Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes (1965)

9 factual errors in season 6 - chronological order

(22 votes)

Klink's Masterpiece - S6-E3

Factual error: As the staff car comes up the street, there are a number of neon signs lit up, as well as store fronts. This is wrong as during the night in wartime Europe, such lighting would be dark to avoid night bombing.

Movie Nut

The Big Broadcast - S6-E12

Factual error: Hogan calls the radio detection truck "radar" when he orders the SS guard to switch it off. From other episodes, we know that Hogan knows what radar is, and back then, the difference between radio homing equipment and radar was even clearer to people than it is today, because radio homing was an established technology, while radar was brand new, and most people were not even aware it existed.

Doc

The Big Broadcast - S6-E12

Factual error: Baker picks up a lot of static in his radio, then suddenly signs off and says "Sounds like the radio detection unit picked up our signal." Unlike radar, radio signal homing relies entirely on measuring the signals emitted by the transmitter that is tracked. It works by comparing the strength of the signal arriving at each component of an array of directional antennae. The process is completely passive and does not cause any alteration of the signal measurable at either receiver or transmitter at all, and certainly not any audible interference or humming.

Doc

The Gypsy - S6-E13

Factual error: In this episode, LeBeau pretends to be a psychic gypsy to fool Klink. Gypsies generally didn't fare too well in the Third Reich. Admitting to being of Gypsy origin would probably have earned LeBeau a ride to the concentration camp.

Doc

Easy Come, Easy Go - S6-E15

Factual error: Klink and Hogan sit behind each other in the P-51 they try to steal. The P-51 is a single-seat airplane, the only twin-seat P-51 are trainers. A trainer would not be at the flight line with the regular airplanes, and if a trainer would actually scramble with the others, it would at least arouse suspicion.

Doc

That's No Lady, That's My Spy - S6-E17

Factual error: Hogan tells Carter that the bush he's camouflaging himself with is poison ivy. Poison ivy is not native to Germany, the very few wild plants that exist today descend from those introduced to botanical parks after 1942.

Klink for the Defense - S6-E19

Factual error: About 8 minutes into show, Major Hochstetter asks Schultz how long Colonel Hogan (an American) has been running the camp, and Schultz says 3 years last November. This is impossible. The US didn't get into the war until December, 1941, He would have to have been captured November '42 or earlier but the war was over by November 1945.

terry s

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Not necessarily. Quite a few Americans served with the RAF before America declared war. The Eagle Squadron American volunteers fought at the Battle of Britain in 1940 for example.

stiiggy

Hogan was an American bomber pilot.

terry s

Rockets or Romance - S6-E24

Factual error: Frankel suggests manipulating the missile's gyroscope, and Hogan suggests an electromagnet as means to do it, which is later implemented. Gyroscopes however are not affected by any magnetic force, which is what makes a gyroscopic compass superior to a magnetic one in many situations. To enhance that effect, gyroscopes are deliberately built out of materials with as little magnetic susceptibility as possible. A large electromagnet next to the missile could potentially cause all kinds of havoc with all kinds of parts of the missile guidance and control, but the gyroscope itself would not be among them.

Doc

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The Antique - S5-E12

Question: When Hogan gives Klink $100 for the cuckoo clock, the bill handed over was a crisp American $100 note. How did Hogan get an American $100 note? At best, in this time period, he should only have Reich Marks. And how would he have 333 Marks, 33 pfennigs? Unless he had a side businesses going, this seems unlikely.

Movie Nut

Answer: It's a comedy, not a documentary.

stiiggy

Perhaps it was counterfeit. There are numerous episodes where they deal in counterfeit monies.

Chosen answer: Hogan and his men are running a spy ring out of the camp, they have access to supplies from outside. (In another episode, they have to convince a defecting German officer that they're legitimately working for the Allies by arranging a specific personal ad to run in the next day's London Times, so a new $100 bill is not beyond their capabilities).

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: Werner Klemperer fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. His two conditions for taking the role of Colonel Klink were that he had to be a bumbling idiot and he always had to lose. It would then be a character mistake that if Hogan offers him a fresh American hundred-dollar bill, he's not going to ask questions, he's going to take the deal. The fact that he's Commandant and could just confiscate the money from Hogan would never occur to him because, again, he's a bumbling idiot who, by the actor's contract, always has to lose.

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: Rightfully, Hogan should not have any money at all. POW were stripped of all cash they carried. The intention was to make escape more difficult. The fact that Hogan has what is the equivalent of a third of the price of a KdF-Wagen (You'd probably know it as a Volkswagen Beetle) in cash should rightfully make Klink more than a litle suspicious.

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