MovieChat Forums > It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) Discussion > Did the U.S. Navy provide assistance to ...

Did the U.S. Navy provide assistance to this film?


It sure looked to me like they couldn't have made this movie without cooperation and assistance from the U.S. Navy, given the use of the submarine and various Naval facilities all the way up to actual onscreen participation of Naval personnel, e.g. the actor who played Tobey's top hand was not an actor but a sailor--who later became an admiral!

So why is there no credit acknowledging this? Did the navy simply decide it would be too embarrassing given the nature of the film? (Oh, and HELLCATS OF THE NAVY two years later was NOT embarrassing?!)

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The submarine scenes were so realistic because they were filmed on and inside the USS Cubera (SS-347), a Balao class diesel-electric submarine launched in 1945. Cubera underwent Guppy modernization in 1947, the configuration in which it appears in the movie. The U.S. navy sold the submarine to the Venezuelan navy in 1972, and it was scrapped in 1989.

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