Goofs

In the French village, Cagney originally appears with a .45 automatic. Next he carries a large revolver, then the automatic. When he is involved in the shootout, he uses the revolver.

In this film, a French engineer called Duclois is a Nazi collaborator on the V2 rocket programme, and is described as being responsible for the design and construction of the 'main assembly and supply depot' in northern France, whom '077' Agent Sharkey must kidnap for urgent interrogation, so that intelligence concerning this dangerous long-range super-weapon can save the imminent Allied invasion of Europe. There were indeed major V2 launch bunkers in the 'Pas de Calais' and elsewhere in northern France, and they were certainly rendered inoperable by Allied military actions which were based upon good intelligence (hence the Germans' development thereafter of highly manoeuvrable truck-mounted launchers). Nevertheless, most of the film's military scenario for the V2 programme is really no more than a convenient dramatic fiction: There was actually no such person as the character 'Duclois.' It was Albert Speer, architect, and at this period also Hitler's Minister for Armaments and War Production, who took up a Colonel Dornberger's ideas for a massive hardened 'Blockhaus' launch site; also, a certain Gerhard Degenkolb was brought in later to help in organizing the mass-production of the rockets (Degenkolb was the former director of the 'Demag Engineering Works' and the man responsible for streamlining production in Germany's locomotive industry). The V2 rocket itself was of course actually developed by Wernher Von Braun and his own team. However, at the time of the film's production Von Braun had begun working for the US military, along with many other Nazi scientists - all having been spirited back to the United States, from under the noses of the Soviets, by the top-secret 'Operation Paperclip' - in order to develop ICBMs for the US, and it would have been political dynamite to have acknowledged this publicly at a time when incipient Cold War tensions were already being felt.

The file on William O'Connell, the Nazi spy Kuncel hiding in an OSS-like unit, lists his birthday as July 13, 1914, and his age as 32, pushing the action of the movie to the summer of 1946 at the earliest - but the story is set in the months before D-Day, the spring of 1944, and Kuncel/O'Connell would have to be under 30.

O'Connell's identification card which he flashes at the submarine base gives his date of birth as April 4, 1910, and the date the card was issued as July 12, 1944, but the story is taking place in the months preceding D-Day, June 6, 1944.

When the resistance listen to their personal message on the news, the radio news reader from London is clearly American. Such messages were broadcast by the BBC.

When Sharkey shows his credentials, a certificate of inspector of STO (compulsory work) to the mayor, the address is rue Marbeur instead of rue Marbeuf.

When Cagney is driven from the french Mayor's office, he is driven in a right hand drive car. The only countries in Europe to drive on the left are the UK and Ireland (and in the period Sweden also, who switched to the right in 1962). Whilst it is of course possible to find a few RHD cars in France, it's more likely the only European car the film makers had was a British one.