Editing U-571 (film) (section)

==Historical inaccuracies==
[[File:U-110 and HMS Bulldog.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|{{HMS|Bulldog|H91|6}} capturing {{GS|U-110|1940|2}} and its [[Enigma machine]], 9 May 1941]]
The film's story and characters are fictional.  The film sparked controversy during its production and release.<ref>{{Cite web |title= U-571: Plausible Fiction?|date=October 2000 |url=https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2000/october/u-571-plausible-fiction }}</ref> Anger over the film's inaccuracies reached the [[House of Commons]].<ref name="blair"/> Labour MP [[Brian Jenkins (politician)|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 of the United Kingdom|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."<ref name="blair">{{cite news |date=June 7, 2000 |title=U-boat film an 'affront', says Blair |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/781858.stm |access-date=August 18, 2006 |work=BBC News}}</ref> [[Paul Truswell]], for the constituency of [[Pudsey (UK Parliament constituency)|Pudsey]], a town closely associated with {{HMS|Aubrietia|K96|6}}, wrote to the US president [[Bill Clinton]], who acknowledged that the film's plot was only a work of fiction.<ref name="bbc-storm">
{{cite news |date=June 2, 2000 |title=Storm over U-boat film |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/773913.stm |access-date=August 18, 2006 |work=BBC News}}</ref> 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]]''.<ref name=white>{{cite news |url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6738785.ece |title=The 10 most historically inaccurate movies |last=White |first=Caroline |work=[[The Sunday Times]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110615070116/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6738785.ece |archive-date=June 15, 2011 |access-date=November 15, 2013}}</ref>

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"<ref name="bbc-capturing"/> 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<ref name="bbc-storm"/> 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''.<ref name="bbc-capturing">{{cite news |date=June 2, 2000 |title=Capturing the real ''U-571'' |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/774427.stm |access-date=August 18, 2006 |work=BBC News}}</ref>

Author Hugh Sebag argues that while the media may have made reports on the fact that the British made the most crucial captures,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/u-571-true-history-behind-matthew-mcconaugheys-ww2-enigma-machine/ | title='An affront to the memories of British sailors': The lies that sank Hollywood's sub thriller U-571 | work=The Telegraph | date=August 3, 2020 | last1=Fordy | first1=Tom }}</ref> 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.<ref name="ayer-admits">
{{cite news |date=August 18, 2006 |title=''U-571'' writer regrets 'distortion' |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5263164.stm |access-date=August 18, 2006 |work=BBC News}}</ref> 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."<ref name="ayer-admits"/>

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]].<ref name="channel4.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/film-u571.html |title=History |publisher=Channel 4 |access-date=March 9, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 24, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100124073957/http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/film-u571.html }}</ref>  [[Gordon Welchman]], head of [[Hut 6]] at Bletchley Park, wrote: "Hut 6 [[Ultra (cryptography)|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 {{GS|U-110|1940|2}}, was made on 9 May 1941 by {{HMS|Bulldog|H91|6}} of the Royal Navy, commanded by Captain [[Joe Baker-Cresswell]] assisted by HMS ''Aubrietia'', seven months before the United States entered the war.<ref>{{Citation |last=Moseley |first=Ray |title=Hollywood Insults British Intelligence: Captain's Son Says Film About Capture Of Nazi Encoding Device Is Distortion Of History |date=March 4, 1999 |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1999/03/04/hollywood-insults-british-intelligence/}}</ref>  The United States's involvement in the [[Western Front (World War II)|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 {{GS|U-559||2}}, 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]]."<ref name="channel4.com"/> 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 {{GS|U-505||2}} in June 1944: by this time, the Allies were already routinely decoding German naval Enigma traffic. 

[[File:Pennsylvania Sun.jpg|thumb|The tanker ''Pennsylvania Sun'', torpedoed by ''U-571'' on 15 July 1942 (was saved and returned to service in 1943)]]

The actual {{GS|U-571||2}}, 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]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Taylor |first=John Charles |title=German Warships of World War II |date=1968 |publisher=Doubleday |page=132 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MF9NAAAAMAAJ&q=u-571 |access-date=7 February 2022 |language=en}}</ref> She was hit by [[depth charge]]s, dropped from a [[Short Sunderland]] Mk III flying boat, ''EK577'', callsign "D for Dog", belonging to [[No. 461 Squadron RAAF|No. 461 Squadron]], [[Royal Australian Air Force]] (RAAF) <ref name="uboatnet">{{cite web
 |url=http://uboat.net/boats/u571.htm|title=The Type VIIC boat U-571|last=Helgason |first=Guðmundur |website=German U-boats of WWII - uboat.net|access-date=29 July 2022}}</ref> and based at [[RAF Pembroke Dock]] in [[Wales]]. The aircraft's commander, [[Flight lieutenant|Flt Lt]] Richard Lucas, reported that most of the U-boat's 52 crew managed to abandon ship, but all died from [[hypothermia]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Miles |first=John |date=1 Aug 2000 |title=U-571, The True Australian Story |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/259458603 |work=Air Force News |page=26}}</ref> 

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.<ref name="uboatwar">{{cite book |last=Blair |first=Clay |author-link=Clay Blair |title=Hitler's U-Boat War – The Hunters, 1939–1942 |publisher=Modern Library |year=1996 |isbn=0-679-64032-0 |pages=81, 85–86, 144}}</ref> 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 {{GS|U-852||2}} after the sinking of the Greek ship ''Peleus'' in 1944.<ref name="PBS">{{cite news |date=December 16, 2006 |title=NOVA Online: Hitler's Lost Sub |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostsub/map_u0852.html |access-date=December 16, 2006 |publisher=[[PBS]]}}</ref>

The real {{USS|S-33|SS-138|6}} was stationed in the [[Pacific Ocean]] from June 1942 until the end of the war. She was sold for scrap in 1946.<ref name="SS 33"/> 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 (United States)|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 {{USS|S-26|SS-131|2}} 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, {{USS|PC-460||2}}, in January 1942.<ref name="SS 33">{{cite web |date=2007-07-30 |title=SS-105 S-1 |url=http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ss-105-unit.htm |access-date=2007-07-30 |publisher=[[Globalsecurity.org]]}}</ref>

The [[Kriegsmarine]] destroyer [[Type 1936C destroyer|''Z-49'']] was ordered on 12 June 1943 but never laid down, let alone completed and sailed.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Koop |first1=Gerhard |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TZHPBQAAQBAJ&q=z49 |title=German Destroyers of World War II: Warships of the Kriegsmarine |last2=Schmolke |first2=Klaus-Peter |date=22 July 2014 |publisher=Seaforth Publishing |isbn=978-1-4738-4670-8 |page=xliv |language=en |access-date=7 February 2022 |name-list-style=and}}</ref>

===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 [[German World War II destroyers|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.<ref name="germandestroyers">{{cite book
 | last = Williamson
 | first = Gordon
 | title = German Destroyers 1939–45
 | url = https://archive.org/details/germandestroyers00will
 | url-access = limited
 | publisher = [[Osprey Publishing]]
 | year = 2003x
 | page = [https://archive.org/details/germandestroyers00will/page/n6 6]| isbn = 9781841765044
 }}</ref>

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|P68|6}} sank {{GS|U-864||2}} with torpedoes.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.uboat.net/boats/u864.htm|title=The Type IXD2 U-boat U-864 – German U-boats of WWII|website=Uboat.net|access-date=November 6, 2017}}</ref>

German [[Type XIV submarine|Type XIV supply U-boats]] or ''Milchkühe'' ("milk cows") did not have [[torpedo tube]]s or [[deck gun]]s, being armed only with anti-aircraft guns for defense, and therefore could not have attacked other vessels.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.uboat.net/types/xiv.htm|title=Type XIV Milch Cows (supply boats) – U-boat Types – German U-boats of WWII – Kriegsmarine|website=Uboat.net|access-date=November 6, 2017}}</ref>