A British coastal command pilot is charged with neglect when it is thought that he has sunk a British submarine rather than a German U-boat. Unable to live with his actions, he volunteers for a deadly mission. His girlfriend meanwhile tries to prove that he is innocent.
Acting
Patricia Plunkett's Mona—fierce, practical, stealing every scene.
Direction
Annakin's claustrophobic interiors versus vast, indifferent sea.
Cinematography
Coastal command footage—real planes, real tension, no fakery.
Director
Ken Annakin
Michael Denison
Rick
Patricia Plunkett
Mona
Kathleen Harrison
Mona's Mother
Maurice Denham
Wing Commander Hewitt
Sebastian Shaw
Wing Commander Dickens
Denis O'Dea
Captain Burnaby
Laurence Harvey
PO Hooper
David Tomlinson
Binks
Joan Dowling
Miriam
Joss Ackland
O'Neil
Nora Swinburne
Admiral's Wife
Charles Victor
Mona's Father
A.E. Matthews
Air Raid Warden
Margaretta Scott
Mrs Burnaby
Paul Carpenter
PO Morgan
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ken Annakin shot real Coastal Command operations for authenticity—those aren't models, that's genuine RAF fear.
Based on a 1940 novel: wartime audiences saw Rick as heroic, 1949 viewers increasingly uncomfortable with glorified self-destruction.
GB
US
