Crash Dive

Crash Dive is a typical WWII propaganda film with a stirring musical score by Hugo Friedhofer that prompts any young man to want to enlist in the navy. The cast is uniformly good, especially Tyrone Power as he cleverly tries to woo a reluctant Anne Baxter. Sub skipper Dana Andrews always excelled in military roles. The plot borders on the ridiculous. A German naval base in the north Atlantic- where? An American submarine conducting offensive operations in the Atlantic would likely have been attacked on sight by Allied forces who would naturally assume all subs in the Atlantic were German (such was the fate of one U.S. sub which left New London for the Panama Canal and was never heard from again). Good action scenes for a film of this genre with many of the clichés that would be repeated in other WWII submarine films.

Fantastic special effects highlight this World War II submarine drama starring Tyrone Power, Dana Andrews, and Anne Baxter - Power's last before going into the Marines.

Power is charming as a man who captures the heart of Anne Baxter, who though he doesn't know it, just happens to be the girl of Dana Andrews, Power's new commanding officer.

Out on the submarine, there's some exciting action as the sub searches for a secret base set up by the Nazis. One interesting subplot is the friendship of Oliver, a black soldier, with Mac, portrayed by James Gleason. Ben Carter, who played Oliver, does a great job, and his role as a concerned friend and brave soldier is not the usual stereotypical one blacks were often forced to play.

The ending, of course, is pure propaganda as Power, supposedly talking to his uncle, talks about the fighting men, subs, PT boats, and the like all doing their job.

I'm in no way trying to denigrate it - propaganda is a fascinating part of film history and at that time was deemed important to the war movement. It's all very interesting to view today. And Power is gorgeous.

This is one of very few films shot partly at the submarine base in Groton, CT, aka Submarine Base New London, CT.

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 the fictional USS Corsair is the experimental USS Marlin (SS-205), with a conning tower modified to resemble her sister USS Mackerel (SS-204). A few O-class and R-class submarines, built in World War One and used for training in WW2, are visible in the background of some shots. For wartime security reasons, no submarine classes used in combat in WW2 appear in the film. The USS Semmes (AG-24 ex-DD-189) is seen in one shot; there are probably not many good Technicolor views of a four-stack destroyer available today. The Semmes was being used as a sonar testbed at the time.

I personally did not like how the love story progressed, as Tyrone Power is consistently deceptive and gets the girl anyway.

Another reviewer has assumed that the Nazi base would have to be near New England on the basis that WW2 submarines had a short range. This is incorrect. US submarines in WW2 routinely went from Pearl Harbor to Japan's home waters, patrolled for several weeks, and returned to Pearl Harbor on a single tank of diesel fuel. A Gato-class submarine could cover 11,000 miles without refueling, thus could have patrolled in German home waters while based in Groton if necessary. My assumption is that the Nazi base would be in Greenland, not likely given the realities of the war, but the raid on it still makes for good action.

Crash Dive was one of many films to be released during WWII. Its pluses are good acting, supplied by Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter and Dana Andrews and award winning special effects. The story takes place in and around our then American sub base in New London Ct. In between battles with the German navy, a love story evolves with Tyrone Power and Dana Andrews after the same woman played by Anne Baxter.James Gleason is a bonus as one of the sub's seasoned crew memebers.

Tyrone Power and Dana Andrews take on the Nazi's in their submarine. When it comes to nautical movies you just can't beat a good old submarine story, the claustriphobic atmosphere of the sub, the inevitable sweating in the dark, listening to the ping of the sonar and anticipating the rocking explosions of the depth charges... And it's all in glorious colour, which is unusual for a war movie actually made during the war. Throw in a love triangle and a commando attack on a secret Nazi base and you have a solid patriotic entertainment (it even encourages you to buy war bonds over the final credits!).