Crash Dive

Crash Dive (1943)

Tyrone Power -- Leading a reckless crew on the war's most daring mission!

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Date of release
1943-04-22
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (27)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
War, Romance, Drama, Action, Adventure, Thriller
Director
Archie Mayo

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 1. Including: Academy Award for Best Special Effects

Crash Dive is a World War II war film in Technicolor released in 1943. It was directed by Archie Mayo, written by Jo Swerling, and starred Tyrone Power, Dana Andrews, and Anne Baxter. The film was the last for Power before assignment to recruit training, as he had already enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

Background

Part of the film was shot at Naval Submarine Base New London, Connecticut. A few naval combatants rarely seen in Technicolor are visible in the early part of the film. The PT boats seen near the beginning are the 77-foot Elco type. The submarine primarily featured as Corsair was the experimental USS Marlin, with a conning tower modified to resemble her sister USS Mackerel.

One of the scenes in the film was similar to that in Destination Tokyo (1943) starring Cary Grant, where the submarines follow an enemy tanker into their naval base through a minefield. Another similar plot device was in the 1954 film Hell and High Water about an island base to be used to launch a Tupolev Tu-4, a copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, in U.S. markings for an sneak atomic bomb attack.

One interesting feature of the film is the significant role of African-American actor Ben Carter as messman Oliver Cromwell Jones. While most World War II films (particularly those made during the war) feature few, if any, African-American characters, Crash Dive is a notable exception.

It is possible portions of the film were inspired by the actions of the Greenland Patrol, a U.S. Coast Guard unit which patrolled the waters off Greenland, looking for Nazi weather stations and submarines. One such weather station was captured in June, 1941, which among other things impeded accurate German weather forecasting. Its personnel were taken to Boston and interned.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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