Movies that you stopped watching because of inaccuracies

[NeoRutty]

I dunno, not to defend ID4 for realism, but two thoughts come to mind:

1. You can take out a very large ocean vessel with a single well-placed torpedo.
2. I think desperation played a part here.

Ya you never know!… a single bee can make a giant human crashing through the woods, coming at their nest, disappear into a hospital and die…

You gotta shoot your shot and hope you get lucky!

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Speaking of ID4, it always gets me how in movies like this they always launch air to air missiles at these massive targets be they giant spaceships or kaijus. As if an air to air missile is going to do anything the size of the giant ships in ID4 or a monster the size of Godzilla.

I like ID4, but that was my main complaint with that movie when it came out. They should have been armed with something like SLAM missiles. Oh and the B2 firing a CRUISE MISSILE at point blank range where it probably couldn't have gotten away from the NUCLEAR DETONATION!

 

[Riceball]

I dunno, not to defend ID4 for realism, but two thoughts come to mind:

1. You can take out a very large ocean vessel with a single well-placed torpedo.
2. I think desperation played a part here.

The thing that you have to understand is that air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles don't kill through explosive force nor do they detonate on contact. Instead, they use proximity fuses and do the bulk of their damage through fragmentation. So shrapnel from a relatively small missile against a ship the size of a small city isn't going to do a whole lot. The more effective approach would have been to fly B-52s and B-1s over the thing and carpet bombed it to hell with fighters flying cover.

 

[DarkHelmet]

Ahhh, the original Red Dawn. I hold that movie dear to my heart because I was in the Army when it came out, at the height of the Cold War. It was the scenario that every American feared was going to happen.

The opening gave a quick synopsis of the state of the world, which basically said it sucked and the US had no Allies and stood alone. With that, we suspended any disbelief.

It was a fun movie but what I loved most is it gave us closest thing to any kind of a HIND we could get at the time, even though the HIND- A's were dresses up PUMAS.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

That was also one of my favorite movies growing up. My dad was a Marine in Vietnam who liked the movie, but always laughed at how fast they took over, the civilians giving up their guns, etc. He would say "There's millions of veterans that would organize the civilians in that case to fight as militias like the Revolutionary and Civil War."

 

[TazMan2000]

The thing that you have to understand is that air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles don't kill through explosive force nor do they detonate on contact. Instead, they use proximity fuses and do the bulk of their damage through fragmentation. So shrapnel from a relatively small missile against a ship the size of a small city isn't going to do a whole lot. The more effective approach would have been to fly B-52s and B-1s over the thing and carpet bombed it to hell with fighters flying cover.

Some missiles do have a fuze that sets the warhead off when it strikes the target in addition to a proximity fuze.

TazMan2000

 

[Riceball]

Some missiles do have a fuze that sets the warhead off when it strikes the target in addition to a proximity fuze.

TazMan2000

While that's true, that's seldom, if ever, the case for air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles since it's much harder to fit a fast-moving aircraft directly. That and there's no need to since one or two hits from a missile exploding nearby and showering the plane with fragmentation is usually enough to take down all but the toughest of aircraft.

 

[TazMan2000]

While that's true, that's seldom, if ever, the case for air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles since it's much harder to fit a fast-moving aircraft directly. That and there's no need to since one or two hits from a missile exploding nearby and showering the plane with fragmentation is usually enough to take down all but the toughest of aircraft.

When a missile is fired, the forward travel g-forces causes the arming mechanism (older missiles) to align or electronic device to allow some time so that the proximity fuzes don't become active until it is well away from the firing aircraft. The proximity fuze is the primary means of detonating the warhead, but there is also an impact fuze that goes off if the proximity fuzes do not work, or the missile hits part of the aircraft that are not in view of the proximity fuze sensors. A secondary reason for the impact fuze it to ensure the destruction of the missile if it misses and hits the ground. This will ensure that the secret technology inside the missile doesn't get into enemy hands. However, in rare cases some missiles have soft landed, or landed in such a way that the impact fuze was not triggered.

TazMan2000

 

[Solo4114]

The thing that you have to understand is that air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles don't kill through explosive force nor do they detonate on contact. Instead, they use proximity fuses and do the bulk of their damage through fragmentation. So shrapnel from a relatively small missile against a ship the size of a small city isn't going to do a whole lot. The more effective approach would have been to fly B-52s and B-1s over the thing and carpet bombed it to hell with fighters flying cover.

That sounds suspiciously like "Fly a bunch of bombers over a big ship and have them drop bombs on it."

Kinda like the opening to....TLJ.

Ahhh, the original Red Dawn. I hold that movie dear to my heart because I was in the Army when it came out, at the height of the Cold War. It was the scenario that every American feared was going to happen.

The opening gave a quick synopsis of the state of the world, which basically said it sucked and the US had no Allies and stood alone. With that, we suspended any disbelief.

It was a fun movie but what I loved most is it gave us closest thing to any kind of a HIND we could get at the time, even though the HIND- A's were dresses up PUMAS.

Apparently, the "T-72" they built was realistic enough that the military contacted the filmmakers to ask them how the hell they put that together.


But yeah, that film was always pretty unrealistic. Fun, though! One of my favs.

That was also one of my favorite movies growing up. My dad was a Marine in Vietnam who liked the movie, but always laughed at how fast they took over, the civilians giving up their guns, etc. He would say "There's millions of veterans that would organize the civilians in that case to fight as militias like the Revolutionary and Civil War."

Yeah, the other thing is that, geographically speaking, the U.S. doesn't really lend itself to occupation. This country is HUGE and probably too big for an army to hold against an unwilling populace. Now, granted, there isn't a hell of a lot that small arms can do to a tank, but you also can't put tanks everywhere, and especially in urban environments, tanks don't do amazingly well.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Yeah, the other thing is that, geographically speaking, the U.S. doesn't really lend itself to occupation. This country is HUGE and probably too big for an army to hold against an unwilling populace. Now, granted, there isn't a hell of a lot that small arms can do to a tank, but you also can't put tanks everywhere, and especially in urban environments, tanks don't do amazingly well.

You would just do what partisans (and Wolverines) did in WW2. You kill the bad guys and then you have anti-tank weapons. Supposedly after WW2 a Japanese general said they had no plans to invade the U.S. because they would be fighting civilians for every street. Maybe, but unless the U.S. Navy was defeated they couldn't logistically pull that off.

 

[p51]

"Red Tails" was a travesty of a film that I just cannot watch, even though I normally love WW2 films.
 Not because of the wrong planes and stuff. In fact its one of the most accurate WW2 movies made for the 'stuff' used.
No, it was the impossible maneuvering of the airplanes, the somersaulting Kreigslok locomotive from just getting hammered with .50 caliber slugs and the monumentally bad writing.
The real Tuskegee Airmen deserved  way better than that.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I haven't seen it for so long, but I remember there were quite few problems. I was really bummed because they were one of the first units my grandpa said to read about when I was around 13. They occasionally were at Foggia, Italy where he was stationed. He was on the fire/crash crew and he mentioned a B-24 crew coming back saying "We had colored escort pilots, can you believe that?!?!" (amazed not disgusted) and he was like "Why not?".

 

[Solo4114]

Yeah, I remember getting only part of the way thru Red Tails and just turning it off. I really wanted to like it, but as I recall the delivery of lines and structuring of scenes and stuff just felt hokey.

You want a good WWII aerial combat movie, you go watch The Battle of Britain.