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The ship is identified by the number 113 on its bow, sometimes noted as DDL 113 or DLG 113 in production notes, intended to represent a Farragut-class destroyer leader (DLG).

The opening shots of the fictitious guided missile destroyer USS Bedford were not of a United States Navy Farragut-class destroyer but a British Type 15 frigate, HMS Wakeful, as the Department of Defense objected to how the Navy was portrayed in the screenplay and declined to cooperate with the film's production. Interior scenes were filmed in HMS Troubridge, another Type 15 frigate. The class's novel, forward-sloping bridge windows can be seen in some shots, as can British military equipment, such as a rack of Lee-Enfield rifles. The rest was filmed, and the film itself produced, at Shepperton Studios in the United Kingdom. There, a large model of the Bedford was filmed in a tank.