The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous campaign of the Second World War running its entire six years.

Much of the battle was fought in weather conditions reminiscent of what you see on the deadliest catch a reality

show about cranky grandpa's and retrofitted World War II era boats fighting the elements

and their quasi criminal crews to catch Alaskan King Krabs, which, if you're

in the target demo for today's film, I hardly need to tell you.

Those conditions have made it devilishly tricky to portray what crews in the Battle of the Atlantic went through,

but it has always been a temptation because it's such a fertile subject for war films.

Its depiction has become easier and easier to address as production technology is advanced.

You build the deck of a ship in a bathtub on a sound stage and spray your actors with hose water

and it's not really going to give us a feeling of being there. Put that deck on a

gimble and pitch the actors around while a 3D background is procedurally

generated on the green screen behind them and you can get a little closer as with today's film.

We've watched many films about this battle and considered it from many different angles.

We've previously reviewed at least half a dozen films that focus on this theater of the war,

each from a slightly different vantage point.

We've seen the British Navy both on destroyers and tugboats, American merchant Marines, American Submariners, and German U-boatsmen.

But aside from 1957's The Enemy Below,

we've spent very little time on the deck of an American destroyer in the Atlantic.

One thing all these films have in common is how scary they feel.

Naval combat films in particular seem to invite the cultivation of dread in the audience, and it leads to some recency

by us.

What was the scariest gig in the Battle of the Atlantic?

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