in Bavaria in 2007.
  
  
• SPOILER: Wolfgang Petersen's wife, Maria, came up with who was to be killed in the film's conclusion.
  
  

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