Character mistake: Immediately before the attack, when the flag is being raised on the flagpole, the young seaman who previously rang the bell steps backwards and trips over the concrete step behind him.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
1 character mistake
Directed by: Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku
Starring: Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, Jason Robards, So Yamamura
Factual error: In a scene where the USS Arizona blows up, a Kingfisher aircraft is seen toppling from the catapult on Arizona's number 3 turret. On the morning of the attack, Arizona's two aircraft were on Ford Island undergoing maintenance.
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!"