this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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I lost it during Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy stowed away on the outside of a U-boat and then rode it like a thousand miles across the Mediterranean or wherever they were. I guess they thought submarines just buttoned up when they left port and nobody ever went outside on the conning tower. And they never dove or anything.
It's been way too long since I watched Raiders, but I remember it being great so I'll have to watch it again.
That definitely sounds stupid. The only saving grace might be that U-boats, unlike modern submarines, very rarely went underwater. They had diesel engines that ran the engines on the surface and also charged batteries. They could use the batteries underwater, but they didn't last long. When they attacked they'd go underwater so they could ambush the ships they were attacking. But, to set up for that attack they'd race ahead of the ship while staying above the water, then go under for the ambush. Even a lot of the attacking happened above the water. Yes, they had torpedoes, but they also had deck guns. Since their targets were mostly commercial ships, they didn't have to worry about the ships shooting back.
On the other hand, the fact they were used on the surface meant that there was almost always a crew on the conning tower. Technically you could do everything without using the conning tower bridge. But, they almost never did. Even during storms they were up on the conning tower, not sheltering inside. It was awful being exposed to the elements like that, but the visibility through a periscope was awful compared to standing outside.
I've read a lot of memoirs from WWII submariners (German, American and British - not sure if there are any Japanese memoirs in existence) and they always made test dives at the start of a trip, just to make sure everything was shipshape. Even if they somehow hadn't noticed Indy clinging desperately to the conning tower, he would have been left behind pretty early on. Unless he had gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld.
Fun fact: the British experimented with subs that mounted a (fixed) 12" gun taken from a decommissioned battleship. The idea was that they would surface just enough to expose the gun and then blast enemy merchant ships. This actually sort of worked, except that the remote-firing mechanism tended to get water in it and the gun would shoot its own barrel off. And since the barrel was wire-wrapped (a technique the Brits loved) the blown-off part would stay attached and act as an anchor.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to do a test dive right at the start.
A 12 inch gun on a sub is crazy. That's not just a gun from a battleship, that's one of the main guns from the battleship. That's a ridiculous amount of overkill for a merchant ship. If you wanted to ambush armoured enemy ships that's another matter. If you could successfully do that, it might not even matter if the gun only lasted a few shots. A sub is cheap compared to anything requiring a 12 inch gun. I'm surprised they got far enough with the program to actually test fire them.
Since the gun could only be loaded while the sub was surfaced, it had to sink its target in one shot, which was unlikely to be the case against warships, even something small and unarmored like a destroyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_M1_(1917)
Good luck managing to hit a destroyer with a fixed gun.
I would imagine that if you did manage a hit though, it would be devastating. I don't think there were many ships that could shrug off hits from a 12 inch gun. Even if it didn't sink, it would probably be badly damaged, which might give the sub the opportunity to surface somewhere safe, reload, and shoot again.
The destroyers at the Battle off Samar took multiple hits from Yamato's 18.1" guns. The initial hits were armor-piercing rounds that passed right through without doing much of anything, but they took multiple hits before sinking even after the Japanese switched to high-explosive shells. I think a single hit on a destroyer from a 12" shell would certainly not sink it, and depending on where it hit it would probably not even be seriously disabled. Given the close range (less than 1000 yards), the destroyer's deck guns would still knock out the sub pretty quickly.
It is a fun pulp adventure action movie, but if you expect realism you gotta stop there. As far as I know it was all inspired by old serial shows and pulp stories from magazines. Ya gotta just let certain stories be fun. Though as a geek it is fun to rag on their issues I know, have done that lots.
But yes seemed silly he hung on the uboat that long, I wondered about it growing up since was a regular watched movie, that was a long freaking trip to be hanging regardless of food service and comfort.