The Bedford Incident Informations

The Bedford Incident is a 1965 British-American Cold War film starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier and co-produced by Widmark. The cast also features Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam and Wally Cox, as well as early appearances by Donald Sutherland and Ed Bishop. The screenplay by James Poe is based on the 1963 book by Mark Rascovich, which borrowed from the plot of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick; at one point in the film, the captain is advised he is "not chasing whales now". The film was directed by James B. Harris, who, until then, had been best known as Stanley Kubricks producer.

The American destroyer USS Bedford (DLG-113) detects a Soviet submarine in the GIUK gap near the coast of Greenland. Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union are not at war, Captain Eric Finlander mercilessly harries his prey while civilian photojournalist Ben Munceford and NATO naval advisor Commodore (and ex-Second World War U-boat captain) Wolfgang Schrepke look on with mounting alarm. Finlander exploits the fact that the Russian sub has to surface periodically to replenish air and recharge batteries because it is not nuclear powered; knowing full well it will make the Soviets more desperate.

Also aboard the Bedford are Ensign Ralston, an inexperienced young officer constantly being criticised by his captain for small errors and Lieutenant Commander Chester Potter, USNR, the ships new doctor, who is a recently recalled reservist.

Munceford is aboard to photograph life on a Navy destroyer but his real interest is Finlander who recently was passed over for promotion to rear admiral. Munceford is curious whether a comment made by Finlander regarding the American intervention in Cuba is the reason for his lack of promotion. This prompts the captain to become openly hostile to Munceford, who he sees as a civilian who is interfering into military matters for questioning the risks involved in continually harrying the Soviet submarine.

The crew becomes increasingly fatigued by the unrelenting pursuit as the captain continually demands full attention to the instruments. At the same time, Finlander becomes intolerant of anyone who questions his tactics including the ship doctor who advises him that crew are feeling the pressure but the captain will not relent.

When the submarine is found, it ignores Finlanders order to surface and identify itself. The captain, angered by this defiant act, orders the Bedford to run over its snorkel, ordering that it be logged as an "unidentified floating object". He then orders the Bedford to arm weapons and withdraw to a distance to wait for the submerged sub to run out of air and be forced to surface. Confidently he reassures Munceford and Schrepke that he is in command of the situation and that he will not fire first but "If he fires one, Ill FIRE ONE".

A tired Ensign Ralston mistakes Finlanders remark as a command to "fire one". He launches an anti-submarine rocket which destroys the submarine. Sonar then detects four nuclear-armed torpedoes targeting the destroyer. Finlander initially gives basic orders to evade but then silently steps outside the bridge. Munceford follows frantically pleading with the him to do something. But the captain has realised his actions have sealed the fate of everyone on board as the ship cannot evade the nuclear torpedoes. The film ends with still shots of various crewmen "melting" as if the celluloid film were burning as the Bedford and her crew are vaporised in an atomic blast. The films final image is a mushroom cloud.

The screenplay by James Poe follows the novel fairly closely but Poe wrote a different ending. In the novel, the Soviet submarine does not fire back at Bedford before being destroyed. The shocked Finlander then receives word of his promotion to admiral. Commodore Schrepke, realising that World War III will begin once the events are known, sabotages one of the remaining ASROCs and destroys the ship. Munceford, the sole survivor, is found by Novosibirsk, the submarines mothership. Unlike the book, the film version ends with the vessels being destroyed by one another. The plot reflects several Cold War incidents between the NATO and Soviet navies, including one in 1957 when USS Gudgeon, a submarine, was caught in Soviet waters and chased out to sea by Soviet warships. Although none ended as catastrophically as the Bedford incident, the story illustrated many of the fears of the time.

The Bedford Incident was mostly filmed at Shepperton Studios in the UK, although some shots at sea were used. "USS Bedford" was a fictitious guided missile destroyer and the role of Bedford was mostly played by a large model of a Farragut-class destroyer. Interior scenes were filmed in the British Type 15 frigate HMS Troubridge; British military equipment can be seen in several shots, including a rack of Lee–Enfield rifles and Troubridges novel, forward-sloping bridge windows. Sidney Poitiers initial flypast and landing from a Whirlwind helicopter were filmed aboard another Type 15 frigate, HMS Wakeful, whose F159 pennant number is clearly visible. The vessel portraying a Soviet intelligence ship has the name "Novo Sibursk", written on the hull at the bow in the Latin alphabet, not the Russian languages Cyrillic alphabet; "Novosibirsk" is a more accurate English rendering.

In October 1962, shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet submarine B-59 was pursued in the Atlantic Ocean by the U.S. Navy. When the Soviet vessel failed to surface, the destroyers began dropping training depth charges. Unlike in The Bedford Incident, the Americans were not aware that the B-59 was armed with a T-5 nuclear torpedo. The Soviet captain, believing that World War III might have started, wanted to launch the weapon but was over-ruled by his flotilla commander, Vasili Arkhipov, who, by coincidence, was using the boat as his command vessel. After an argument, it was agreed that the submarine would surface and await orders from Moscow. It was not until after the fall of the Soviet Union that the weapons existence and how close the world came to nuclear conflict was made known.

Complete article available at this page.