Goofs for
U-571 (2000) More at IMDbPro »

• Factual errors: The Nazi emblem placed on the S-33 is conspicuously missing in later scenes. As shown in the movie, the code book which cracked Enigma during the Battle of the Atlantic was the long weather code book. This was only captured once - by the British. Subsequent attempts by the US failed as the book would dissolve on contact with water. The film does not purport to be telling a true story; a notice at the end acknowledges the real-life ships whose crews captured Enigmas.
  
  
• Continuity: During the final battle between the captured Nazi U-Boat and the pursuing destroyer, the weather rapidly changes between overcast and sunny.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lt. Tyler is sitting on the porch smoking a cigar the first shot shows it half finished, then the next wide shot shows the cigar full, then the next shot is another close up with the cigar half finished again.
  
  

• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Lt. Tyler and Mazzola are outside on the submarine and a German plane is flying over; when Mazzola yells, his mouth is saying something totally different than what is coming through on the audio.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In one scene several American sailors are wearing German uniforms with the swastika insignia on opposite sides of their shirts. In another scene, American sailors in dress uniforms are wearing ribbon bars for awards that did not exist in 1942.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hirsch is briefing the crew of the S33 he is pointing things out on a chart. When you first see the chart table the only thing on it is a brown folder. In the close up you see the folder and a photograph of the Enigma machine. In the next shot you see the complete table again but only the folder is on it again. Hirsch then pulls the photos out of the folder.
  
  
• Continuity: After they shoot debris from the submarine there is a shot from underneath the submarine. The splashes from the depth charges and illumination reveal that the sub is at or very near the surface, not at 150 metres.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the party scene in the beginning of the movie a sailor is clearly shown drinking a modern twist off bottle of Budweiser beer.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: A black character has a prominent place in the movie, from the crew of the U.S. sub. While sub crews were not fully integrated at the time, African-Americans did serve, as shown here, as messmen and stewards.
  
  
• Factual errors: Several scenes show depth charges dropping within a few feet of the submerged U-571. Detonations anywhere near this close would cause catastrophic hull damage and the boat would be sunk.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: While testing the German of the soldier, the officer refers to the German town of "Koblenz" at the river Rhine. The name of that town is written "Koblentz" in the English subtitles, but this is a common alternate spelling and helps emphasize the pronunciation issues.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the entrance to the Naval yard, there is a stop sign in the foreground. Stop signs of that era were yellow with black lettering and not red with white lettering.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The chief petty officer is wearing anchor insignia on the collar of his khaki shirt, but these were not introduced until 1959.
  
  
• Factual errors: The German recon aircraft appears to be a Messerschmidt 109. However, the head on view is that of another aircraft (wrong wings). The big question is: What is a German fighter doing in the middle of the Atlantic? There were no German aircraft carriers. Recon aircraft were float planes, launched from catapults.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the raiding party get into U-571's galley the cook falls back against the (steel) hull when shot and it moves under his weight.
  
  
• Continuity: At the start of the film, just after the fire starts in the German sub's diesel room, an officer shouts, "She's dropped to 120 meters, Captain." Close examination of the depth gauge to his right shows the sub to be rapidly surfacing.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When S-33 first dives Chief Klough gives three dive alarms saying "Dive! Dive! Dive!". Actual diving procedure requires two alarms sounded accompanied by "Dive! Dive!
  
  
• Continuity: When the Captain is summoned to the outside of the U-571 by the crew (U.S.), he confronts a German destroyer dead ahead, blocking their path. We clearly see the turret guns aiming directly at the U-571 at this point (only for a moment, as the Captain emerges from the sub). Yet moments later, when the Captain orders his crew to fire on the destroyer's radio, the destroyer responds by turning its turret guns towards the U-571, because they are now shown pointing in another direction.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene before boarding the submarine, a box of explosives is shown but the sign on the box is an international United Nations symbol for explosives (exploding device on orange background). The UN was not created until after WW2
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the German recon aircraft appears and the camera moves into the aircraft, the gauges are pointing at zero.
  
  
• Continuity: When "Rabbit" Parker comes back from blowing garbage and Mazzola's body, Tyler is wearing a coat. Three seconds later Tyler has no coat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the U-571 sends its distress message, the toothed wheels of the Enigma machine are visible while three characters of text are typed. The right-hand wheel should advance with every character, but it clearly does not; in a close-up we see it advance correctly once, then on the next character it just starts to move and falls back. Presumably the filmmakers used a real wartime Enigma machine that, after 55 years, was not in good working order.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The S-33 starts from Kittery, Maine ("PORTSMOUTH NAVAL SHIPYARD" on building behind welders), but in Lt. Hirsch's briefing, the map clearly shows the U-571's triangulated position at 52°N, 29°W. This is over 2,000 miles from Portsmouth, NH, but only about 1,200 miles from Lorient, France. The resupply sub left Lorient before the S-33 left Portsmouth (known from the times of day and also because Hirsch knows about it), and the U-571 is drifting east, too, so how could the S-33 possibly get there first?
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Hirsch says that the sub was attacked and presumably disabled "last night at 0300 hours". This is impossible for several reasons; for one thing, the S-33 could not have been sent out when it was. He must mean the previous night.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Hirsch mentions that the location is "near the CHOP line", which is boldly marked on the map at 30°W. The CHOP line, indicating where a convoy's protection CHanged OPerational control from American or Canadian to British responsibility, was first established on July 1, 1942, but the letter that, in his first scene, Tyler has just received is dated May 14, 1942. Also, the CHOP line was initially at 26°W and then 47°W, never 30°.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just before the torpedo is launched, there is a through-the-periscope shot of the destroyer from an impossibly elevated (and much closer than the submarine) position.
  
  
• Factual errors: The crew is shown taking in lines when the boat is preparing to get underway. Lines were not stored aboard the submarines in the line lockers provided because under depth charging, the lockers could open and the lines could get loose and foul the screws or dive planes. Submarines cast off the mooring lines to the tender.
  
  
• Continuity: When the German sub comes across the lifeboat full of survivors, the gunner is shown with a long strand of cartridges that loops down to about his knees. When he begins firing, the strand pulled from his outstretched hand is no more than two feet long, yet the shots ring out for some 15 seconds.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the American submarine is having plates welded to it to make it look like the Nazi sub, the welder kneeling down is wearing a pair of Adidas trainers.
  
  
• Continuity: After the U-571 deck gun fires at the destroyer, wrecking the radio room and mast, the crew hurry back to the conning towers as the U-Boat dives. In doing so, they fail to replace the watertight cover on the barrel of the gun (shown in close-up as the crew scramble for the tower), yet moments later, as the U-Boat passes under the destroyer after submerging, the cover can clearly be seen on the end of the barrel.
  
  
• Factual errors: The area around the coast of the UK was patrolled by aircraft of RAF Coastal Command and as the U-Boat is heading for the UK (on the grounds that it is too far to return to the US with such a damaged boat), the PBY Catalina that is seen in the last shot, should be wearing RAF roundels not US-Navy (pre-war/neutral) markings.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In reality, the submarine U-571 was never actually captured. The submarines U-559 and U-110 were the ones captured with the codebooks but by the British Navy in August 1941, four months before the United States entered the war.
  
  
• Factual errors: German resupply submarines, the Type XIV, were not equipped with torpedoes, but anti-aircraft guns. Thus, the S33 would have succeeded in its mission and left without the Germans being able to retaliate, though able to inform command that the Enigma was compromised.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the scene in which the men are in bunks and Mazzola is talking about a girl he met, he says when he's not "getting anywhere" with her, he uses his secret weapon: the story of the S-26. He then says, "She was running a test dive down off Norfolk. Shaft seal failed. She sunk to 400 feet." This is incorrect. The S-26 was accidentally struck by PC-460 (USS Sturdy) and sank during night patrol maneuvers in the Gulf of Panama in January of 1942.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the U-boat torpedo hits the Destroyer, the boat comes to a complete stop immediately after exploding. A destroyer would need hundreds of feet to come to a complete stop. Hit by torpedo or not.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ensign Larson is shot, Lt. Tyler is asking him if he's okay, and the Christmas Tree (situation board) is visible in the background with one light off. A moment later all the lights are on.
  
  
• Factual errors: When U571 is under depth charge attack from the German destroyer, on the soundtrack you can hear sonar pings that would be attributable to ASDIC. The Germans did not have ASDIC.
  
  
• Factual errors: Both the S-33 and U-571 come under torpedo fire from the German resupply submarine. These U-boats did not have torpedo tubes and would only carry torpedoes as ammunition for the standard U-boats.
  
  
• Factual errors: LCDR Mike Dahlgren wears full commander shoulder boards (three wide stripes) in the opening scenes in his whites but LCDR (gold) oak leaves once under way.
  
  
• Continuity: After the team takes the enemy U-Boat and they have to use it to escape the German resupply U-boat, Lt. Tyler is rapidly turning two dive valves in one direction. In the next scene, he is rapidly turning them in the opposite direction.
  
  
• Anachronisms: As the mission begins, Maj. Coonan uses the phrase "lock and load." During WWII, the phrase was actually "load and lock", referring to first inserting a full magazine into your weapon, then flipping the mag lock, and finally cocking the loading bolt to ready your weapon. The phrase order somehow got reversed during the Viet Nam war, and perpetrated in movies about Nam.
  
  
• Anachronisms: While boarding the U-Boat, Lt. Tyler slowly walks the length of the boat with his hand gun extended using the Weaver Stance. The Weaver Stance, a two handed grip, was developed during the late 1950s by Deputy Sheriff Jack Weaver in California. Before that time, especially during the war, the single handed side grip was taught and used.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Lt Tyler is reading the document in his car, the date at the top of it is "May 14, 1942". Military dates on documents are always in a day - month - year format, so the date on the document should have been "14 May 1942".
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the shipyard is working on the 33 boat, one of the shipyard workers is clearly seen using a present day yellow DeWalt grinder.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the crewmen of the S-33 are being retrieved from the party, the law enforcement officers have the letters MP, standing for Military Police, on their armbands. Military Police is strictly an Army agency. Law enforcement in the Navy is handled by Shore Patrol (SP).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: In the scene with the life boat, the machine gun used is clearly a MG-42 or some variant, however, when the machine gun is fired the sound we hear is more similar to a .50 caliber Browning, a gun used by the US army, not a Nazi u-boat.
  
  
• Continuity: The original Captian (Bill Paxton) is shown ducking his head under the water and sinking, giving in to his death. However, when the crew comes back up to look for survivors, they notice the Captain's dead body floating on top of the water. He did not have a life vest on either.
  
  
• Continuity: The sheets seen in the American submarine are on backwards. (This was noted in the commentary.)
  
  
• Continuity: While Lt. Tyler is looking through the binoculars at the German destroyer the guy behind him is also looking through binoculars. Then there is a medium shot that shows him not looking through the binoculars. Then there is a close up again of both of them looking through binoculars.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There is a scene where the guy is in the sonar room. Then there is a shot that shows the length of the corridor. If you look down at the end of the corridor there is a guy that walks into the corridor from the side and stops and looks down the corridor toward the camera.
  
  

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