Continuity: When Tyler is unhandcuffing Tank and Mazzola's body is lying beside him, in the long shot of the scene, it looks like Tank and Mazzola are a few feet away from each other. But in the overhead shot, they're right beside each other.

Continuity: In both scenes when the sub is being depth charged, how come the lights keep coming on even though you see them blowing out?

Continuity: As the submarine is preparing to leave the dock in one of the movie's first   scenes, Bill Paxton, the commander is standing on the top part of the sub. A seaman is walking in Bill Paxton's direction and the camera is at a distance. As the camera zooms in the man walking should have been in the frame under Mr. Paxton but he just disappeared.

Continuity: When Mazzola is shot in the engine room he takes down the German, first he has hold of the German by the neck, then the collar, then the neck, then the collar again.

Revealing: Almost at the end of the movie, the sub is being chased by a German destroyer. One of the destroyer cannon shots hits the stern portion of the U-Boat (where the diesel and electric motors are located). That hit should have instantly killed Tank (in the electric motors room) and maybe also Trigger (they are both working to fix the stern torpedo tube). This event reminds you that this is just a movie.

Continuity: When the German in the bunk goes to shoot Matthew McConaughey, the man fires but the bullet doesn't hit the wall, only about 2 feet away, for a much longer time than it would have really taken. Also, when the American soldiers pass by the spot a few minutes later where the bullet hit (when they are looking at the dead German's ring) the bullet hole has suddenly disappeared.

Factual error: When the American crew storms the U-571 and reaches the aft compartment, where the last Germans are gathered, we can see a row of bunks on each side of the chamber. The VIIC type has no crew acommodation in this place; the last compartment houses just the electric motors and some pumps and auxiliary machinery, as well as the breach of the aft torpedo tube.

Other: There is a scene where Eddie, the mess steward, is taunting the German prisoners while writing numbers on their chests. Watch his writing hand as he's working on 11. He makes an awful lot of strokes, including several horizontal ones. You can see from the next guy, 12, that Eddie's ones are just simple vertical lines, so there's no reason for him to have spent so much time writing on 11's chest. Except that it gave him time to say his whole line.

Continuity: When the U-571 goes to 200m, it springs a bunch of leaks and everybody gets soaked. Then, there is a shot looking past Tank's left shoulder at Tyler and the chief talking. In this shot, Tank's shoulder is completely dry. The camera angle changes and then changes back, and in the next shot at this same angle Tank's coat is now dripping with water.

Continuity: When the plane flies over the U-571, an overhead shot shows Tyler and Mazzola looking up at the plane while Trigger and Rabbit wave from beside the deck gun. Then Tyler orders the men to wave at the plane.

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene near the end of the movie when Rabbit is in the bilge trying to stop the air leak, the concussion of an artillery shell fired from the destroyer shakes some pipes loose. The mistake is that one of the flanges visible on a section of pipe has no bolt holes, making it impossible to join that pipe to anything.

Factual error: Submariners are trained to always listen to the sounds of the boat, since anything out of the ordinary could mean death. Given that training, the small size of a German U-boat and the less-than-skeleton crew aboard it is not possible that the sounds of the fight in the forward torpedo room, or the sounds of the German commander operating the chain on the torpedo loading rail would have gone unnoticed or uninvestigated for so long.

Continuity: When the Americans are first diving U-571, the Chief recommends "closing main vents". Tyler runs over and starts spinning two large red wheels. Each time the scene cuts back to him, he is spinning the wheels in a different direction. Left than right, than left again.

Factual error: The yard set has a red and white stop sign. Stop signs during WWII were yellow with black letters

Factual error: The German supply U-boat couldn't have sunk the S-33 with a torpedo, as neither the Type XIV nor any other class of German supply sub was equipped with torpedoes (this would have meant less storage space for cargo).

Continuity: At the very beginning U571 is being depth charged and forced to surface but the attacking destroyer has disappeared.

Deliberate "mistake": When the Americans are in the U-571 battling the resupply sub, Tank gets the engines running and starts the sub moving forward. There is an exterior shot of the sub's propellers, with the port prop turning counterclockwise and the starboard prop turning clockwise. Then Tyler wants to turn right to heading 010, and he orders "Starboard back full", which should reverse the direction of the starboard propeller to help turn the sub. Two exterior shots later, however, the props are shown still turning exactly the same way they were before Tank reversed the starboard engine.

Continuity: After the German captain has attacked Tank and handcuffed him to the crane, the pattern of blood on Tank's face changes at least twice. First, he has two channels of blood running down the left side of his face under his nose and on his chin, and no blood on his lips or the right side of his face. Then, when Eddie and Tyler arrive, there is blood smeared all over Tank's nose and lips. Finally, after Tyler takes the cuff off and is yelling at Tank, all of a sudden there is a line of blood from Tank's nose across his cheek to his right ear.

Factual error: At the beginning of the film the depth charge attack is shown rupturing a diesel fuel line in the engine room, which showers the fuel DOWN on the crew stationed there. In fact the fuel lines ran UNDER the deck plates and so a broken line could not shower fuel in that manner.

Continuity: Just after Mazzola's been killed, Tyler unlocks the handcuffs from Tank. The handcuff starts swinging as soon as Tank pulls his hand free, but in the next shot it's stopped moving.