Introduction

A submarine commander is forced to blow up a Japanese ship with prisoners.

Outline

The American submarine Greyfish, under Lieutenant Commander/Commander Barney Doyle (Glenn Ford), searches for the Shinaru, one of the Japanese aircraft carriers that led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Doyle receives word that the target has an escort, including a transport ship Yoshida Maru carrying his wife and child, who were captured in the Philippines.

As luck would have it, Greyfish finds the ships. Doyle’s second in command, Lieutenant/Lieutenant Commander Archer Sloan (Ernest Borgnine) tries to talk his friend out of risking the lives of his family, but Doyle proceeds with the attack. To their horror, their torpedoes sink the transport. The Japanese make no attempt to rescue the survivors, hoping to lure the sub to the surface. Doyle is forced to leave the prisoners to drown.

Doyle manages to follow the Shinaru into Tokyo Bay itself and tries again to sink his nemesis, but fails and barely escapes from Japanese destroyers. The Greyfish then returns to Pearl Harbour. There, Vice Admiral Setton (Philip Ober) wants to promote Doyle to a desk job, but his anguished second-in-command Sloan begs on behalf of his friend and superior officer for and gets one last chance at the Shinaru. Sloan turns down a command of his own to accompany him.

Doyle is assigned a quiet, out-of-the-way patrol area off the Alaskan coast, but fortune is with him. He encounters the Shinaru once more. The sub sustains some damage from a collision with a boom and has to launch its attack using sonar only. After the torpedoes are away, the sub is sent to the bottom by the Shinaru’s escort with depth-charges. The crewmen are able to exit and use Momsen lungs to reach the surface, where they are rescued by a sister sub, who sinks the escort. When they are brought aboard, they are told that they have sunk the Shinaru.

Trivia & Goofs

• N/A

Production & Filming Details

• Directer: Joseph Pevney.
• Writers: William Wister Haines and Richard Sale.
• Producer: Edmund Grainger.
• Cinematography: George J. Fosley.
• Editor: Gene Ruggiero.
• Distribution: MGM.
• Release Date: 24 October 1958 (US), 11 January 1959 (UK).
• Running time: 98 minutes.
• Country: US.
• Language: English.

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