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.

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For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost, for the want of a horse the rider was lost, for the want of a rider the battle was lost, For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Robert,

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 ! )

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

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

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For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost, for the want of a horse the rider was lost, for the want of a rider the battle was lost, For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Robert,

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.

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“The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.” - General Jimmy Doolittle

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.

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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).

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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?

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-Dustin

Give a man a fire and he is warm for a day, set him on fire and he is warm for the rest of his life.

Speilburg picked a very unique unit that landed on Ohama. Tom Hanks is the surviving officer of the Ranger company that landed on the extreme southern end of Ohama. As Rangers this unit would be used to independent missions, ones requiring extensive map work and, were essentially expendable to the 28th Division as they officially wouldn't have been part of that unit.

There are a number of variants here. Rifle grenades, sniping, a pincer attack pinning to the front and flanking for the kill. Whatever the reason they decided to do it like they did.

In war things don't always make sense. Of course draping it around your neck does leave your hands free to do other things.....


I think Speilburg was trying to get as many ancedotes from WW 2 into the movie as possible. The 60mm mortar bomb thing was done on occasion. They were also used as a substitute load on the standard US rifle grenade launcher for urban fighting.


Probably for photographic reasons. Remember, it is a movie. Actors get paid to be seen.


Depends on how likely they thought another German unit would come along was. We don't know the full back story so it is hard to fault the part we do see.

Great movie though.

I agree. I watch it over and over... and that's how I started noticing those "little things".

As for the Band of Brothers charging a battalion of SS men bunched up and didn't return an effective fire, that's really what happened as described in the books: book by Stephen Ambrose but also in Dick Winters' Beyond Band of Brothers and Biggest Brother...

Dick Winters reflected on this in his memoirs and still couldn't believe how stupid the Germans were at that particular encounter in Holland.

They landed to the right of the 29th. I suspect you made a simple typo, but one that needed correcting.

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Best Regards,
JW

That one is far better than average though I did spot a T-6 posing as a Fw 190, still a pretty good job especially considering the original book had some notable inaccuracies including a Tiger attached to the Alpenjaeger (still remember that 20 years after reading it as it nearly spoiled my fun by breaking the "suspension of disbelief").

Because it is fun to tear movies apart.

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For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost, for the want of a horse the rider was lost, for the want of a rider the battle was lost, For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Robert,

Remember film has a language of its own, so when a car crashes it has to roll over a few times, fly through the air then exploded in a huge fireball. Likewise when a bad guy is shot, even by a small calibre handgun, he must fly back a few yards. When a good guy is shot he must 1/ look down, 2/ told stomach as blood seeps through fingers; 3/utter wise/funny comment.
I remember a story of an Irish actor who went to Hollywood, when he returned he was asked why did he put on a fake - begorrah, tis yourself sur, top o' da mornin - accent that nobody in Ireland uses. He replied that when he spoke in his normal accent he was told it was not the correct Hollywood Orish brogue.
Another limitation is budget - Most productions cannot afford to make all their own stuff so they they equipment/uniforms from a hire shop so German uniforms might only come in 1939 parade ground style regardless of when the movie is set. It they're on a really tight budget they use re-enactors which is acutally better cos at least they try to get it right.

But back to WWII movie gripes, my big one is subtitles. I might only have high school French but when someone says "20km"' why does the subtitler feel the need change it to "20 miles". In the movie Indigenes the poor subtitler seems to be totally confused by the French rank stucture, eg: refering to senior NCOs as officers. Its not a low budget movie, could n't they find a military expert to read over the translations to get it right.

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Those who live by the sword will be shot by those of us who have progressed

One of my favorites is the pump shotgun. Watch movies or shows where someone is using one. They point it at the baddie and threaten them. The bad guy doesn't comply so the good guy with the shotgun racks the thing and points it at him again.....

Not much threat in an empty shotgun......

this is a good post, ok heres one. Maybe someone cann dispell it for me.

From Saving Private Ryan. Te scene towards the end where Tom hanks and his men have found Ryan. Ryan refuses to leave his buddies and as the town is about to be assaulted by the Germans Capt Miller (Hanks) organizes the company sized outfit to defend the town.
Remember the American sniper in Millers unit is ordered into the town Bell tower to scout for the oncoming Germans. He hauls up his sniper rifle up to the top of the bell tower along with the squads m1919 machine gun and 1000 belted rounds. He signals to miller he sees 2 tiger tanks, 2 other tanks, and 50 troops on the way into the town. The American unit takes positions.

The tigers are actually not bad replicas (they were actually old T-34's with some body work!). Millers unit knocks them out with their sticky bombs they have made, the tigers are not destroyed but they have thrown tracks and cant move but can still shoot.

Anyway here is the part thats an error although only a war nut or WW2 vet would notice...the other two "tanks" actually appear to be self propelled guns similar to this type



These tanks come into the town after the tigers and most of the German infantry have been wipe out, thanks largely to the sniper and his m1919 in the bell tower. Heres the implausible part, the German tank appears to be about 100 yards away or less yet elevates its gun high enough to blow apart the sniper at the top of the bell tower. I know this is splitting hairs but being a war freak that is the first thing that occured to me when i saw this scene - how could it elevate its gun that high an angle, at that distance, to take out the guy in this 100 foot tall tower?

It could be another self-propelled gun farther out, not the same one below the tower.

But how many rounds did Jackson have in his 1903? I thought he went over the 5 round capacity in one uninterrupted scene. Got to double-check...