Movies - The Enemy Below

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	Movies - The Enemy Below

The Enemy Below is a 1957 film which tells the story of battle between the captain of an American destroyer escort and the commander of a German submarine during World War II. It stars Robert Mitchum, Curd Jürgens, David Hedison and Theodore Bikel. The movie was directed and produced by Dick Powell.

The movie revolves around a Buckley class destroyer escort, the USS 'Haynes' (DE-181), and a German U-boat attempting to rendezvous with a German merchant raider in the South Atlantic Ocean during World War II. The 'Haynes' is commanded by Captain Murrell (Robert Mitchum), a former merchant marine sailor whose wife was killed when his freighter was sunk by a torpedo during the Second Battle of the Atlantic. Now in command of a destroyer escort, Captain Murrell must track down and destroy a U-boat commanded by Captain von Stolberg (Curd Jürgens) in a personal battle of wits between the two captains. In the end, Captain Murrell rams the U-boat with his destroyer, sinking both.

The film 'The Enemy Below' starring the USS Whitehurst ‘playing’ the USS Haynes was based on the novel by Denys Rayner DSC & Bar, VRD, RNVR, (1908-1967) - a WW2 British naval officer involved in submarine warfare throughout the second Battle of the Atlantic. In the movie, Rayner’s fictional HMS Hecate becomes the USS Haynes, and a pipe smoking chess-playing British Captain Murrell becomes Mitchum's US Captain while Jürgens plays Rayner's Kapitän Peter von Stolberg. Rayner’s book does not identify Hecate – beyond saying she was “a Western Approaches destroyer” - Von Stolberg’s words on noting her camouflage via the periscope of U-121. Published a year earlier, Rayner's description of the tension between an aristocratic German, contemptuous of Hitler and a nazi subordinate is depicted in the film and may have been the first of successive "good German-bad German" war movie scenarios. The reconciliation between commanders in the movie's finale differs from Rayner's version, where after initial attempts at politeness, both commanders and the rest of the swimming survivors are left "locked in deadly combat" - an ending reminiscent of John Boorman's 1969 WW2 film 'Hell in the Pacific' starring Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune.

The Star Trek episode Balance of Terror was loosely based on 'The Enemy below'.

'The Enemy Below' received an Academy Award for best special effects. The destroyer escort 'Haynes' was portrayed by the USS Whitehurst (DE-634) and was filmed in the Pacific near Oahu, Hawaii. Many of the Whitehurst's crewmen participated. The men wearing the telephone headsets, the gun and depth charge crews, the sailor fishing, and all of the men seen abandoning ship, were Whitehurst sailors. The ship's Commanding Officer, LCDR Walter Smith, played the role of Engineering Officer. He is the man seen reading the comics during the lull before the action. The Whitehurst website, linked below, has more on this story including several still photos taken during the filming.

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