It's worse than that. The film is loosely based on an action carried out by British forces, the capture and subsequent scuttling of U-110 by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Bulldog. Nine seamen boarded the damaged u-boat in rough seas via a wooden rowboat which broke up as they were boarding, and extracted the Enigma machine. Bulldog was then forced away to engage another u-boat, meaning that the seamen had to remain aboard the sinking u-boat for another five hours until Bulldog could return to retrieve them. U-110 was then scuttled in order to fool German intelligence into thinking the Enigma had not been captured.Rawne1980 said:
This was an important action, as Naval Enigma was much harder to crack than the version of Enigma used by the Army and Luftwaffe.
Fifteen Enigmas were captured from u-boats in WW2. Thirteen by the Royal Navy, one by the Royal Canadian Navy and one by the US Navy in 1944 long after Naval Enigma had been cracked.
The screenwriter said later that he felt bad about the historical inaccuracy and would not do something like that again.
One part was based on real American heroism, though: the sacrifice made by the captain is based on a US Navy submarine captain in the Pacific fleet, who was wounded on the deck and ordered his men to leave him there and submerge the boat.
But for me, the nationality of a hero doesn't matter, and one person's actions don't reflect on their whole country, so I'm not bothered.
