Best war movie mistakes of 1981

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Gallipoli picture

Factual error: Mel Gibson sits around the campfire at the railway camp with the lads, reading newspaper reports of the April 25, 1915 landing at Gallipoli. The 3rd Light Horse Brigade (including the 10th Light Horse Regiment from Western Australia) landed at Gallipoli on 20 May 1915. This would have given him less than 3 weeks to enlist, train, travel to Egypt by ship and land on the Peninsula. A bit of a stretch. In reality, the 10 Light Horse regiment was raised in October 1914, with the 1st-3rd reinforcements departing Fremantle February 19-22, 1915.

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Das Boot picture

Revealing mistake: In one scene just before the attack on a big Hunter the young captain (Jürgen Prochnow) is sitting with his charts. Beside him he has got a glass of beer standing. The sub lurches heavily right and left in the hard weather, but the surface of the liquid stays the same.

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Zombie Lake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When the woman in the opening credits is taking off her clothes, she is about to take a blue shirt from her bag, but decided against it. As she does, you can see a crew member aimlessly wandering around in the bushes behind her. (00:01:40)

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Escape to Victory picture

Factual error: In the final football game scenes ( from about three-quarters of the way through the film or so) all the spectators are wearing 1970's clothes and have 1970's hairstyles.

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Eye of the Needle picture

Deliberate mistake: When "Henry Faber" discovers the phony airfield, several helicopters with Army markings are among the aircraft visible. Although the Army did use helicopters experimentally during WWII, those used bore no resemblance to those shown in the film.

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Southern Comfort picture

Factual error: In the boat-stealing scene, when the machine gunner fires a burst of blanks out of the M60 at the Cajuns, the weapon functions perfectly. However, the muzzle is bare. When firing with blanks, weapons have to have metal pieces called blank adaptors screwed into the muzzle to keep enough gas inside the weapon to cycle the bolt. Without one, the M60 would fire one round and stop.

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