Val Guest and Robert Day were asked to direct.
Krisling:
One may not like the French people but one cannot help appreciating their wine.
The U-53, which is shown arriving to effect the rescue of the Germans late in the War, had been sunk by the British destroyer HMS Gurkha west of the Orkney Islands in February 1940. The same fictionalised name was used for a late-WWII U-boat in another 1950s British film, The Cruel Sea (1953).
Opening credits prologue: NORTH AFRICA 1943
English, German, Italian
GBP75,000 (estimated)