The crew of a German submarine have lost a libel suit against the German edition of Playboy magazine which they alleged had defamed them in an article entitled "Full Tank the Erotic Underwater World". Seven crew members have claimed compensation of between 5,000 marks and 15,000 marks each for what they said was an unfair article which portrayed them as drunk while on duty and obsessed with sex. However a German civil court in Hanover rejected the men's case as Caroline Wyatt reports from Bonn.

The submarine crew took their case to court after Playboy published its controversial article last May. With permission from the German Navy, a journalist and photographer from the men's magazine, had been allowed to spend a week on board the vessel during its journey to Sweden.

The journalist described how his ten free copies of Playboy were snapped up by the German seamen who'd also brought along their own supply of hard-core pornography. The article went into detail on the crew's drinking habits in the submarine's bar commenting that it made a profit of several thousand deutchmarks on most long journeys.

The men say they were unfairly portrayed as macho-sexist louts with unsavoury personal hygiene. The article also quoted the crew's frequent swearing and comments about their wives, conversations the seamen alleged, had been made up by the reporter.

The panel of judges however disagreed. Ruling in Playboy's favour they said that the crew had failed to convince the court that they'd been quoted out of context or that their remarks should not have been published as all on board had been aware of the reporter's presence.

The judge said that readers of the magazine expected entertainment rather than the research standards of hard news. The crew were still deciding whether or not to appeal against the verdict while the German Navy says that in future it's unlikely to allow journalists unsupervised access to its seamen.