Although by this point Sidney Poitier had been making films for 15 years, this was the first film he made in which his race was neither mentioned nor relevant.
Interior scenes were filmed aboard a British Type 15 frigate, the H.M.S. Troubridge. This is why even though this is supposed to be an American frigate, much British military equipment can seen around the ship.
As the actions of the captain become more obsessive, Munceford (Sidney Poitier) tells him, "You're not chasing whales now!" This is a reference to Ahab, the single-minded whaling captain in "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, whose obsession leads to the destruction of his crew and on whom the character of Capt. Finlander (Richard Widmark) ultimately was based.
The U.S. Department of Defense withheld full cooperation in making the picture after negative portrayals of the U.S. military in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Seven Days in May (1964). These pictures strained the Pentagon's relations with Hollywood filmmakers. However, according to a contemporary article in the Los Angeles Times, director James B. Harris and screenwriter James Poe were able to visit a U.S. Navy destroyer based at Norfolk, Virginia for pre-production research in late 1963.
Generally, ordnance fired from US Navy surface ships cannot be disarmed after being launched.
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