![]() While this rarely happened, such destroyer-vs-submarine duels did take place on one or two real-life occasions. While the U-boats did occasionally eavesdrop after stumbling upon the transmitting frequency of the escort ships, as far as we know, they were never able to transmit on that frequency, nor were they able to hack into and broadcast over the convoy's inter-ship communication system.ĭid Allied warships ever get so close to German U-boats that they were almost touching? At several points in the film, a German U-boat uses Greyhound's transmitting frequency and broadcasts threatening messages over the ship's loudspeakers. Tom Hanks' Commander Ernest Krause is a fictional character.ĭid German U-boats taunt U.S. To emphasize the importance of the battle, Winston Churchill coined the name "Battle of the Atlantic," intentionally alluding to the Battle of Britain. Losing the supply lines was a constant worry for the Allies. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous battle of WWII. ![]() It was also more difficult to remain unnoticed by the Germans. Logistically, moving approximately 40 ships as a cohesive unit was anything but easy. The strategy that the Allies used was to send a group of merchant ships across the Atlantic in a convoy that was escorted by a group of warships, and, when feasible, aircraft. Germany used squadrons of U-boats known as wolf packs, in addition to various warships, to prowl the Atlantic Ocean and hunt down and attack Allied convoys, which is what they do to the convoy Commander Krause's ships are protecting in the Greyhound movie. There would have been no American soldiers for D-Day, and in turn, no D-Day and no victory. There wouldn't have been enough men, food, weapons, or resources to make weapons. Germany knew that stopping the supply line would essentially give them victory in Britain and the rest of Europe, as well as the Soviet Union, thus ending the war. ![]() and Canada needed to maintain the vital flow of supplies and men to Europe in order to keep up the fight. The WWII battle focused on Germany's effort to cut off transatlantic supply lines by gaining control of the Atlantic Ocean. The part of Greyhound that's based on a true story is the Battle of the Atlantic, in which the fictional USS Keeling becomes involved. While it's a nice nod to the ship the movie was filmed on, in real life, the USS Kidd wasn't launched until late February 1943, several months after the events in the movie take place. If you listen closely during the movie, one of the sailors on the ship refers to a buddy he knows who was on the Kidd. One of the main reasons the filmmakers chose to shoot on the historic battleship is because the Kidd is the only surviving WWII destroyer still in her wartime configuration. The USS Kidd has been docked in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for years, where it has served as a tourist attraction. Kidd, who lost his life on the bridge of the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. A large portion of the movie was shot aboard the USS Kidd (DD-661), a Fletcher-class Navy destroyer named after Rear Admiral Isaac C. A Greyhound fact check reveals that the USS Keeling (codenamed "Greyhound") is fictional and was not a real-life Navy destroyer. Was the USS Keeling a real naval destroyer? While the movie finds Tom Hanks' Commander Ernest Krause and the convoy caught up in the Battle of the Atlantic over a five-day period in the latter part of 1942, the battle actually spanned almost the entirety of the war, beginning on Septemand ending on May 8, 1945.
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