Aircraft mistakes in films
 

Went to see "The King's speech" this weekend and found it an excellent film, but as a former planespotter, I couldn't help but notice a howler. At one point, the future King George VI's brother David, the future King Edward VIII, lands a Tiger Moth in a field, so correct, an aircraft of that era (mid-1930s). Unfortunately however, the registration of the aircraft is G-ANFM, which of course wouldn't have been allocated until the mid-1950s! Anyone else seen any similar howlers in films?

There's an entire website devoted to this, and not just aviation. Can't remember the name of it, but people spend hours watching films in order to notice the 50-odd "howlers" in each and every one, like the fact that the star's dinner fork had food residue on it in one take and not in the next one. Or than two jacket buttons were buttoned in one scene and only one in the next scene. Truly obsessional.

Yet even they wouldn't notice a 1950s registration on a 1930s airplane...

Just about every film I've seen that involves an aircraft shows a 747 in flight, but in the cockpit the pilot is always struggling with the controls of a twin-jet, and the cabin is narrow body.

The old British version of Top Gun called High Flight and made in the 50's showed our rebellious hero taking off in a two seat Vampire T11 and then flying about in a single seat FB5. Otherwise some excellent air to air filming with piston Provosts and Hunters.

As an aviation photographer and almost certainly nerd, where do I start ? !

-Tora Tora Tora, and almost every film made about WWII, Harvard soundtrack.

'Firefox' - the best reason for buying a gun ( and seeking out the makers ) I've ever seen,

Top Gun - well, you know the rest...

Any programme on Sky. On what used to be the Discovery,Wings channel; if you don't spot a howler within 10 seconds you've probably quite justfiably nodded off or indeed shot yourself - my favourite was the one about the Hunter, mentioning a Rolls Royce engine, pronounced " nee nee " ( Nene...)

A fair proportion of the aircraft in Tora Tora Tora were Harvards! Or BT-13s... :)


Usually if there is a helicopter, then it sounds like a Bell 47. If it is a Bell 47, then it sounds like a Jet Ranger.

Saw "Gold" the other day; some great flying by Nick Turvey in a PA-28, but I was slightly amused by the scene signifiying the villain's arrival in New York from Johannesburg, which showed a short-bodied 727 climbing out of La Guardia (presumably) above a Manhattan skyline. Nice nostalgic shot though...

Slightly off topic: what is the light aircraft used to drop James Bond on to Blofeld's oil rig in "Goldfinger"? It might be something common, but I can't quite make it out; looks a bit like a Windecker Eagle, though it is a retractable.

Edit: I've just looked up the Windecker Eagle on Google - I had always thought it had fixed gear, but it does retract. Therefore I think Bond does jump out of one. One lives and learns.

Also, why is the Sea Bee in "The Man With The Golden Gun" missing its left hand float when Bond arrives at Scaramanger's island?

Howlers are fundamental cock-ups like the Hurricane that explodes before it hits the fuel bowser in the B of B, space ships banking in turns and making jet engine sounds in just about every sci-fi movie ever. Space ships apparently firing guns fer Chrisakes, or unguided missiles as if it were the 1950s. Harrison Ford's revolver apparently ejecting cartridge cases that clink on the ground an impossibly short splitsecond after the shot. Air crashes that take 5 minutes and twenty seperate explosions from places where there is no fuel. Movie-style boiling red flame and black smoke napthalene explosions wherever they're seen. Nuclear blasts that make a rumbling grumbling noise with the flash from 20 miles away. Turbine helos making a Stuka like crescendo howl as they spiral down with an "engine failure", and smoke coming from the skids.

1950s registration! I'll remember that one!

Yes, I knew a lot of the aircraft in Tora Tora Tora were Harvards, modified or not - I obviously didn't describe it well enough.

Another god-awful film is 'The Right Stuff' ; I reckon 'Thunderbirds' is much more informative !

100 years ago, when I was a kid, there was a weekly TV prog called Interpol Calling. That was great - Viscount taking off, Connie in flight and a Dak landing, complete with turbo-engine sound!! Not just once, but almost every episode had similar cock-ups.

My rant....
 

I can't recall the title of the film but its a scene where Jack Hawkins (If memory is correct) standing by a window.
Screaming sound of a high speed pass by a jet aircraft (Blue note?), he looks out of the window to see.........
A DC-3 slowly lumbering past in the distance!!!!
One of the best fluffs I can remember.

Loads of War films where 1 or 2 aircraft are totally "Clean" then produce enough distruction which a whole squadron of fully racked up aircraft would have been hard pushed to produce a fraction of the "Results"

My wife has given up telling me off for my screaming insults at the producers of some of the really glaring cock ups seen in tv/films etc.

What gets me going most of all is the stupid obvious mistakes in News Reports etc. which show that no real research was done prior to Broadcasting, no excuse for it in anyway.

OPF

I think the classic 'Airplane !' spoof summed it up by having a DC3 soundtrack with a 707 -on screen; deliberately !

The site you mention is probably this one. The lengths that some of the posters go to in revealing some error are really quite pathetic.

The problem with aircraft in films, particularly period films is obviously the availability of the right type and mark - take 1940 BB Spitfires for example. Add to this the director's own idea of what either he wants them to sound like, or what the viewing public think they should sound like.

Don't forget Hollywood's motto: "Never let reality get in the way"

A classic today during "The Gift Horse", a classic British war movie. The ship is attacked by twin engined aircraft (Blenheims), which suddenly become Stukas as they start dive bombing !

Or the 'docudrama' on the sinking of the Lancastrian with the in cockpit scenes in a Liberator - which Mk 3 Shackleton did they use (but to the uninitiated it did look quite good)?

Pulse1
 

;)

I appeared in that film as an extra. It was partly made at Cranwell about 1956.

G-ANFM has had quite a film career as she also played Thunderbird 6

One of many aviation howlers that I recall is in the film on the hostage rescue at Entebbe. There were several films produced and I can't remember the actual title despite a search of IMDb but it starred Elizabeth Taylor and Kirk Douglas as parents of a hostage.

Anyway, the film shows the rescue aircraft as being C-130s which is all and good but when its time to start engines and depart the film shows a lovely shot of a radial piston start, complete with starter motor sounds, turning blades and clouds of smoke when the engine fires. :rolleyes:

An almost generic howler is that any cockpit shot of an airliner in flight will show at least one if not both pilots with hands on controls, even in cruise. :ugh:

The end of Die Hard II ... he ignites a snow covered trail of cold Jet A1 with the mere flick of a cigarette lighter ..... I've ignited Jet A1 before now with a flaming torch and it took a few minutes and a lot of persuasion to ignite it!

Tora Tora One scene has a Zero being hit by AA fire. You can see the fuselage break in half, balsa wood plainly visible, but the killer is when one or two radio control servos fall out. Kraft brand servos

Loren

In the film of the Battle of Britain, the aircraft which crashed into the sea were models which were released from helicopters as underslung loads. One of the He111s is seen crashing into the sea with the long suspension wire trailing behind it. This is because the model became unstable and the helicopter pilot emergency released it.

Now the film producers were faced with a problem in that they didn't want to build a new model, so they included a scene where some control cables get shot through to attempt to explain the trailing wire!

another clanger for you - the original 'Indiana Jones' film shows Indiana flying to Nepal in a AN2. Which is funny as the AN2 was not designed untill 1947 and the film is supposed to be set in the middle of the second world war !!.

Can't recall the name of the film but I think John Wayne was in it.

An American WW2 fighter bomber was en route to combat over the Pacific. As the two crew were having a conversation whilst flying along in cloud, the distinct shadow of a man and a sweeping brush went slowly past the cockpit.

A thread-drift of sorts, but what really gets me is that in most major countries where English is not widely spoken (Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc) the movies in theaters and in TV are dubbed.

My favourite :E scene is said John Wayne in said WW2 fighter bomber cockpit speaking Japanese, German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) :ugh:

Has anyone noticed the number of times an aircraft is shown with the ident. letters/numbers/registration back to front (especially in WW2 documentaries!)

Much use of PR Spitfires in Reach for the Sky. Still a great film though!

If you the viewer notices these "things" the prog cant be that good and holding your attention. Though I did notice yesterday the interchangeability of a Lancaster and a Halifax on a bombing raid on Essen, and the day before there was one of those wartime classic interviews with the eager reporter, testorone pouring out of every pore, interviewing some "jolly godd chaps" immediately after their return from Berlin, with the A/C in the background, a very early version of an Anson. How many rfueling stops did that require? Alan

I re-watched The Hunt for Red October the other day. An F-14 trying to land on with some sort of technical problem crashes, but the aircraft that actually hits the round down and then rolls across the deck ablaze is a Grumman Panther or Cougar, I didn't quite manage to see enough of the wing planform to decide which it was.

I suppose that when the film was made the genuine crash footage of various F-14s around carriers was not available as these crashes had not actually happened yet.

How about aeroplanes out of control in a dive with the engine and prop rpm increasing to a crescendo, and the props are constant speed units!

Jets make exactly the same sounds as well!!!

Ever noticed that that all aircraft that crash in films have the Stuka siren fitted and nearly all helicopters sound like Bell 47s.
Likewise an awfull lot of FW 190 get shot down during the Battle of Britain and airliners taking-off retract their undercarriage just like a B52 - The curse of stock footage. :ugh:

That dreadful mix of Spits in the Alec Guiness ''Malta story'' (good film though). Griffon's, bubble canopies etc

In Memphis Belle the B17s are escorted by some P51s which have to turn back early because of fuel.

The whole point of the P51 was that it could escort bombers all the way to the target. The whole point of Memphis Belle was that it managed to complete a tour without P51s, usually relying on Spitfires or P47s.

There were plenty of Spitfires available for the film, but apparently the film company decided 'the movie going public associates the Spitfire with the Battle of Britain'.

I do wish the BBC News would stop dubbing that washing machine on spin-cycle noise every time there's an interior shot from a helicopter.

:*

I can remember numerous films and series on TV showing the 'hero' taking off in something like a Comet, then you saw (say) a Viscount cruising along followed by Connie or Stratocruiser landing! The director, continuity or editing people obviously assumed the general public wouldn't notice and simply used 'stock' shots for the three phases of flight!

True Lies
 

Not a "mistake" as per the intent of this thread, but the AV8B Harrier scene in True Lies has to rate near the top of the absurd scale. Our hero Arnold hovers around the crane with his daughter hanging onto the shot out wind scren frame- and they talk and hear each other! and she does not get sucked into the intake. He also backs it into a glass window, etc etc,

Also the OA-6 Loach that can't shake the chasing UH-1 HUEY in the Dustin Hoffman movie "Outbreak"

Other misplaced flying things...
 

Borderline aviation related and anyway somewhat more subtle than most of the above but posted for the benefit of those that enjoy such observations; very many movies that wish to set the scene in a jungle – particularly a threatening one - will be dubbed with the calls of the Kookaburra, a bird which actually lives only in Australia and PNG.

jg

High Flight
 

There were more bloopers in High Flight. My father was an RAF Fireman at Nicosia when they filmed the final crash scene (he and his mates got a fiver each as extras!)

As they come in to land "somewhere in West Germany" you see the fire tender and blood wagon scream down the runway, passing the Nicosia Tower with a very mediterranean landscape, just before the obvious model aircraft scrapes along the runway wheels up.

Interestingly one of the firemen was so enthusiatic in heaving the dummy pilot out of the burning cockpit that he broke or otherwise damaged his arm. He can be seen nursing it in the subsequent dash to the ambulance!!

[dad remustered to supply when the firemen became part of the RAF Regiment!!]

Kiddies, it's called drama. Trust me, I used to write films and have three Academy Award nominations to show for it. (No you won't find them listed under my name if you do a search; look for "Dick Young," the producer of the short documentaries I wrote.)

400 years ago, the snarkers would have been saying, "There was no arras in that room in Dunsinore Castle, it was actually two rooms to the west. And did you see that Birnam Wood scene? There were actually people wearing the trees!"

Give moviemakers a break. They have budgets, and they don't give a scheiss about anoraks who know Malcolm hoods were introduced in September, not October...

This thread is an exercise in people demonstrating how smart they are. Go home.

Stepwilk
 

Yes, and this is an aviation forum. A lot of people in this business get wound up about inaccuracies involving aircraft in films - a lot of the time these details are un-avoidable due to lack of appropriate aircraft and some are due to budget constraints or laziness by the production. I realise that.

What really annoys me about Hollywood is their habit of changing history - not whether Robin Hood was American, but REAL history. I worked with an American who visited some WWII POW cemetaries in Thailand, and he told me that he was astonished that there were no Americans buried there. We had to tell him why. He'd only seen the films.

Your post is an exercise in someone demonstrating how stupid they think the general public are. We're staying.

Maybe we should make a list of so-called 'factual' films that have bent or even mutilated the facts of actual historical events.

I'll start the ball rolling with the tale of the US Navy capturing an Enigma machine from a U boat. How many people think that's what really happened?

Oh, and stepwilk, would you like one of us to retrieve your teddy - you threw it so hard out of your pram you might not find it.

It's called 'attention to detail' and it can make the difference between credibility and ridicule. The average audience are demanding more accuracy and it's ignored at the film producer's peril.

I do a bit of consultancy work for authors who want to get the aviation bits of their books correct. There's a lot of demand for that sort of work and it's becoming more important in the information age where a quick google can show up massive errors.

It's actually also an exercise in a bit of fun and communication with fellow aeronautically-minded individuals...