Suicide Fleet is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by Albert S. Rogell, written by Lew Lipton and F. McGrew Willis, and starring William Boyd, Robert Armstrong, James Gleason, and Ginger Rogers.
Three friends who work on the Coney Island Boardwalk, Skeets O'Reilly, Baltimore Clark, and Dutch Herman are all in love with the same woman, Sally.
The three are assigned to a US Naval destroyer, Dutch and Skeets subordinate to Baltimore, who is promoted to a chief petty officer, because he has served in the navy before.
The three sailors are part of the boarding party, and Baltimore manages to take possession of coded dispatches prior to the ship's sinking.
In early March 1931, RKO announced that Boyd's first picture with the fledgling studio would be the submarine drama, Suicide Fleet.
[8] By July both James Gleason and Robert Armstrong had been attached to the film, and it was published that Pierre Collings had been allocated to assist writing the screenplay.
[1] The trade papers announced Sal Polito as the director of photography and Denzel A. Cutler as the sound editor.
[11] Even though the film was already in production, the final pieces of the cast were announced in late August: Frank Reicher, Henry Victor, and Hans Joby.
[15] In late August, the cast and crew spent several weeks at sea filming, 25–50 miles off the coast of San Diego, California, in cooperation with the United States Navy, before returning to the Culver City studio.