| The Silent Enemy | |
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Original US release film poster |
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| Directed by | William Fairchild |
| Produced by | Bertram Ostrer Raymond Anzarut |
| Screenplay by | William Fairchild |
| Based on | Commander Crabb by Marshall Pugh |
| Starring | Laurence Harvey Dawn Addams John Clements Michael Craig Sid James |
| Music by | William Alwyn |
| Cinematography | Otto Heller |
| Editing by | Alan Osbiston |
| Release date(s) | 1958 |
| Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Silent Enemy is a 1958 action film directed by William Fairchild. It stars Laurence Harvey as Lionel "Buster" Crabb and describes his exploits during World War II. Based on Marshall Pugh's book Commander Crabb, it was made following the publicity created by Crabb's mysterious disappearance and likely death during a cold war incident a year earlier.
The film depicts events in Gibraltar harbour during the World War II Italian frogman and manned torpedo attacks, although the film's depiction of those events is highly fictionalised.
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The story begins with a dramatisation of the Italian manned torpedo raid on Alexandria (1941) in which two British battleships were sunk. The British are worried that this new Italian tactic will give the enemy naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. From Spain, an Italian expert on underwater operations is secretly watching the British base in Gibraltar and planning new attacks.
Maverick diver Lionel Crabb is brought in to head the British response. He creates a team of divers to intercept the Italian attacks and defuse the bombs. The Italians plan a major attack on a British convoy, but Crabb and another diver manage to infiltrate the Spanish docks from which the Italians are planning the attack, identifying the ship (the Olterra) which the Italians attack from. Crabb leads an unauthorised pre-emptive strike on the ship carrying the torpedoes and destroys it, winning the George Medal.
This movie does not represent real events accurately. In particular, in the real world there was no attack on the Olterra, and no underwater hand-to-hand battle between Italian and British frogmen. The breathing sets used by the film actors representing the Italian frogmen seem to be British naval type rebreathers and not authentic Italian rebreathers. The three manned torpedoes seen in the movie, representing Italian maiali, were film props.
In the film Crabb dives on the wreck of a recently crashed B-24 Liberator that had gone into the sea just after taking off from Gibraltar Airport. This scene was based on the accident in 1943 in which Polish general Władysław Sikorski was killed. In the film the submerged wreck of an Avro Shackleton is used as a stand-in for the Liberator.