Speaking of stripes…
I always find it mildly amusing when officers and noncoms are shown going into battle wearing their insignia of rank. AFAIK, they normally take them off beforehand; otherwise they’d be prime targets for snipers. (Bill Mauldin even mentioned this in Up Front).
If we are going to start bringing up saluting and drill, this thread will be chapters!
Windtalkers had me tearing at my hair in frustration.
Luke still shot first.
You mean … Han? :dubious: 
Well, factoring in the loss of ships and crews and the entire planet Vulcan…
There’s still no way.
You’ think they’d go back to Pike or Spock as Captain with Lieutenant Kirk under them.
That worked out well for the Germans.
No, wait.
Fifteen million plus vs. a maximum of three million. A case of ants overwhelming an elephant.
Yeah, look at the. Could not even control Afghanistan.:p:rolleyes:
Historically, they can’t even keep a hold on Russia. Just saying. 
Plus, the Germans were never able to devote their full resources to defeating the Red Army. In the long run, though, I doubt it would have made much difference. They were too few in number and not prepared for subarctic weather conditions.
Hell, the British Army couldn’t control Afghanistan back when they were one of the top armies of the world … [well, actually they tried 3 separate times and failed ]
I’ve seen this in a couple of black & white WWII movies where an extra has a Thompson and is manually working the bolt after every shot. It’s obvious to me there’s no blank firing adapter installed and the weapon isn’t cycling.
Not in the military, but I do love movies where you can see someone reloading the M72 LAAW single-shot anti-tank launcher like it was a bazooka. Seen that several times. There was also a movie where the big secret weapon was an M72 with a big night vision scope mounted on it.
I’m not military, but I alternately love and cringe at The Great Escape. I’ve read and re-read my first copy of Paul Brickhill’s book to rags, and have been fascinated with it and other books on POW escapes. They certainly did hire ex-inmates opf Stalg Luft Drei as advisors, and obviously worked from the sketches in Brickhill’s book. The physical depiction of the camp and the tunnel appear to be spot-on accurate. I’m a bit annoyed at how they condense characters, pointlessly change names, and add non-existent "cute’ backstories that aren’t real (like the accidental POW of “the Forger”, and the story of his blindness and aided escape), and how they felt the need to make a lot of the characters American. (Americans WERE initially at the camp, but they were separated before the escape, and none were among the ones that got out that night. Maybe the filmmmakers figured Americans wouldn’t pay attention to the movie if it only hasd Brits and the occasional Pole or other European.)
But I really get annoyed with Steve McQueen’s character, who has no counterpart in the real story, does things that never would have been done by an inmate (they NEVER would have asked somebody to escape and then get voluntaruily re-captured. Never. It was hard enough getting someone outside the camp, and it would’ve been heartbreaking to order him to come back. Besides, they had plenty of information about routes and things outside the camp – right down to railroad timetables – from other sources, particularly “tame goons”). Furthermore, he does things that would be guaranteed to get him shot –
----walking over the Warning Wire. (The German machine-gunners in the watchtowers (“goon boxes”) would immediately shoot you if you stuck a nose over that wire.
—jumping onto the back of a guard trying to shoot a man climbing over the fence. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, if only to prevent anyone else from think of doing this.
– Clotheslining a German soldier riding a motorcycle.
– Changing clothes with said cycling German. This would get him shot as a spy when recaptured.
As do I, but there’s a little bit of (local hero) Jerry Sage in Steve McQueen’s character:Sage’s exploits were immortalized in the classic 1963 film The Great Escape. The film’s protagonist, portrayed by Steve McQueen, was based largely on Sage’s experiences as a POW. In 1985 the retired Colonel Sage penned his autobiography, titled Sage: “Dagger” of the O.S.S.
I was never in the army, but my dad was. He said that up until Sgt. Hulka got injured it was fairly similar to how he remembered basic training. He enlisted in the late 50s.
In McQueen’s defense, he did join the Germans chasing him across the countryside.
It was a lame joke about the Death Star explosion being fixed.
McQueen’s characters does things ascribed to other people in the book – someone was “Cooler King”, someone “moled out” with Piglet, Someone distilled the Rasin Hooch 9not potato liquor, as in the movie) into spirits. But they were different guys. Several of the characters in the film were completely or mostly based onn a real-life counterpart, but McQueen’s character isn’t, really. It’s a Frankenstein made up of bits of several real-life people, and the personality of none of them.
If people want to claim their local hero was the basis for McQueen’s part, they can do so, but I’m not required to agree.
Not really military, but when did it become accepted fact that espionage agents and intelligence operatives were either:
A) a suave guy in a tuxedo, driving an Aston Martin, using his actual name wherever he goes whose plan is generally no more complex than show up at some fancy party and antagonize the local terrorist or drug lord into capturing him and ranting about his plans by sleeping with his girlfriend.
B) good looking, smart, idealistic, reluctant, one man wrecking machine, sometimes suffering from that rare form of amnesia that causes you to forget your name and personal history, but leaves your Krav Maga and tactical weapons training intact.
C) Pretty much the hottest woman you will ever see but who is able to slip in and out of any location undetected by putting on a wig.
Because I’m pretty sure working at the CIA or MI6 is absolutely nothing like any of that.