Hell Boats (1970)

In this World War II action film, James Franciscus plays Lieutenant Commander Tom Jeffords, an American Naval Officer serving with the British Navy before America’s entry into the war. (This is not as implausible as it sounds; Franciscus’ own father was killed in action in the same year as this film takes place, 1941, while flying for the English before America officially joined the Allied war effort. In any case, this is explained away by Jeffords’ mother being English.)

Jeffords is given the mission of using a group of Motor Torpedo Boats (MTB’s) in Valletta, Malta to  destroy a German U-boat installation and glide bomb arsenal in Sicily. The impetuous and determined Jeffords must report to the cautious Commanding Officer of the Maltese base, Commander Roger Ashurst (Ronald Allen), with whom he disagrees about strategy. Ashurst’s wife, Alison (Elizabeth Shepherd), is likewise frustrated by her husband and becomes embroiled in an affair with the dashing Jeffords.

At first, Jeffords is no more loved by the men now under his command than he is by his C.O.; he seems to them to be overly demanding and reckless. But together with his Israeli buddy Yacov, he gets a small flotilla of MTB's ship shape, performs a successful reconnaissance of the German facility with the help of the Sicilian Resistance (including the gorgeous Magda Konopka, who along with her fellow Resistance members unfortunately doesn’t escape the Nazis as Jeffords and Yacov do), and captures a German boat to use as a Trojan Horse in the attack on the Nazi compound. Seeing that Jeffords is willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission, particularly when putting his own life on the line, the men under his command come around and even Ashurst asks to be part of the final attack, during which the British officer shows that he too is of heroic mettle even if he is a more subdued personality.

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