It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.

During production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96 during Buchheim's 1941 patrol and one of Germany's top U-boat "tonnage aces" during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as consultants.

One of Petersen's goals was to guide the audience through "a journey to the edge of the mind" (the film's German tagline Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes), showing "what war is all about".

Columbia Pictures issued both German-language and English-dubbed versions in the United States theatrically through their Triumph Classics label, earning $11 million.

[3] Das Boot received positive reviews, and was nominated for six Academy Awards; two of these (Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay) went to Petersen himself.

Lieutenant Werner, a war correspondent on the German submarine U-96 in October 1941, is driven by her captain and chief engineer to a French bordello, where he meets some of the crew.

The captain learns from an envoy of the German consulate that his request for Werner and the chief engineer to be sent back to Germany has been denied.

As they approach the Strait of Gibraltar and are about to dive, they are attacked and badly damaged by a British fighter plane, wounding the navigator, Kriechbaum.

After over 16 hours, they manage to surface by blowing their ballast tanks, and limp back towards La Rochelle under cover of darkness.

In 1973, Buchheim published a novel based on his wartime experiences, Das Boot (The Boat), a fictionalised autobiographical account narrated by a "Leutnant Werner".

This effort primarily failed due to technical concerns, for example, how to film the close encounter of the two German submarines at sea during a storm.

This ensured natural growth of beards and hair, increasing skin pallor, and signs of strain on the actors, who had, just like real U-boat men, spent many months in a cramped, unhealthy atmosphere.

The production included the construction of several models of different sizes, as well as a complete, detailed reconstruction of the interior of the U-96, a Type VIIC-class U-boat.

Petersen states in the DVD audio commentary that young men from throughout West Germany and Austria were recruited for the film, as he wanted faces and dialects that would accurately reflect the diversity of the Third Reich around 1941.

The outdoor mock-up was basically a shell propelled with a small engine, and stationed in La Rochelle, France, and has a history of its own.

[13] A few weeks later, during production, the mock-up cracked in a storm and sank, was recovered and patched to stand in for the final scenes.

The full-sized mock-up was used during the Gibraltar surface scenes; the attacking aircraft (played by a North American T-6 Texan / Harvard) and rockets were real while the British ships were models.

[citation needed][14] A mock-up of a conning tower was placed in a water tank at the Bavaria Studios in Munich for outdoor scenes not requiring a full view of the boat's exterior.

When filming on the outdoor mock-up or the conning tower, jets of cold water were hosed over the actors to simulate the breaking ocean waves.

In this he was considerably assisted by the numerous photographs Lothar-Günther Buchheim had taken during his own voyage on the historical U-96, some of which had been published in his 1976 book, U-Boot-Krieg ("U-Boat War").

Most of the interior shots were filmed using a hand-held Arriflex of cinematographer Jost Vacano's design to convey the claustrophobic atmosphere of the boat.

As the film received partial financing by West German television broadcasters WDR and the SDR, more footage was shot than was shown in the theatrical version.

[27] Prior to the 55th Academy Awards on 11 April 1983 the movie received six nominations: Cinematography for Jost Vacano; Directing for Wolfgang Petersen; Film Editing for Hannes Nikel; Sound for Milan Bor, Trevor Pyke and Mike Le-Mare; Sound Effects Editing for Mike Le-Mare; and Writing (Screenplay based on material from another medium) for Wolfgang Petersen.

The critical consensus states "Taut, breathtakingly thrilling, and devastatingly intelligent, Das Boot is one of the greatest war films ever made.

[32] In late 2007, there was an exhibition about the film Das Boot, as well as about the real U-boat U-96, at the Haus der Geschichte (House of German History) in Bonn.

The characteristic lead melody of the soundtrack, composed and produced by Klaus Doldinger, took on a life of its own after German rave group U96 created a remixed "techno version" in 1991.

Songs heard in the film, but not included on the album are "La Paloma" sung by Rosita Serrano, the "Erzherzog-Albrecht-Marsch" (a popular military march), "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" performed by the Red Army Chorus, "Heimat, Deine Sterne" and the "Westerwald-Marsch".