The Frogmen

The Frogmen is a 1951 movie made by Twentieth Century Fox. It is based on some United States frogman operations against the Japanese in World War II. It was the first such movie about scuba diving and became a popular and cultural hit.

Mistakes

It contains obvious errors in the men's diving equipment.

In the last operation (blowing up a Japanese submarine pen), the men correctly used drysuits; but they used old-type bulky 3-cylinder open-circuit aqualungs, which make obvious clouds of bubbles, and useless for covert operations. Real frogmen use rebreathers. Such use of aqualungs is also anachronistic, as the Cousteau aqua-lung was unknown except by a few French men until after World War II ended. In 1951, however, the public was unfamiliar with scuba gear and likely not many in the audience noticed the error. See Frogman#Errors about frogmen.

During that sequence, some of the frogmen had underwater knife fights against three Japanese harbor-patrol frogmen who used light short-duration rebreathers with the breathing bag round the neck. However, in the rapid movements and twistings and turnings needed in an underwater fight, a diver with a light silent rebreather would easily defeat an opponent hampered by a large heavy bulky aqualung.

Trivia

• On the US ship, a fireman's-type industrial rebreather is used.
• The US submarine surfaced to release the frogmen, as it did not have an underwater airlock for divers.

External links

• The Frogmen at IMDb