Naval Warfare Movies

Hitler's Lost Sub

Published: 2000
Country: USA
Length: 120 min.
Keywords: WWII, Documentary

This is the VHS release (see more).


This documentary combines two stories: German U-boat warfare in the two world wars, and the search for the identity of a U-boat found off the coast of New Jersey in 1991. Footage from wartime propaganda films and newsreels, and interviews with U-boat veterans and experts in the field, provide the backdrop for the historical scenes. Among those interviewed were Erich Topp, Horst von Schroeter of U-123, and authors Timothy Mulligan and Clay Blair. Footage of Horst Bredow at the U-boot-Archiv was also included. The account of the seven-year search for an identifying mark on the sunken U-boat is accompanied by footage of the dive team and underwater shots of the wreck. Three divers perished on the wreck in the course of those seven years. At last, several finds (a knife engraved with a crewman's name, a plate bearing the boat's number) established the boat as U-869. Two mysteries still remain - how the boat came to the US coast when she was thought to have been sunk on the other side of the Atlantic near Rabat; and how she met her end (the most likely cause is thought to be a hit from one of her own circling torpedoes).


Shown in slightly altered form in the UK as The Mystery of the Missing U-boat and in Germany as Letzte Feindfahrt: Das Rätselhafte Schicksal von U869.