I’m spending the snow day indoors watching old movies, starting with The Enemy Below. One of the classics of the sub genre with Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens. A piece of dialogue has me wondering…
The movie is about a German u-boat and an American destroyer hunting and evading each other. At one point the destroyer is preparing to drop charges and the German captain is giving them time to decide on a depth before taking evasive action. We see Curt Jergens and his crew waiting tensely for a moment and then he suddenly orders, “Port red three! Down to 150!”
What does that mean? Port means left, but what about “red three”? Could that be some kind of standard evasive maneuver?
Just a WAG, but the “Red Three” might be a sub/crew specific shorthand for a specific set of actions.
For instance, “Red Three” could mean something like “Back Flank Port Shaft! Ahead Full Starboard Shaft!” But instead of saying all of that, they come up with the command shortcut “Red Three.”
Finishing the movie today, I notice there were several other instances of the same order: “Port red three!” It was always an evasive action.
But the term “red” is also used in other ways. Early in the film Curt Jurgens sites the destroyer through the periscope and reports its position as “Red 19”.
Could red just be another term for port / left and the number is degrees? In boating and aviation red lights are always on the port side of a vessel, and green on the right. But if that’s true, why the redundancy in the order, “Port red three”?
It could be the angle of the sub, as in “Turn to port and down three degrees.” It makes sense that they would use different terms for turning and tilting, otherwise there would be a high risk for misunderstanding.