Goofs

The P-51 Mustang planes strafing the rail yard are not carrying any bombs when they launch their attack. Then as the POWs escape from the rail carriages, the P-51s suddenly start dropping bombs.

During the theatre rehearsal in the POW camp, Lt. Thomas W. Hart approaches Lt. Lamar Archer, who - visually and audibly - addresses him as 'sergeant'. (This could have been corrected in the post-production stage.)

The level of the alcohol in the glass jar in the Colonel's office changes between shots. At one point it rises and later lowers again without being poured.

Near the end of the movie when the Kommandant is heading out of the barracks are to return to his office, the German soldier salutes him with an American salute instead of a Nazi one.

Stalag IVa was a real prison camp, but in fact only held one American. The vast majority of the prisoners were Russians or Poles, with a few Frenchmen and Britons being interned there as well.

The film's geography is convoluted. Apart from mixing infantry and aviation personnel in the camp, it is extremely unlikely that any tuskegee airmen of the Italy-based 15th Air Force would be to northern Germany where POWs from the Battle of the Bulge were kept.

At the start of the movie the date is given as 16 December 1944, the day that the German Ardennes Counter-Offensive (aka The Battle of the Bulge) began. When Hart crashes his jeep as he speeds away from the MP's, he ends up in a gully with a large number of dead American soldiers. A road sign seen earlier in the scene indicates that this is supposed to be the men from the infamous Malmedy Massacre. Those murders of POW's didn't happen until 17 Dec 1944, the day after the battle began.

The synopsis says Col. Visser is Luftwaffe, which would be correct since the Germans organized POW camps by branch of service. But all the Germans wear Army uniforms.

In the beginning of the movie, the title sequence tells you that it is the HQ Battalion V Corps. The patch on Lt. Hart's left shoulder and the other staff members is the patch for the VIII (8th) Corps.

There is no way that Col.McNamara could allocate which hut men went into. The Germans controlled this. Also there is no way he could just turn up at the Camp Kommandant's office unannounced and talk to him.

At the start of the movie the date is given as 16 December 1944, the day that the German Ardennes Counter-Offensive (aka The Battle of the Bulge) began. When Hart crashes his jeep as he speeds away from the MPs, he ends up in a gully with a large number of dead American soldiers. A road sign seen earlier in the scene indicates that this is supposed to be the men from the infamous Malmedy Massacre. Those murders of POW's didn't happen until 17 December 1944, the day after the battle began.

Col. McNamara wears a subdued arm patch of the Big Red One (First Infantry Division). Subdued service patches were not used by the Army until the 1960's.

The German guards are shown carrying K98k rifles that lack sight hoods or cleaning rods. The lack of these features indicate that they are weapons that were captured by the Soviets during WWII, and were then stripped after the war in the re-arsenaling process.

The movie depicts Stalag VIa as being located in the middle of a desolate valley near Augsburg, Germany. The real Stalag VIa was located on a hillside overlooking the city of Hemer, halfway across the country.

The highest number of aerial victories by a Tuskegee pilot was 4, not 9 as Lt. Scott claims. Interestingly, one of 2 pilots who accomplished this was named Archer.