Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

2 factual errors in Monkey Business

(23 votes)

Monkey Business - S3-E29

Factual error: In several episodes, Hogan's men communicate by radio with a British submarine, and the dialog hints that the sub is submerged at the time. During the WWII era, submarines could not communicate by radio without surfacing first. In most episodes one might argue that the sub could be running shallow with a mast up, which would perhaps be within the technical possibilities of the era, but in this episode, the sub is talking to Hogan's men while under attack by a destroyer. This pretty much rules out running at periscope depth, because ramming was regularly-used tactic for killing subs that were in the process of diving or surfacing. To avoid confusion: Nowadays, subs can communicate while running several hundred feet deep by using VLF and ELF. However, these are definitely not capable of transmitting voice, but are text-only.

Doc

Monkey Business - S3-E29

Factual error: In this episode, the Royal Navy submarine that acts as a radio relay for Hogan's men is hunted by a destroyer. Like in most such Hollywood scenes, depth charges are seen exploding right next to the submarine, which just shrugs the blasts off. In reality, any depth charge that went off closer than 100 meters was instantly deadly to a submerged sub.

Doc

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Answer: Nimrod's actual identity was never revealed in the series. It was only known that he was a British intelligence agent. Nimrod was not Colonel Klink. Hogan had only implied it was him as a ruse to get Klink returned as camp commandant, not wanting him replaced by someone more competent who would impede the Heroes war activities. The term "nimrod" is also slang for a nerdy, doofus type of person, though it's unclear why that was his code name.

raywest

"Nimrod" is originally a king and hero mentioned in the Tanach and taken into the Bible and the Koran. His name is often used in the sense of "stalker," "hunter," and sometimes figuratively as "womanizer" as in "hunter of women." I've never seen it used to denote a nerdy person, and although I cannot disprove that connotation, I think given his role, the traditional meaning is more likely the intended one.

Doc

It's widespread enough that Wikipedia has an entire section on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#In_popular_culture

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