NEW YORK (AP) — Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker whose World War II submarine epic “Das Boot” propelled him into a blockbuster Hollywood occupation that involved the films “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Pressure One” and “The Excellent Storm,” has died. He was 81.

Petersen died Friday at his house in the Los Angeles community of Brentwood immediately after a fight with pancreatic cancer, explained consultant Michelle Bega.

Petersen, born in the north German port metropolis of Emden, designed two features before his 1982 breakthrough, “Das Boot,” then the most highly-priced film in German film record. The 149-minute film (the initial minimize ran 210 minutes) chronicled the powerful claustrophobia of everyday living aboard a doomed German U-boat throughout the Struggle of the Atlantic, with Jürgen Prochnow as the submarine’s commander.

Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, “Das Boot” was nominated for six Oscars, which include for Petersen’s route and his adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s finest-providing 1973 novel.

Petersen, born in 1941, recalled as a youngster managing along with American ships as they threw down foods. In the confusion of postwar Germany, Petersen — who began out in theater ahead of attending Berlin’s Film and Television Academy in the late 1960s — gravitated toward Hollywood films with obvious clashes of very good and evil. John Ford was a significant impact.

“In faculty they never ever talked about the time of Hitler — they just blocked it out of their minds and concentrated on rebuilding Germany,” Petersen explained to The Los Angeles Periods in 1993. “We young ones have been hunting for extra glamorous goals than rebuilding a wrecked state however, so we were being truly all set for it when American pop culture arrived to Germany. We all lived for American flicks, and by the time I was 11 I’d decided I desired to be a filmmaker.”

“Das Boot” introduced Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he grew to become 1 of the major makers of cataclysmic action adventures in films spanning war (2004’s “Troy,” with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995…