Originally posted by Wilbus
And that's the #1 reason so many vote for it...
And the movie didn't even stay true to history...
true the movie had many inaccuracies.
1) In preparation for the attack, Doolittle (Baldwin) is show training the pilots on land in a flat, sparsely wooded valley near mountains somewhere in the American Southwest. The actual training was done at the airfield known today as Columbia Metropolitan Airport in West Columbia, South Carolina. It is a far more verdant and mountainless area in the state's "Piedmont" topography. In fact, it continued to be training site for B-25 crews during the war which would use islands in the nearby Lake Murray for target practice. A crashed B-25 was recovered from the lake in the 1990's, restored and is now on display in the state museum.
2) Several shots of the USS Hornet aircraft carrier depicted it as having an angled flight deck, a technology that was not implemented until after the war. However, in every other respect the ship, portrayed by the USS Lexington, is accurate, and even of the same Lineage, the Essex class. The Japanese carriers are portrayed more correctly by comparison—a few of them did have their bridge/conning tower superstructure on port side rather than the more common starboard configuration.
3) Affleck and Hartnett's characters are shown taking part in the Doolittle bombing raid over Tokyo in which, as fighter pilots, they would not have been allowed to participate.
4) The B-25 Mitchells shown participating in the Raid are "J"-models, when the models used in the actual Raid were "B"-models.
5) Several crewmen on Affleck and Harnett's B-25's are killed in the firefight with the Japanese, including Harnett's character. In fact, no members of the raid were killed in this manner. Three airmen died in the crash landings in China, three were later executed as POWs by their Japanese captors, and one died of starvation in captivity. (Four other POWs were recovered alive near the end of the war).
