Lt. Kenneth Braden, a newly trained Navy Frogman, is unexpectedly ordered to report for duty without being able to notify his new girlfriend, Sally Johnson, in whom he has taken a serious interest. He is informed that she is an officer of Naval Intelligence and was responsible for a recent confirmation of his character and fitness for a special mission.
At the beginning of the story, Pepperland is introduced by a narrator as a cheerful, music-loving paradise under the sea, protected by Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The titular Yellow Submarine rests on an Aztec-like pyramid on a hill. At the edge of the land is a range of high blue mountains.
Robinson (Jude Law), a veteran captain of under-sea salvage who is recently divorced and estranged from his young son, receives news that he is to be made redundant. He receives £8,000 for his services and is asked to clean his desk and leave the premises.
On a volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his daughter Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race.
Demi (Harris), is a veteran Soviet Navy captain finishing up a career that failed to live up to the legacy of his legendary father. He is given an assignment by Markov (Henriksen) to lead a top secret mission and given the command of his old ship. Due to mistakes he made during his service, involving the deaths of many of his past crew in a fire, this will be his last assignment and his only opportunity to command any ship at all. Demi interrupts a party involving his crew, including Alex Kozlov (Fichtner), his up-and-coming executive officer headed for great success. However, as Demi leaves his home to lead Alex and his crew of on the secret mission, the presence of KGB agent Bruni (Duchovny), and ominous portents, begin to alter the objectives of the mission, causing Demi and Kozlov to become concerned. Furthermore, Markov commits suicide as the submarine departs.
Holden is cast as Commander White, who during an enemy attack orders that his submarine dive to avoid destruction and thereby loses the captain of the boat on the last day of World War II. The bulk of the movie follows his career in the Navy after the war as his doubt and guilt wear on his marriage. Then, just as he is about to resign from the Navy to escape the ghosts of his past, the Korean War begins and the movie concludes as an action thriller.
A small group of British sailors stationed on a Scottish island engaged in top-secret research on a new and dangerous torpedo are joined by a US Navy scientist, Lt. Brad Bradville (Gene Kelly), and his assistants. When several tests of the weapon fail, and men are killed, tensions within the group mount. Bradville must prove that the torpedo can work and win over the British, especially Lt. Rogert Wharton (John Justin), before the Admiralty pulls the plug on the project.
Macy stars as the COB (chief of the boat) on a fictitious US Navy submarine, the USS Swordfish (although there were two actual submarines named USS Swordfish that served the US Navy during and after World War II, neither are represented by the sub in this film). While on patrol in the North Atlantic, the ship is ambushed by two German U-boats. Swordfish destroys one of them, but is critically damaged by a torpedo fired from the second one, the fictitious U-boat U-429 (again, there was a real WWII German submarine U-429, not actually represented in the film). Eight members of the American crew escape and are held prisoner on board U-429. However, the American executive officer had previously contracted meningitis and given it to his captain, who brought it aboard the U-429. Within days, over half the German crew, as well as some of the Americans, contract the disease and die. Although the Germans and Americans begin to work together to keep the boat operational, not all the U-boat crew is willing to go along with this arrangement. Also, another U-boat and an American destroyer (the fictional USS Logan, not related to the actual attack transport of that name) threaten to overwhelm their tentative truce.
Off the coast of Alaska, oceanographer Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson) is studying the migration patterns of whales aboard an experimental submarine she took without permission from her employer. Meanwhile, a military helicopter drops experimental sonar transmitters into the water, causing a pod of whales to go out of control and start ramming a nearby glacier. In the chaos, the helicopter crashes into the glacier, and the combined damage breaks the glacier open, thawing two hibernating, prehistoric creatures. MacNeil narrowly avoids destruction as, unknown to her, a giant shark and octopus are freed. Some time later, a drilling platform off the coast of Japan is attacked by the octopus, which has tentacles large enough to wrap around the entire structure. After returning to Point Dume, California, MacNeil investigates the corpse of a beached whale covered with many bloody wounds. Her employer Dick Richie (Mark Hengst) believes them to be from a tanker propeller, but MacNeil insists they appear to be from a creature. Later, she extracts what appears to be a shark’s tooth from one of the wounds. Elsewhere, the huge shark leaps tens of thousands of feet into the air from the ocean and attacks a commercial aircraft, forcing it to crash into the water.
Charles Sturm (Laughton) is a naval commander whose jealousy and abuse makes life miserable for his wife Diana (Bankhead). His suspicions fall on his own subordinate, Lieutenant Jaeckel (Grant). Although his suspicions are baseless, Sturm has Jaeckel transferred. After Charles falls into another fit of paranoid rage and strikes Diana, she wanders off into the streets during a festival and soon encounters another officer, who turns out to be Jaeckel's replacement, Lieutenant Sempter (Cooper). Learning of their affair, which this time is real not imagined, Charles plots a terrible revenge.
Dans le golfe de La Spezia, un sous-marin de grande croisière, le A 103, entre en collision avec un navire de ravitaillement et s'immobilise à 80 mètres de profondeur. De délicates tentatives de sauvetage du bateau et de l'équipage vont s'organiser...
The Royal Navy is concerned about constant attacks on convoys by German submarines and having to keep "half the fleet" watching for the German battleship Tirpitz. The Tirpitz is 60 miles from the sea inside a Norwegian fjord and attempts by the Royal Air Force to sink her have failed. Commander Fraser (Mills) is determined to prove that an attack by human torpedoes is practical, despite scepticism from the higher echelons that such an operation would be feasible.
During 1964, in the months following World War III, the conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout, killing all life there. Air currents are slowly carrying the fallout south; the only areas still habitable are in the far reaches of the southern hemisphere.
Lieutenant Taylor (John Mills) and the rest of the crew of the submarine Sea Tiger are given a week's leave after an unsuccessful patrol. Hobson (Eric Portman) goes home to save his marriage, while a reluctant Corrigan (Niall MacGinnis) heads off to his wedding. Then the crew are called back to duty, much to Corrigan's relief, though he later has second thoughts. Sea Tiger is assigned the top secret mission of sinking Nazi Germany's new battleship, the Brandenburg, before she enters the Kiel Canal to begin sea trials in the Baltic Sea.