Goofs

The reason the Americans cannot receive air support is because of poor weather. When the artillery is brought in on a train, the sky is perfectly clear.

Kiley, while flying in an airplane, takes a picture of Hessler traveling in a staff car. The picture should have shown him looking towards the camera. Instead, they obviously used a still from the film.

In the opening scene all external shots of the recon plane show clear skies. Yet shots from the cockpit and from the colonel's car show it is mostly cloudy.

The interior of the conference room portion of Col. Hessler's command trailer is easily twice as big as shown in the exterior shot, moments before the trailer strikes a land mine and kills Hessler's tank commanders.

When Gen. Grey is standing on the steps of his new headquarters, a messenger runs up and hands him a folded white piece of paper, but when he and Col. Pritchard walk inside seconds later its the colonel who's holding the paper and hands it to him, telling him ts the intelligence information he had requested earlier.

Common in military movies and TV, nearly every salute is done incorrectly. The enlisted man or lesser-grade officer is supposed to hold his salute until returned. Everyone learns that in basic training. Yet here the salute is a quick up/down nearly every time.

Henry Fonda utters one of the most commonly mis-used pieces of movie dialogue when, after talking with HQ over the telephone, he says "Over and out!" Correctly spoken, it's one or the other, "Over!" OR "Out!", but never BOTH, back to back. "OVER!" is correctly used to signify a response is expected, "OUT!" is correctly used to signify the conversation is ended.

The opening narration states that "Montgomery's 8th Army was in the north . . . ". British Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery did command the British forces in NW Europe, but the 8th Army, formerly commanded by him, was in Italy.

The Malmédy massacre is shown taking place on a snow-covered field. In fact, it didn't snow until the massacre was already over, and the snow covered the bodies.

Lt. Col. Kiley salutes indoors. There are very few occasions (i.e., when receiving pay, and some ceremonies) where soldiers render a hand salute indoors, since in almost all occasions the hat is removed while indoors.

At the end of the film German Col. Hessler wants to capture the American fuel dump intact. The attempts by the Germans to do so are an established historical fact about the real battle. German tanks ran on gasoline like American tanks. The myth that German tanks ran on diesel is probably the result of Karl Malden, playing General Omar Bradley erroneously saying so in Patton (1970).

When looking over the captured German soldiers, Lt. Col. Kiley and Col. Pritchard examine what appears to be a more modern rifle, looking like an AK47. It is actually an MP44/StG44, which served in limited numbers in the last two years of the war.

Guffy's tank takes a direct hit in the final tank battle, blowing away most of the turret. Not only is Guffy unhurt or even affected by the hit, the radio still works.

When Lt. Col. Kiley attempts to shoot Col. Hessler at the Our River bridge, the German infantrymen who dismount in response shout various lines like "Es kam von da oben" ("It came from up there") and "Da sind sie" ("There they are"). The foleys of these lines are also used (repeatedly) in subsequent scenes (such as the capture of Lt. Weaver and Sgt. Duquesne), even though they are entirely inappropriate to the events being depicted; they are simply being used as "generic German dialogue."

The radio transmitter used by Col. Hessler in the German command vehicle is an American Hallicrafters SX-28, which is a receiver incapable of transmitting.

The bazookas used by the Americans are actually Spanish M-65 rocket launchers, introduced after World War II. In addition, the M-65 uses an 89mm rocket, while the American M1, M1A1, M9 bazookas used a 60mm rocket, although the German Panzerschreck, introduced in 1943, used an 88mm rocket.

The Germans discuss that they will be using jets against the allies, and look at some models of them. However, the models look nothing like the Messerschmitt Me-262 or the Heinkel He-162, the two jet fighters the Germans actually did use in the war.

During the train sequence, when the train is delivering big guns, the film cuts between views of the train on the track and views from the footplate. The two views are clearly of different tracks. The track shown from the footplate has clearly visible overhead electrification pylons. The views of the track showing the train do not have electrification pylons.

As the film opens Henry Fonda's plane is chasing the German command vehicle on the ground. As the vehicle speeds along the tires squeal as the vehicle makes each turn, however the vehicle is on a dirt road and rubber tires don't squeal on dirt.

In quite a few scenes, dying soldiers miss their mark and fall down too late. Especially during the first tank attack scene, some of them miss their mark by as long as three or four seconds. In one particular scene, two soldiers trying to mount a machine gun wait for three seconds before they fake death and drop to the ground, although the explosion that kills them was only five feet away.

The Jeeps used are the M39, not the WWII Willy's MB or Ford GPW. Both had a split windshield, but the M39 did not.

There are several shots of Bronson firing a machine gun in the general direction of the camera. There are no muzzle flashes, so obviously no blanks were used. He simply shook the weapon and pretended to fire.

When the team of American engineers arrives at the Our River bridge to destroy it, the lead engineer says to Lt. Schumacher (Ty Hardin), "I'm sure loaded with C-4, can you use any?" However, C-4 was not developed until 1956. Composition C, C-2 and C-3 were the types of plastic explosives used by the U.S. army during WW2.

When Duffy is first introduced, putting "merchandise" back on his tank, he asks one of his men to get him some cigarettes. The man goes to the rear of the tank and opens a box containing cartons with various brands. The carton removed for Duffy is Lucky Strikes in their prewar green livery. In 1942 Lucky Strike changed its packaging colors from green and red to white and red. Its ad campaign stated that "Lucky Strike Green had gone to war." This was done because the green ink was made using copper, and copper was needed for the war effort.

Early in the movie, Henry Fonda's character visits the "up front" front. In one scene there is a soldier in a bunk reading a folded magazine, and the viewing audience can see the page he is not reading. The magazine is the April 1964 issue of Playboy and the page he has opened is the beginning of a pictorial on Playmate Donna Michelle. In the same shot a photograph of Rita Hayworth as "Gilda" can be seen on the wall. Gilda (1946) was not released until 1946. The action in this film takes place in 1944.

The German Tiger tanks and American Sherman tanks were actually American tanks from the Korean War era. Most Sherman tanks were scrapped after the war, and the remaining Tiger tanks are in museums.

In an early scene when Kiley shows General Grey a photograph of Hessler, a copy of the play "Inherit the Wind" by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee can be seen on Grey's desk. The famous Scopes "Monkey" Trial play was not published until 1955.

When the mostly-teenage German tank commanders are performing "Das Panzerlied," you can see that they are lip-syncing; the singing voices are clearly not their own.

Robert Ryan says to an aide, "Get me Blue Code, 301". Then we hear what is supposed to be the aide saying it, but it's a dub of Ryan's exact words "301" with Ryan's voice.

In several exterior shots, you can clearly see the movie lights reflected in the soldiers' helmets.

When the last vehicles get over the bridge (moments before the cover of the German soldiers gets blown), the shadow of a camera can be seen on the side of the last truck as it passes by.

The Battle of the Bulge was fought in the densely-wooded Ardennes Forest of Belgium, not in a semi-arid environment.

When the train (carrying the guns) is nearing the first bridge, you can see several men (perhaps railway workers) standing along the side. They are wearing shirts and cowboy-like hats which indicates that it's very hot. The Battle of the bulge took place during the very cold winter of 1944.

When the sergeant and the lieutenant get pointed in the wrong direction, you can see the road-sign pointing to Ambleve (left) and to Malmedy (right). Since the sign is supposed to be twisted, this means that they came from the east. Being east at 42 km from Malmedy, and 36 km from Ambleve, they would have been several (10-15) kilometers inside Germany.

There are no mountains in the Ardennes as seen in the movie.

Amblève is not just a town as depicted. It is a municipality and actually named Amel. It was depicted that Hessler's forces bombarded the place. In reality, Amel was the site of heavy fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. On 17 December 1944, the Wereth Massacre took place when eleven soldiers of the African American 333rd Field Artillery Battalion were tortured and executed by members of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

When Col. Martin Hessler musters his new panzer troops, they are said to be raw recruits, and he is reluctant to go to battle with them (until they convince him of their worthiness by singing the "Panzerlied"). However, many of the soldiers sport military awards such as the tank battle award or the close combat award, and some - including the first two he meets - wear Iron Crosses, the highest German award for bravery in battle. In other words, at least half of them are hardened battle veterans and would easily be recognized as such by an experienced officer such as Col. Hessler.

Early in the film we are shown a column of American vehicles retreating in disarray. In the forefront is a stalled jeep being rocked by several men. Much later, Gen. Grey observes a column of retreating American vehicles and says that "this time they're retreating like soldiers." However, this is the same clip shown earlier except that it has been flipped left to right (the jeep being rocked is now on the other side of the frame.) Since the film clip is the same, Grey really has no basis for his statement.

Kiley and other soldiers salute without any headgear on. Salutes are general performed with headgear on.

Just prior to Col Hessler's meeting with Maj Wolenski (Charles Bronson) he tells Konrad "Tanks run on petrol." "Petrol" is British term (and indeed much of the English speaking world uses it to refer to gasoline). A German would call it "benzine." As all the German's dialog in this film is in American style English with a German accent, real or affected, why wouldn't he just call it gasoline? It was Robert Shaw (Hessler) tipping the fact that he's a British actor.

Early in the film Colonel Hessler tells Conrad that four years ago his panzers over ran Poland. BUT the setting of the film is December, 1944, and Hessler would have known that the invasion of Poland took place in September 1939. Further, this character would have been quite capable of subtracting 1939 from 1944 and coming up with 5 and NOT 4.