Battle of the Bulge (1965) - 18 mistakes

Factual error: None of the German tanks are accurate representations of German WWII types. They are all post war US variants.

Continuity: Near the beginning, Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley is in a scout plane and flies over Col. Martin Hessler, who is in a German staff car below. Kiley tells the pilot to "rev the engine" just above the car to entice Hessler to look up at them, so he can get a good photograph of his face. The plan works, and the ground level movie camera shows Hessler looking up. When the "photo from the air" is later developed, it shows Hessler looking up from the ground level camera's perspective, eyes focused about 30 degrees behind the airplane and giving a profile of Hessler.

Factual error: In the final scene showing the retreating German army, the land they are travelling over is fairly flat and devoid of trees. The Battle of the Bulge was fought in the thickly forested and hilly Ardennes Forest.

Factual error: During the scene (near the end of the film) in which Col. Hessler's tanks attack a hilltop fuel depot, American GI's counterattack by rolling burning 55 gallon gasoline drums at the German tanks. When one of the burning drums hit Col. Hessler's tank, the tank IMMEDIATELY explodes and its turret blows off. The blowing off of the turret indicates that something inside the tank (most likely the ammunition) exploded. However, in order for a burning gasoline drum to cause such an explosion, the burning gasoline has to heat the interior of the tank to make it hot enough for the ammunition inside to explode.

Continuity: When the German saboteurs dressed in American MP uniforms jump out of their plane, all the parachutes are black, except two that are white. When the scene cuts to those soldiers on the ground gathering their parachutes to hide them, they are ALL white.

Factual error: The American vehicles (jeeps, trucks) in many scenes are painted in German camouflage patterns and colors. If you look you will see the classic red brown/dark green stripes on dark yellow covering them.

Factual error: All of the jeeps used by American forces are of post-war design - most probably CJ-3 (M38) models - recognisable by their one-piece windscreens. Some of them have been modified to somewhat resemble the WW2 model by moving the spare wheel to the rear, but most of them still have the spare fitted to the side further identifying them as post-war models.

Revealing: In the scene where Sgt. Guffy's tank is being pushed to the side by a German tank, we see that the tanks are in fact miniatures.

Continuity: In the scene where Col. Hessler is visited by a courtesan, he refuses her "services", opens the door and hands her her fur coat. In the next shot, the door is closed again and the colonel still has the courtesan's fur coat.

Audio problem: In the opening, Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley is following the German staff car in the scout plane. As the car swerves back and forth on the gravel road, you hear the tires squealing. This would not happen on such a road.

Factual error: The "German" halftracks are all in fact American halftracks painted in German colours. The vehicles used by the two sides looked very different.

Factual error: When he meets the general at the beginning of the film, Hessler refers to Conrad as "my corporal". He actually wears the rank insignia of an Unterfeldwebel, equivalent to a sergeant in the British Army and a staff sergeant in the US Army.

Factual error: The panzergrenadier commander, Major von Diepel, wears the double-breasted field grey uniform that was only worn by panzer artillery. Panzergrenadiers wore standard infantry uniform with green piping (which he does wear).

Factual error: The German panzergrenadiers follow the tanks on foot right from the beginning of the advance. Panzergrenadiers were armoured infantry and travelled in halftracks, only dismounting to fight. Even ordinary infantry advancing with tanks would have used trucks - to do otherwise would have slowed the tanks down to a crawl and rendered them ineffective.

Deliberate "mistake": In the scene inside General Kohler's command center when Kohler is giving Colonel Hessler a tour of the war room he points out to Hessler a clock on the wall whose increments represent 1 hour and that the attack has to be over within so many hours. Later in the movie, just when the attack starts, this dormant clock's hand immediately springs forward and ticks through 2 increments, thus representing 2 hours passing in 2 seconds.

Factual error: The US spotter plane used in the film is a Cessna Birddog, the prototype of which first flew in 1949.

Factual error: The Malmédy Massacre was not carried out by specially-prepared machine-guns hidden in the back of trucks, but by the guards surrounding the prisoners.

Factual error: Sgt. Guffy is shown with Lucky Strike Cigarettes in a green carton. At the beginning of WW2 an ingredient in the green dye was determined to be necessary for war production. The carton was changed to white & red; "Lucky Strike Green Goes to War" as the advertisement said. Since the Battle of the Bulge was in Dec. 1944 it is doubtful cigarettes that were 3 years old would still be around.