Did You Know?

A modern barcode can be seen on the back of a whiskey bottle. There's also a clear shot of a bottle with a built-in plastic translucent pourer under a plastic screw cap.
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Evelyn and her nurse friends are shown wearing bikinis. The bikini didn't make its first appearance until 1946.
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A sailor betting on Dorie Miller's boxing match has a $5 bill with the "Hawaii" overprint on it. Although series 1934 and 1934-A notes were printed with the "Hawaii" overprint, these notes were not issued until July 1942, seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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A modern 'rocking' style light switch can be seen in Evelyn's house.
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In the first view of Pearl Harbor, just before the nurses are shown in the small transport boat the Arizona Memorial is visible in the background.
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The early boyhood scenes are dated 1923, but the father is a crop duster, an occupation that did not exist until after WWII. In addition, the Stearman biplane used in the opening scenes wasn't produced until 1934. It was a pilot trainer for the military, and was released to the public after WWII as surplus.
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In the beginning of the movie, we see a newsreel of 1940, showing a US tank fighting in the city of Cologne. This did not happen before March 1945.
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In the England scene, a spitfire with a four-blade propeller is seen. This was a late-war model. All Spitfires at the time of the Battle of Britain were models with three-blade constant pitch propellers.
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As soon as the Japanese planes fly in, we see shots of the US fleet. The ships with the overhanging ladder style device at their bows are a class of assault-transport ship that were not launched until the early 1970s - some 30 years after the events takes place.
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Danny and Rafe are seen boarding a C-47 transport which is to take them to their destination where they will train for the top secret mission. The C-47 used, clearly has a radar dome mounted in the nose. C-47s of this type did not exist in that time frame.
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When Danny is called on the carpet by Doolittle for buzzing the field, he refers to Doolittle's trophies on a cabinet to his left. One of the trophies is of an F-86 Sabre, a swept wing jet not even on anyone's drawing board in 1940.
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Red's M1928A1 Thompson submachine gun has a 30-round magazine. 30-round magazines weren't available until the release of the M1/M1A1 Thompson in 1942 so he should be using a 20-round magazine or the 50-round drum magazines the other pilots are using.
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When Rafe and the other pilots are attempting to reach their planes, he tells them that P-40s can't outrun Zeroes, but can out-turn them. Not only is this information untrue, in fact the truth is quite the opposite, but how would he know this information? The Zero was only introduced in 1940, and very few, if any, Americans had ever seen it in action before Pearl Harbor.
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In the scene in the Cryptography office, as Dan Aykroyd mutters about the Japanese flooding the Pacific with radio traffic, the ticker-tape coded messages are printed out in Helvetica, a font not designed until the 1950s.
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During the Doolittle Raid, USS Hornet has the number "8" painted on her deck. At the time of the raid, US carriers didn't have their hull numbers on their flight decks. Most showed their names abbreviated, e.g. "EN" for Enterprise, or "YKTN" for Yorktown. Hornet's deck only had guide lines to aid the pilots.
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Evelyn gives Rafe a scarf when they say goodbye. It disappears and reappears between shots.
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As Rafe and Danny talk on the beach, the lighting and the color of the sky changes between shots
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When Danny and Evelyn leave the Black Cat diner, Evelyn doesn't leave her handkerchief on the table. After she has walked out the door, Danny picks up the handkerchief, which was not there a second ago.
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When the pilots return home after bombing Japan, we see a back view of Doolittle's wife with a purse in her left hand. As she walks forward to welcome her husband home, the camera reverses angle and we see a front view of her. But now, the purse had switched sides and appears in her right hand instead.
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When Rafe's squadron is scrambled (in the sequence before he gets shot down) he gets on to the wing of a Spitfire with the markings RF-T. For the rest of the sequence he is in a Spitfire with the markings RF-M (apart from one fleeting shot where the last letter is R).
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When the planes take off to bomb Tokyo, the captain of the carrier says "forward" in order to help them taking off. When the planes are still taking off, the carrier has its anchor chains as if it was anchored.
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Special effects shots of the Japanese flagship, IJN Akagi, are accurate. However, Essex-class USS Lexington stood in for Akagi for scenes aboard ship and is visibly different. In particular, her island structure is much larger than Akagi's.
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We see an above shot of Evelyn putting ice on Rafe's nose (after the cork hits it), then it cuts to a side shot and we see Evelyn pulling the ice away. When the camera cuts back to the above shot, the ice is still on Rafe's nose and Evelyn pulls it away after a couple of seconds.
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When the major brings Evelyn into the command post area, he tells her Doolittle's raid is scheduled to take off in a "couple of hours". If the task force was spotted by a Japanese ship and immediately launched which advanced the raids execution by 12 hours (as reported to President Roosevelt), how could the Major have brought Evelyn to the command post a couple of hours before they were scheduled to be launched. The raid would have been over.
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Rafe shoots and kills the Japanese soldiers taking Danny away, before a fourth soldier aims his rifle at Rafe. Rafe discovers his pistol is empty and the Japanese soldier who had been aiming his rifle at Rafe and only has to pull the trigger, then turns and aims again.
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(At 1:05:50) Evelyn and Danny are talking about the night before. He tells her everything will be alright then they hug. Her head is on his right shoulder the next shot its on his left shoulder.
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Danny and Rafe are promoted to captain when selected by Doolittle for the Tokyo mission. They continue to wear lieutenant's bars on their jackets afterward. Danny wears captain's bars on his cap, but lieutenant's bars on his jacket. The captain's bars on his cap look like they are gold colored, and should be silver.
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As Rafe and Danny sleep off their hangovers in the convertible, the crew is visible in the car's chrome bumper.
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The camera pans across a window, showing Evelyn seated inside and eventually stops at a reflection of Rafe. A red indicator light from the camera is clearly reflected and moves across the first pane during the shot.
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While Dorie Miller is running down a corridor during the attack, the camera following him revels a crew member holding a device standing slightly off screen.
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Throughout the attack scene, the placement of the battleships in Battleship Row changes. When the Oklahoma is shown capsizing, in some scenes she is correctly moored next to the Maryland, in other scenes she is next to the destroyed Arizona. In some parts the capsized ship is even surrounded by some sort of fog with no ships around her. When Admiral Kimmel is on the small boat touring the harbor after the attack, the Oklahoma is next to the Arizona and other battleships that seem to have been placed in a random clutter next to each other, instead of the line that they were in that morning. Even in the scene showing Pearl Harbor at an aerial view right before the attack, the Geography of Ford Island and the placement of the battleships is wrong. Battleship Row isn't even visible.
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For reasons of expediency and the practical requirements of storytelling (and, presumably, due to some genuine errors), many of the actions and procedures depicted in the movie do not accurately reflect the actions and procedures followed by American and Japanese service personnel in 1941. Many of the events shown in the movie did not happen, or happened differently on the morning of 7 December 1941. This is not a documentary.
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At that time, Japanese was written from right to left. All the Japanese characters in the movie are written from left to right, except one phrase, which says, "Empire of Japan banzai".
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Rafe wears an Eagle Squadron badge, as do the Spitfires. The squadron code 'RF' is for No.303 Squadron, which was a Polish unit. The only Hurricane seen in the film has the correct codes for an Eagle Squadron, 'XR-T' for No.71 Squadron.
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When the Doolittle raiders are practicing their takeoffs, the flags in the background indicate that they are on a downwind departure. Anyone with any knowledge of aviation knows you take off into the wind. Especially if you are trying to shorten the takeoff run.
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The Japenese torpedo dropped from a plane rockets on the water with its wooden frame intact. In reality, the wooden frame would detach once in the water.
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Rafe explains to the pilots, that are going to fight the Zeros that are strafing the airfield, that "P-40's can't outrun Zeros, so we're going to have to out-fly them." He has the aircraft capabilities backwards. In level flight and especially a dive, the P-40 can outrun a Zero any day. On the same note, a Zero can fly circles around a P-40. Pilots fighting the Zero in the P-40 were told to use "zoom and boom" tactics, diving on Zeros and racing away. If a P-40 pilot ever tried to out-fly a Zeros superior maneuverability, he'd be dead.
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Military Nurses were not permitted to wear long flowing hair styles as portrayed in the film. While in uniform, including their whites, the length permitted was just above their collars.
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During the Japanese attack, one of their bombers that are attacking an airfield is carrying an aerial torpedo. This weapon is designed only to attack ships by being launched at low level into the water by a bomber flying toward the target, not to attack land-based targets.
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Doris Miller is shown as a petty officer second class. Miller was in fact a petty officer third class at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.
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During the presentation of medals to the Navy nurses, of which Evelyn is one, the sleeve stripes of their uniforms denote the rank of Ensign, whereas Evelyn was referred to as Lieutenant. In the U.S. Navy, Lieutenants are the equivalent of Army Captains, and Lieutenant J.G. is the equivalent of Army First Lieutenants. In either case, there should be two sleeve stripes on a Navy Lieutenant's uniform: two of the same width for a Lieutenant, and the top stripe thinner for a Lieutenant J.G.
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In the scene where President Roosevelt is expressing his dismay with the Americans not doing more to aid the Aliies in Europe he mentions that the US needs to send more tanks to Britain and Russia, to provide aid. At this point in time, early 1941, Russia was still an ally of Nazi Germany. They didn't start fighting on the side of the Allies until after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and were not considered part of the Allies until January 1942.
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During the attack, Japanese planes bomb the hospital grounds and then proceed to strafe. The Japanese did not attack the hospital, which would have been a waste of scarce resources. Any damage to the hospitals and civilian buildings was caused by American anti-aircraft shells falling on them.
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During the raid on Pearl Harbor, a US Navy destroyer escort with the hull number 1041 is seen in a couple of the attack sequences. However, this ship was not commissioned until the early 1960s, and there were no US warships with hull numbers in the 1000s back in 1941.
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The RAF Squadron Leader calls Rafe "Pilot Officer", an RAF rank equivalent to a US Army Second Lieutentant. As his silver bars indicate he is a First Lieutenant, he would have held the rank of "Flying Officer" in the Eagle Squadron.
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Gooz doesn't bash the firing pin down on the Type 97 grenade before throwing it. Furthermore, the grenade was known to be weak and certainly wouldn't have had enough blast to send bodies flying.
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The tailgunner in one of the Japanese B5N "Kate" dive-bombers is seen firing an American-made M2 .30-caliber machine gun. No Japanese aircraft would be equipped with an American weapon.
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When the Japanese patrol boats are contacted, it is said that they are 400 yards away. At a distance of 400 yards ships at sea are in danger of colliding, not just being spotted. The actual sighting was made at 10,000 yards. Further, such a sighting was no great surprise, since an air patrol had spotted Japanese ships earlier that morning.
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In the film a cage mast is shown collapsing. Four ships had these that day and none collapsed.
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A Japanese gunner is seen firing a Browning machine gun during the attack. In reality, the Japanese rear gunners during the attack used the Type 92 LMG, a Japanese copy of the aircraft version of the Lewis Gun.
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The car the heroes drive to the airfield in is strafed by a zero. The large-caliber armor-piercing ammunition that can rip airplanes and ships to pieces does only cosmetic damage to the car.
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Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Chester Nimitz is shown in Washington DC tracking the movements of the Japanese carrier fleet. He has the four stripes of a full admiral on his uniform sleeves. Yet before Pearl Harbor Nimitz's rank was only Rear Admiral (upper half) with two stripes. His promotion to full Admiral was awarded on December 31st, three and a half weeks after Pearl Harbor. Also, prior to Pearl Harbor Nimitz was Chief of the Bureau of Navigation working primarily in a personnel role. He was not the ranking officer planning war strategy in the Pacific from intelligence reports.
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When the bomb crashes into the Arizona's ammunition magazine, it is shown knocking a rack of shells for the main guns loose and landing among a stack of powder bags. In addition to the fact that shells and powder were always stored separately, the projectiles are shown bouncing off the floor with a resounding "clang", as if hollow and made of a light metal. The projectiles for the Arizona's 14" guns weighed over 1,500 lbs. each, and obviously would not bounce in this manner.
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The American P-40 fighters depicted in the movie are "E" or "N" models, which did not enter service until after 1941. These can be identified by the shape of the chin radiator on the "E" and the canopy shape on the "N". The actual model available at the time was the "B" or "C".
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Hardly anyone smokes. Although during the 1940s nearly every soldier smoked cigarettes, it was a conscious decision on the part of the film makers not to portray it because of the current feelings about the dangers of smoking.
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A newsreel refers to the bombing of "downtown London". While there is in fact a "central" London, this area has never been referred to as "downtown". However, Edward R. Murrow, whose reporting is being simulated in the scene, did use that common American term.
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The gas flame used to simulate muzzle flash can be seen in a Japanese AA gun.
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During the Doolittle raid take off scene, two catapults can be seen on the flight deck. USS Hornet had no catapults.
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When the guy sent to bomb the Arizona is looking through to aim the bomb, you can see next to the fake Arizona, the real one in the water.
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During the bombing of Tokyo, one section 'sky' had not been keyed in from Rafe's cockpit window, clearly showing the green screen that it had been filmed in front of.
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When the battleship Oklahoma is shown rolling over, the anchor chains on her forecastle never move. Each link in such an anchor chain would weigh over one hundred pounds, and so should have drooped toward the water as the ship rolled.
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