The Silent Enemy – 1958 | 92 mins | War | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Rousing true-life World War Two maritime heroics of Lieutenant "Buster" Crabb, a British navy frogman who won the George Medal for his wartime exploits in the Mediterranean, based on the biography Commander Crabb by Marshall Pugh. This adventure yarn boasts some astonishing underwater action sequences and bristles with sharp photography and deft orchestration. Crabb died some years later during the 1950s when caught making an underwater reconnaissance of a Russian cruiser moored in Portsmouth on a courtesy visit to Britain.

In 1941, British naval bomb-disposal officer Lieutenant Crabb (Laurence Harvey) relocated to Gibraltar and set about destroying the Italian command centre using neutral Spain to lay mines underneath allied shipping. Crabb commanded a team of frogmen and cut through bureaucratic red tape to lead his men against Italian divers sabotaging military shipping. In the course of the counter-attack mission using underwater chariots he was able to blow up the Italian ship that was used as a command post.