Very interesting Jim. That explains the crew's switch from feet to meters,
with no hesitation whatsoever in the dialog, as well as the targeting in
yards. Question - you said targetting remained in yards up through the Cold
War, is that still the case?
Nat
PS: Carleton mentioned Das Boat, which was certainly the grand-dad of those
movies. In its original German/subtitled form it was in meters, and in its
later English-dubbed version (somewhere in my videos) it's also in meters.
Don't know what happened after Hollywood changed the name to "The Boat".
> That movie depicts and grossly distorts a bit of World War II history
> but in the process makes a pretty decent Hollywood story. As a
> submariner who served a few decades later, perhaps I can add a bit of
> "local color" to Nat's message.
>
> In the 70s and the 80s I served on four nuclear submarines (plus a
> small, nuclear powered research sub). While still bound to certain oaths
> (I am still a Navy officer, but "retired"), I can still assure you that
> the Cold War submariner was cognizant that submariners of other
> countries controlled the keel depths of their submarines in terms of
> meters. That knowledge of course has certain tactical value. American
> submariners measured their own keel depths in feet, however. During that
> same period, American submariners did their target analysis and ranging
> in terms of yards, as well as their torpedo settings. These were the
> practices in WW II and they continued on through the Cold War.
>
> Of personal interest to me was some of the fire control equipment I
> used. This term refers to equipment used to solve target motion problems
> and to aim and provide settings for torpedos, not for fire fighting.
> Some of that equipment grew out of WW II equipment. One sub I served on
> was built in the 50s and it still used a very old style Position Keeper
> that grew out of the WW II hand-held "is-was" board; we used the same
> techniques on it for periscope approaches (to the firing point) that
> were used in WW II. Why mess with success?
>
> Jim
>
> Nat Hager III wrote:
> >
>
> > I enjoyed the WWII sub movie U-571 a week ago, in which an American crew
> > commandeers a Nazi U-boat, and are reading its depth gauges in
> meters. The
> > use of meters throughout the dilaog is pervasive, even in one tense seen
> > where they're approaching crush depth: "180 meters!....190
> meteres!....200
> > meters!....", with lots of tight shots of metric depth gauges
> and perspiring
> > faces.
> >
> > Later, however, they give the range to target as 1000 yards.
> >
> > Nat
> ....
>
>
