WW2 Movie Inaccuracies

The Polish airforce was non-existant for the most part, and what survived the initial onslaugh was obsolete and few in numbers. True, Allied air forces were grounded due to bad weather, but TA included some examples that weren't in the Ardennes sector during the Battle of the Bulge. Another thing is that I guess the Germans got used to being without air cover.

 

True, but these bolded examples occurred in the Ardennes Offensive after half the officers and NCOs in these Panzer divisions were wiped out in Normandy. The 5th Panzer Army armored units (2nd Panzer) used their recon battalions more effectively but their units, particularily 2nd Panzer, were in better condition than the SS outfits. Nevertheless, the 6th Panzer Army and the officers of the SS units were heavily criticized by the Heer for not using their recon elements properly and for trying to "bounce" enemy targets.

But all in all, I was under the impression that the German Tank units formed and rebuilt after normandy simply didn't have time for any proper, coordinated training with multiple arms. This is why they had to resort to brute tactics- even their infantry was forced to use less sophisticated tactics due to lack of training, leadership, and communications.

 

U571- Do I need to say anymore. lol
Battle of Britain, How many British aircraft do you see shot down compared to German ones.
SPR- I think is probably the best one out of all of them, although still silly, (a machine gun in the middle of no where with no real objective to defend.) Or as pointed out early, the fact that the Church tower was still standing during the opening battle at the end.
A Bridge to Far. Is a movie I still enjoy today dispite the lack of visual effects which I think take away the real life of battle but still a good one.
Kelly's Heroes, hahaha lol. I wont even bother.

 

Ooohhh...a little harsh, I think. Quite a few is the answer ( although I agree the ratio is firmly in the RAF's favour but hey - 'we' won it, didn't we ? )

At the time ( 1969 ) it was still a little bold to see major 'good guy' characters killed or mutilated ( eg Michael Caine whose aircraft we see explode, Christopher Plummer whose in-cockpit burning was quite well-portrayed). The film also commences with Hurricanes being destroyed on the ground and a RAF pilot drowning in the Channel......

 

Very true, but in terms of Historical accuracies it is off.
Someone who is watching it for the first time or someone who knows nothing about ww2 will think it was like that in terms of aerial victories.

But I do enjoy the movie though I especially admire the amount of work that went into the aircraft and the made airforce.

 

I agree your point and I guess that again we have to accept the dictates of 'entertainment' over 'accuracy'. In 1969, the 'myth of the Battle' ( ' Our young men have got to shoot down their young men at a rate of three-to-one' ) still held sway - today we know the odds were actually fairly even.

But to spend time illuminating kill ratios and describing the effects on Barbarossa may have taxed the average audiences' patience a little.....

( PS : Sorry to sound pedantic - if I'm honest it's probably because you're daring to criticise one of my all-time favourite movies ! )

 

No problem, like I said I enjoy the movie too.

I cant remember it properly, but it is a the beginning where the Air Marshall person is talking to someone else (Yes I know very descriptive, lol.) and he says along the lines, "How do we know if we have won" and the guy replies, "well if you see German troops marching in the streets in 3 wks you have known that we have lost."

Well something like that, Martin I am sure you could retype that word for word. lol

 

I just hate it when that happens...Now I've got to find it and put it on again...You slipped that in on purpose...Give us a clue...Where...?

Funny that though, just come across an LAC in We Remember D-Day that landed on Omaha as planned...Interesting.

 

pearl haubour is another film that has alot inaccuracies. but i don't know the inaccuracies,i going by another persons word.

and the movie (my fav movie). the movie was base in ww2 christmas time but the evnt happend in ww1 christmas, plus to make it more fake all the american survive the shoot out while only one german survives the shoot out plus there is no shoot out ever in the real history event in ww1

 

Personally, this thread is not very useful.

Why? Remember: its a MOVIE! Hollyweird never lets reality get in the way of their storyline, war or western or any theme.

If you want absolute accuracy, then watch actual combat documentaries filmed by combat photographers.

 

i see you're ways and views and i agree on this,but still isn't this what a forum is all about. Too talk about anything related to the topic ww2?

 

Thread relocated to the appropriate forum.

 

It's often grim when one's own obsessions are covered by any kind of media... I come from a family where it's traditional to endure the old man's moaning during Westerns when they use some gun that wasn't even dreamt of on the given date .

I know I shouldn't care, and that willing suspension of disbelief is the whole point of entertaining films, but those M47/48/Panther/Tigers & M24/Shermans in 'Battle of the Bulge' still make me feel queasy...

Brilliant quote from the director in a 1965 interview, from the film's Wiki page:

"Well, we had to scour Europe for this. There are places where such tanks do exist, you know—sometimes in junkyards, sometimes in existing armies, and sometimes just by chance one finds a cache of tanks, guns, old planes, and various other relics of World War II. We managed to assemble these great numbers of tanks you saw in the film after looking about for months and months. We found both the German tanks, still relics of World War II, and American tanks, which are sometimes still used by our own forces. So what you see on the screen are truly the tanks that were fought in the Battle of the Bulge and throughout the Western Front and on the Russian Front in World War II."

Argh.



~A

 

Some things I've wondered about SPR in no particular order:

1) Why was a squad from Omaha beach area given the task of finding a paratrooper in the Utah beach area? How did they get past the Germans in Carentan?

2) Couldn't they have just flanked and snuck in close to the MG nest guarding the radar station instead of doing a frontal attack? Or better yet, get Jackson to snipe the crew?

3) Is it standard practice to take the MG ammo belt out of the can, drape it around the neck and run around with it? Wouldn't it be easier to just carry the ammo can by the handle? (I'm talking about Upham)

4) When Ryan and Capt. Miller were shouting to each other about being out of ammo and using the mortar shells instead, they still had grenades clipped to their belts.

5) Why was Sgt Horvath in front of Miller's, Ryan's, and Reiben's field of fire while defending the village?

6) Being in enemy country, why would they lounge around like that by the radar site waiting for the German guy to finish digging the grave. Shouldn't they be on a 360 degree defensive stance at the very least?

That's all I can think of for now.

 

Possible because he was also carrying other ammo around, plus his rifle (like when he was going up the stairs but chickened out). It would allow him to fire his rifle while carrying the MG ammo. (My opinion at least).

 

Don't forget Upham probably had 0% Infantry training ...He was taken from the typing pool because he could sprechen Sie Deutsches


Anyway the story originated from Canada somewhere so seeing as they made it up as being American, let them make the rest up ..... Incidently I used to actually use clips from that film for teaching recruits battlefield first aid and We Were Soldiers too.

Cheers

 

Yep I remember in we were soldiers....the clip where Americans hop out of helo's....holding on to hats with one hand...rifles in t'other..making their way through vegetation and the Brit 18-30 holiday rep in Union Jack shorts trying to get them all to join in the Okey Cokey...

 

I used the phosphorus burn clip

 

I was just watching Band of Brothers-Part 5 and I was actually quite shocked.
After the part where the teenager German is shot and the company is ambushed perhaps the whole German company is slaughtered and half of the reinforcements are kiled not one single American is killed in the process? I really have to question nationalism here. The forces they faced were SS men,so what were Germany's best troops doing in such a tightly packed packed position with their field of fire facing where their reinforcements were?