What is the biggest military movie/TV goof, basically the military Movie/TV mistakes that annoys you the most?

I was going to start my own thread on this but yeah... the absolute suckiest piece of crap evah... Especially the attack on Pearl... What - did they mount a half size model of the Utah on a rotissiere and then "capsize" it by rotating it till the decks were level with the surface? Spruance destroyers being blown up? A couple of round-stack frigates getting strafed? Nurses dashing to the hospital perfectly made up on a Sunday morning? Augggggghhhhhh!!!!! Someone needs to be slapped with a brick!

My wife asked me what I was shaking my head about after we left the movie.
I replied, "I wonder if the war would have gone any better if they used those Spruance destroyers and Knox frigates shown in the film"

The way Randall Wallace continues to screw up history, starting with "Braveheart". Here, the way he butchered the Doolittle Raid, from the opening scene, when Doolittle wasn't even on active duty, to the last minute changes to the aircraft just before takeoff (actually done weeks before while at Eglin), to the formation flying (like, when you've limited gas, you're going to wait around for almost an hour for everyone else?), to the radio chit-chat (removed at Eglin). And, you don't take a bunch of fighter jocks and put them into medium bombers. Apart from the use of -J models instead of some -C or -D model B-25's, the film switches between what appears to be a straight deck carrier with no forward cats, to an angle-deck with the cats out there for all to see.
To me, anyway, "Tora!..." and "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" were much more accurate in their depictions of these events... not without problems of their own.

Jimmy Dolittle had a comb-over not a full head of hair.

Amazes me in all these movies, when the soldier or Marine says he's on his last clip. Someone tosses him a clip and he starts firing in bursts of 3-5 rounds. Going to run out again in 5 seconds. Anyone ever hear of precise, single shots!

We are talking about the 97% of the country who have never been shot at in anger and don't know why fugas explosions are so lame, or that a sonic boom at 50 feet overhead hurts. Or that we all have our worst fears and they are faced at different times. What is truly amazing are the ones that can visualize themselves as Arnold or whomever and all the fake heroics. But then it's hard to portray the fear that you can cut with a knife, the sweat, the blood of friends. But it makes it easy to tell the real from the fools

Sometimes you need to read the instructions. In the early seventies we used a flash-bang simulator next to a tank silhouette to indicate the target firing. This wasn't very satisfying since it only produced a small puff of smoke and a bang that couldn't be heard in a moving tank 800 meters away. Up to this point all we did was connect the wires on the simulator and turn the crank when ready. One day, feeling bored, I decided to read the instructions that came with the simulator. Imagine my surprise when I found the outer body of the device unscrewed so that you could put a small amount of gasoline inside before screwing it back together. I wired this one up by the silhouette and when I set it off it produced a small fireball almost identical to a tank main gun going off! Who would have thought it!

Gunbroker still has the craptastic 90rd snail drums from the early 2000s for cheap haha.

If you watch closely in the helicopter scene, he starts out firing an RPG but then it quickly becomes a LAW. Huge gaff.

Done that.

Not to mention Rambo found that helicopter that had been sitting in the jungle rotting for over 20 years, and with no tools or spare parts, he got it running and flying.

Yeah, with the opposite door closed.

Me too. I was chemical for 14-years and the whole premise pissed me off. So in order to disarm these incredibly destructive rockets you have to go through this elaborate and dangerous disarming procedure; including actually removing the agent-filled canisters?! I don't think so.

I was working on Johnston Island dismantling chemical weapons when my wife and I watched that. The injector made me laugh and I had to explain to her that the amount of agent he got on himself was enough to kill several thousand people and one injector was not going to fix that.

Somehow or other I had a hard time believing that something which could eat the skin off your bones could be cured with an epi pin.

I am all for letting the Hollywood types stick big
needles into their chests. Maybe we'll get lucky.

PO2 Rev. Frederick C. Mullis, AFI, CFM - Don't be that way!

That has ANYONE not reporting—to a superior officer, for pay, etc.—saluting indoors. To be fair we must acknowledge that in the Air Force a friendly wave counts as a salute.

Or when they keep their hats on when they go indoors.

No, bootcamp n my secondary school 4 buildings you had to salute indoors to get in. It aggravates me.

SGT David Greth Ironically "stripper" was the shortening self-stripping. So you could actually be self-stripping with your rifle in hand. Just food for thought and a mental picture at no extra cost.

SGT David Greth - Correct if referring to the M1903, a Mauser or M-16. The clips for M-1 are en-block clips and are self-ejected when closing the action. There is no "stripping" of the ammo by the shooter.

I will always recall an M-1 pinging as it ejects a spent clip! GySgt Thomas Reichard -

My boss calls it a clip but I've started correcting him and I think he's catching on

Aw c'mon Sarge, he was the greatest Navy SEAL Cook ever!

Peels potatoes with the greatest of ease!!! Potato never saw it coming!!

Greatest waste of oxygen ever

MSgt Ronnie Kelly - Greatest unelected waste perhaps.

But it was Steven Segal, America's greatest actor, he's also a great cook! LOL!

Who somehow miraculously goes from Chief Ryback to Lt. Ryback between Under Siege 1 and 2.

SFC Michael Deffendall - battlefield promotion.... ;o)

And also, why do they need to build an elaborate system to get the missiles off-board?

I found that is one of the consistently accurate parts of nearly every military movie...
"The most dangerous thing in the military is a lieutenant with a map and compass."

Personal experience. As a 19D as Opfor I was stopped by an Artillery officer and asked where a location was on a map. I was dumbfounded.

You mean they aren't?

to be fair Captain, I was an 0861 Artillery Scout observer, and we did a LOT of Land Navigation with our butter bar Lt's and in the 12 years I did that, my battery got in 9 Lts, and 6 of them were absolute shit with Land Nav. One of them didn't even know how to hold the compass right, doing some stupid ass sideways lean for some reason.

And because I was just a 8 year corporal, I had no idea what I was doing because trying to help our Lt. only resulted in him saying he knew what he was doing and I needed to stop trying to correct him because as a "college educated officer" he was the one doing it the right way. He also ended up getting his FO team lost in the woods 3 times and ended up on the wrong location and set up their firing IP facing the wrong direction.

I remember that. For a spilt second you could see the daylight through the empty LAW tube.

I remember that now. Should have been a rear area full of Crispy Critters.