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Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) - 20 mistakes

 

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Updated this week Factual error: None of the jeeps shown in this film are correct for 7 Dec. 1941. The standard jeep grill didn't appear until Feb. of 1942. All jeeps up to that point were either Bantam, Ford, or Willys prototypes or the first standardized jeeps (called slatgrills) that used welded bars for a grill, as did most military trucks of the time.

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Mistake Continuity: During the attack a parked US plane is blown up and the prop goes cartwheeling off along the runway. Not wishing to waste a perfectly good explosion the director filmed this from several different angles and used the same explosion several times. You can easily see the prop each time.

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Mistake Factual error: In the opening scene of Washington DC the building on the left is the Museum of American History which wasn't built until around 1959.

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Mistake Factual error: In one scene you see a damaged B-17 about to land when he gets a call from the tower saying that he had a Zero on his tail and telling him to go around. This would never happen. A heavy B-17 (much less a damaged one) would never be able to outrun a Zero, especially after trying to land. The pilot's best option would have been to get it on the ground as soon as possible and to run like hell.

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Mistake Factual error: In the scene where the Japanese pilots are taking off the carrier deck, there is an overhead view of the launch. The carrier in the scene has a angled deck. The angle deck carriers didn't come along until after the war was over.

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Mistake Other: During the attack there is a scene where a ground crew is trying to tow a PBY away from the fires. You can tell it is a fiberglass mockup because the bottom is cracked and jiggling from the stress of the tow vehicle.

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Mistake Factual error: When the Japanese planes first arrive, they fly through the mountainous area near Schofield Barracks. The white cross that is seen in the movie is a memorial to identify the location of first appearance of the planes on Oahu. It wasn't there on December 7, 1941.

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Mistake Factual error: In the scene where the Japanese submarine is trying to sneak into Pearl Harbor, the ship identified as the USS Ward is a much newer type of destroyer, not the World War I vintage with 4 smoke stacks that the Ward actually was.

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Mistake Continuity: During the scene where the B-17 has only one wheel down, the wheel that is down changes. When the B-17 is first shown in a close up with one wheel down, the right wheel is down. But during the sequence where it is shown approaching the runway, and in the crash footage, the left wheel is the one that is down.

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Mistake Continuity: Take a look at the harbor tug, fighting the fires on the battleships, it sports a TV antenna.

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Mistake Other: Just before the attack starts, there is a scene where the Navy are performing their start of day ceremony. Watch the sailor who rings the bell. After he has finished he walks backwards and stumbles as walks into a small raised item.

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Mistake Factual error: In the scene where the Japanese planes have arrived in Hawaii and are flying across the island before they arrived to bomb Pear Harbor, there is a microwave tower in the background. Microwave communications was not invented until much later in the century, so there were no microwave antennas or towers.

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Mistake Continuity: When the flight school instructor in the yellow Stearman first sees the Japanese planes it is surrounded on three sides (left, right and rear) but when he takes the controls to dive out of the way, there are no Japanese planes on either side. Submitted by Dennis Gannon

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Mistake Continuity: When the sub is trying to sneak into the harbor, the first shot shows it with the conning tower out of the water, when the U.S.S. Ward spots it, all they see is the periscope, but when they start to shoot at it, the conning tower is once again out of the water. Submitted by Dennis Gannon

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Mistake Audio problem: There is a scene early in the movie where a band is playing on the deck of one of the Japanese carriers. The band is playing in 4/4 time, but the director is conducting in 3/4 time.

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Mistake Continuity: When the USS Ward first spots the mini-sub trying to sneak into the harbor, we see a close up of the conning tower. The forward edge of the conning tower is undamaged. Next we see the USS Ward fire it's first shot and we see the shot miss and hit the water well forward of the mini-sub. Look at the conning tower and there is now a square notch in the forward edge. The USS Ward fires its second shot. Just before the special effects explosion you can see the forward edge of the conning tower is undamaged. After the flash from the shell hit on the conning tower subsides, we can now see the square notch which we saw after the first shot which missed. Finally, the mini sub submerges and in the underwater shot, the forward edge of the conning tower is again undamaged.

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Mistake Continuity: In the scene where Kramer meets Admiral Stark at his residence he is shown leaving the house through the front entrance. The next scene, showing the house from the drive, the entrance is not the same as the close-up.

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Mistake Factual error: In any scene when they are pulling the B-17's around, those aren't the right ones. The earlier B-17's had no tail gunner. They weren't added until shortly after the US entered the war. Before then, the pilot would fishtail so that the port and starboard gunners would have a short time to shoot at pople coming from behind them.

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Mistake Factual error: While it's touted as being an "accurate" Historical Film, there is one aspect that is wrong; none of the B-17 Bombers had problems with their landing gear during the attack.

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Mistake Factual error: In the deck scenes of the U.S.S. Nevada, she has three fourteen inch guns mounted in each of her four turrents. The Nevada did have triple mount guns, but only in the first and third. The second and third turrets only had two.

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