Factual error: Aboard the aircraft carrier, there is a closed-circuit TV that shows the operations on the flight deck. At one point, a gull-gray F-14 Tomcat, in obvious distress, comes in for a landing. The camera cuts away from the TV to Ryan's face, and the cuts back to the TV. All of a sudden, the plane crashing is no longer an F-14, but an old Korean War-era fighter (F-9F Panther of VF-21), colored the dark blue the Navy stopped using in the 1950s. The director chose to insert a piece of stock footage from George Duncan's crash on the deck of USS Midway (CV-41) on July 23rd, 1951 rather than build a model F-14 to crash for an otherwise unimportant scene.
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Visible crew/equipment: When the Red October sub has surfaced to let the crew get off because of the supposed nuclear leak, there is a brief shot where you can clearly see the camera and its filming crew in their tennis shoes on the deck.
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Factual error: In the opening scene of the movie, the Red October is being escorted out of the Russian harbour by a United States Coast Guard Cutter and U.S. Navy sea tugs.
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More mistakes in The Hunt for Red October
Trivia: Paramount Studios essentially rented a US submarine to be in the movie. The USS Houston (SSN 713) played the USS Dallas and the surface scenes were filmed off of Long Beach, CA and Port Angelas, WA. Two crewmembers off the Houston were actually given very small speaking parts in the movie.
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Trivia: The Alfa-class submarine Konovalov commanded by Captain Tupolev is named after Soviet Rear Admiral Vladimir Konovalov. In March 1945, he sunk the German luxury liner Goya in the Baltic Sea on its way to Kiel, killing 6220 East Prussian refugees out of 6385.
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Trivia: The US submarine used by Paramount Studios, during the filming, accidentally sunk a tugboat when getting into position to film a scene. One of the submarine's radio antennas snagged the tow cable between the tug and a barge and this pulled the tugboat underwater. One person died.
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More trivia for The Hunt for Red October
Jeffrey Pelt: Mr. Ryan, I'm a politician. Which means I'm a cheat and a liar and when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops.
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Admiral Josh Painter: This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.
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Jack Ryan: "Ryan, some things in here don't react well to bullets." Yeah, like me. I don't react well to bullets.
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More quotes from The Hunt for Red October
Question: During the ending sequence (with the Alpha) the Red October is running on the screws instead of the caterpillar. Now, we know the "reactor leak" was fake...and we know that the caterpillar was working normally (right after Ramius says "let us turn South" you see the Red October dive over a canyon wall with the screws not moving hence the caterpillar running). Wouldn't it have been wiser to run on the caterpillar during the ending?
Michael WestpyQuestion: In the scene in which Jack is asking himself how Ramius is going to get his men off the Red October, how does he figure out what Ramius is going to do?
Chosen answer: Thinking out loud, Jack says, "how do you make men want to get off a nuclear submarine..." the word "nuclear" made him realize that the easiest way to make the crew WANT to leave the sub is to fake a reactor/radiation accident.
Grumpy Scot
Chosen answer: No, (mentioned in the book, not the film), the caterpillar can only drive Red October at a little over 1/2 her top speed. Speed is far more important than silence at this point.
Grumpy Scot