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Trivia

The code for successful surprise (and the movie's title) "Tora! Tora! Tora!" was a shortening of the words totsugeki (attack) and raigeki (the Japanese term for torpedo bombers), and was originally spelled "To ra, to ra, to ra!" Those two shortened words were interpreted by American radio operators, who happened to intercept them, as the Japanese word for "tiger"; hence "Tora! Tora! Tora!" See more...

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Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) - 23 mistakes

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Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, History, War

Mistakes
Trivia
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Factual error: After the Opana radar operators call in their discovery of the approaching planes and are told "don't worry about it" they turn off the radar station. In the actual attack they stayed there all during the attack, and even tracked the planes returning to the carriers, thereby locating the exact position of the Japanese fleet. This information was also ignored by the command center.

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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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Factual error: When 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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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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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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Factual error: When 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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Factual error: The radar installation at Opana Point on Oahu was a newly developed Westinghouse type scr-270. This is not the one shown in the movie, which is of more recent vintage.

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Factual error: The scene where the Japanese planes are taking off from their carriers shows a mix of aircraft in motion, mainly reproductions of the Zero, Kate, and Val aircraft that were used. In the actual event, the Zeros always left first as they needed the least space, and the heavier planes last. This is not the case in the film.

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

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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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Factual error: When 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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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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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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Factual error: At least twice in the movie you can see across the harbor a ship with the number 1048 on its bow. That ship is the USS Sample, which wasn't commissioned until 1968.

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

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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 she takes the controls to dive out of the way, there are no Japanese planes on either side.

Edit Submitted by Dennis Gannon
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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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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.

Edit Submitted by Dennis Gannon