: The film’s revisionist history was so significant that it was condemned in the British Parliament, leading to an onscreen disclaimer during the end credits acknowledging the actual contributions of British forces. How Much Should We Teach the Enigma Machine?
But Tyler, who had followed the boarding party to oversee the extraction, saw Kessler scrambling toward the control room, reaching for the dive planes. A last, desperate act to drag them all down.
But the S-33’s engines coughed. The destroyers had them. The first depth charge went off close—a god-fisted punch that cracked a pipe and sent men flying. The lights flickered.
“Cast off! Dive! Dive!” Tyler screamed.
However, the cinematic prowess of U-571 cannot be separated from its most contentious aspect: its historical revisionism. The film reassigns the capture of the first Enigma machine from the British Royal Navy to the United States Navy. Historically, it was the British crew of HMS Bulldog that captured the Enigma from U-110 in May 1941, months before the United States had even entered the war. By the time the US Navy engaged in similar operations, the British had already broken the code.
, which is modified to resemble a German resupply vessel for a "Trojan Horse" operation. The Mission : The crew infiltrates a crippled German submarine, , to retrieve the Enigma coding device The Conflict