The story describes World War II submarine warfare in the Pacific Ocean, and deals with themes of vengeance, endurance, courage, loyalty, and honor, and how these can be tested during wartime.

He persuades the Navy Board to give him a new submarine command with the provision that his executive officer be someone who has just returned from active sea patrol.

The crew figures out that Richardson is avoiding legitimate targets to enter the Bungo Straits undetected in direct violation of his mission orders.

After blowing up a cargo ship and engaging Bungo Pete, they are attacked by aircraft that had clearly been alerted to their presence and were waiting in ambush.

Since the Japanese believe the Nerka has been sunk, he returns to the Bungo Straits to fight the Akikaze, which the submarine sinks with a bow shot, only to be attacked again by a mystery torpedo.

Ensign Keith Leone, a sympathetic and loyal major character of the novel, is replaced by an unsympathetic and disloyal one who did not appear in the novel, Cartwright, to advance the conflict.

The US Navy, which helped with the film's production, may have been concerned with reviving memories of a 1943 incident in which Dudley W. Morton fired on Japanese shipwreck survivors while commanding USS Wahoo (SS-238).

This submarine had earlier portrayed the Nautilus in the Walt Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and made several appearances in the television series The Silent Service.

Rear Admiral Rob Roy McGregor, who had commanded two fleet boats (Grouper and Sea Cat) during World War II, acted as the technical advisor.

Director Robert Wise had real submariners working with the cast until they could realistically depict the complexities of these torpedo attacks.

The US Navy and the production company staged a premiere for several journalists onboard the USS Perch, while she was "seven miles off Long Beach and 60 feet down".

To the extent that the events depicted might appear hard to believe, he cited the credentials of the novel's author and noted, "they look more like the real thing in good old black-and-white.

"[11] One critic later summarized the plot after it had been replicated in other submarine films: [T]he Executive Officer hates the Skipper and smolders valiantly in that compressed environment with the tacit complicity of the crew until the Old Man just plain old blows his stack and then we have a shouting match and, as is the way with guys, things get better and we outwit the [you supply it] lurking there beyond in the somber depths to sail home at last.