Stupidity: No U-boat commander is going to "finish off" a ship that is dead in the water and is on fire from stem to stern. He exposes his boat and his men to mortal peril by surfacing, brightly lit by a full moon and the fires burning on the sinking ship, making them a sitting duck for the destroyers that might well be still in the area. He also wastes a precious torpedo for absolutely no net gain.
Das Boot (1981)
1 stupidity
Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Gronemeyer, Hubertus Bengsch, Klaus Wennemann
Revealing mistake: In one scene just before the attack on a big Hunter the young captain (Jürgen Prochnow) is sitting with his charts. Beside him he has got a glass of beer standing. The sub lurches heavily right and left in the hard weather, but the surface of the liquid stays the same.
Captain: I'm sorry.
Lt. Werner: Is it hopeless?
Captain: It's been 15 hours. He's not going to pull it off. I'm sorry.
Lt. Werner: I asked for it. 'To be heading into the inexorable... where no mother will care for us... no woman crosses our path... where only reality reigns... with cruelty and grandeur.' I was drunk with those words. Well, this is reality.
Trivia: The movie is based on actual events and some of the characters have existed in real life. One of them, Pilgrim, took his own life after the book on which the movie is based was released.
Question: What's the music the German band are playing at the end when U96 returns to port?
Answer: It's the 'Erzherzog Albrecht Marsch', composed 1887.