Memphis Belle

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Dan is being attended to by the crew after he has been hit you can clearly see that it is a prosthetic arm that they are holding up and not Dan's.

Visible crew/equipment: During the take-off sequence, in a close-up showing a ground crewman pulling the chock away from the front of a tire, production crew and a van can be glimpsed in the far distance out of focus before being obscured by more period accurate vehicles and extras.

Factual error: When the radio operator was asking for a radio check he used a phonetic alphabet. He use the word Tango, representing the letter T. Tango is the modern and current phonetic representation for T. In the 1940's the word was Tare. Able, Baker...Roger, Sugar, Tare, Uncle...Zebra.

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Suggested correction: British forces adopted the American phonetic alphabet in 1942.

American forces weren't using "Tango" until 1956. When the British and American forces coordinated calling alphabets in 1943, they used "Tare", not "Tango."

Bishop73

More mistakes in Memphis Belle

Richard Rascal Moore: Yeah Luke, why go back to the daily grind of being a lifeguard? Take it easy.

More quotes from Memphis Belle

Trivia: Very few flyable examples of the B-17 existed at the time of the shooting of the movie. One airplane "stood in" for several by having its decals changed. The B-17G featured in the film has since undergone a meticulous restoration and now lives in Renton, Washington, USA. Though it is fully flyable, certain certification issues with the Federal Aviation Administration have kept it grounded.

More trivia for Memphis Belle

Question: At the briefing it's pointed out that there's a hospital, school, etc. around the factory they're bombing, and Dennis is very adamant about getting the bombs "right in the pickle barrel" so a lot of innocent people don't get hurt. But the planes are spread out over a large area in the sky, and are also moving when the bombs are dropped, so wouldn't the bombs land over a large area and not just in the limited vicinity of the factory?

Krista

Chosen answer: It would seem that every plane's Norden bombsight would drop from different angles, etc., each designated for a common target. So, 2 planes could be higher, lower, ahead or behind the target and each hit the target, if the bombadiers had an accurate fix on the target.

Answer: Even with the Norden bomb sight, during WW2 bombing was generally very inaccurate.

More questions & answers from Memphis Belle

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