In the scene culminating in the attack on the U-boot by a destroyer, the captain is wearing a grey-and-red football scarf. It looks like it ends in ‘-ling’. Anyone know what it is?
Can’t say with any certainty, but the German military had certain colors/color combinations for specific branches and ranks. Just a guess, but those might be the colors for a captain of a submarine, or at least the colors denoting the German navy.
Then again - maybe it really was just the colors of the captains favorite soccer team.
As far as the “ling” ending, that could be the ending of any number of German words and nothing specific springs to mind off hand.
Side tidbit: despite the spelling, “Das Boot” is pronounced “Das Boat” in German (just like our English word “boat”) and not “boot” as in footwear. I mention this as it is often mispronounced in English. Roger Ebert mispronounces it as “boot” every time he mentions the film.
The second dialogue we learned in high school German was:
Wo ist Monika?
Im Boot.
(No doubt with Peter, who, in the first dialogue, was going to the lake. 
)
Herr Kaleun dressed in civilian clothes on the sub. He wore a plaid shirt and what I assume to be a non-issue leather jacket. (I’m not an expert on WWII Naval uniforms, but I know that Luftwaffe pilots bought their own civilian leather jackets.) He did wear his cover, though. There is a scene where the results of a soccer game are announced to the crew. I should have made the connection to see if the name ended in ‘-ling’, but it didn’t occur to me.
I couldn’t watch the whole movie. Side B of the DVD wouldn’t play. 
I tried cleaning it, but that made it worse. I guess I’ll have to get another copy eventually.
I just bought the 5 hour version of the movie and I am planning to watch it this afternoon. I’ll keep an eye and an ear on it for you.
Just finished watching it. Didn’t spot the scarf, sorry.
The dialog in the movie goes a bit like this (paraphrased) at about 154 minutes in the movie :
“I’ve got bad news boys. It isn’t going well for our team (in German it sounded like “Stuttgart fallon”). There are losing 5 to none.”
According to Wiki, it is Schalke 04 that is cited as being down 5-0. IMDB backs that quote up here.
Unfortunately Schalke’s colors are blue and white - so a red/grey scarf wouldn’t make sense.
Red scarf red shmarf. If you look close enough, you can see he’s wearing his brown pants.
Using Wikipedia’s List of German Footbal clubs I can find three clubs with -ling in the name: SSV Reutlingen; Röchling Völklingen and 1. FC Union Solingen. All are from inland towns so there’s no obvious one to choose from. None of the colours match, although Röchling Völklingen have a red and black strip - maybe the scarf is faded?
Schalke 04 were a powerhouse during the war years, champions in 1939, 1940 and 1942.
You can spot the scarf in this snip of the movie. There’s a decent close-up around 1:00. Can’t say I saw the “-ling” though.
The captain is not wearing a grey-and-red football scarf, but a Kriegsmarine towel.
If you check the movie Das Boot Director’s Cut (1981) during minute 4:35 PM someone shows special guest Lt Werner a war correspondent who takes pictures and will be writing about war heroes the different spots of the ‘SUB’. In the toilet there is a towel from the Kriegsmarine.
Later during minute 48:57 you will see the towel with the red balls around the captain’s neck. During the 49:02 minute you can read the text, if you know German and you can read mirror writing, because you can see the back of the towel so that the text is mirrored. If you look at the ear you see an ‘M’ and you can read ‘marine’ further below.
I found several pictures of said towel online; some were blue but most were red like this one:
