Das Boot is a 1981 West German war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer and Klaus Wennemann. An adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s 1973 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, the film is set during World War II and follows the German submarine U-96 and her crew, as they set out on a hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.
Das Boot was primarily filmed at Bavaria Studios in Munich, Germany, where detailed U-boat mock-ups were mounted on hydraulic rockers to simulate motion. External, historically accurate scenes were shot at the La Pallice submarine pens in La Rochelle, France, with additional exterior, water-based footage filmed in the North Sea near Heligoland and the Bodensee (Lake Constance).
La Pallice
La Pallice is the commercial deep-water port of La Rochelle, France used for filming location for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Das Boot.