History Main / JustPlaneWrong

*** Fluff can say whatever it wants, but the fact is that expect Valkyrie and Vulture, none of imperial aircraft has jets pointing down/vectored thrust to be VTOL. However ALL of them have landing gear without wheels. That means they HAVE to have some kind of antigravity device on board.

* In ''Film/PacificRim'', the F-22 Raptors are shown firing two guns, but the production craft only has one (on the right side). The pilots must also have been carrying the idiot ball since they are shown to be strafing at retardedly short ranges. At least the tracer rounds are coming from the right spot.

* In ''Film/PacificRim'', the F-22 Raptors are shown firing two guns, but the production craft only has one (on the right side). At least the tracer rounds are coming from the right spot.

** To clarify: "Buddy spike" is used by a friendly aircraft to reassure the "spiked" target that the lock was from a friendly and can be disregarded; the movie thinks it means "stop locking on to me, I'm on your side." (The correct callout would be "Blue on blue".)
** Also, the tail number (assuming, of course, that it was supposed to be an American-registered aircraft...)

* In the Hollywood remake of ''Film/{{Godzilla}}'', the military aircraft are portrayed inaccurately. Apache helicopters have fixed, side-mounted guns (as opposed to the swiveling nose-mounted gun of a real Apache) and Sidewinders (not mounted on the Apache, which would use Stingers). Also, later in the film, the missiles the F/A-18s used to kill Godzilla on the bridge were labeled "Harpoons", which are designed for anti-ship usage. There is a land attack version of that missile (the SLAM—[[FunWithAcronyms Standoff Land Attack Missile]]), but they're designed for hardened targets.

** To clarify: "Buddy spike" is used by a friendly aircraft to reassure the "spiked" target that the lock was from a friendly and can be disregarded; the movie thinks it means "stop locking on to me, I'm on your side."

* In the film ''The Guns of Navarone'' the good guys get strafed at one point by a German fighter plane. The actual plane was an F4U Corsair, which was an American fighter plane mainly used by the Marines in the Pacific.

** Ironically, this may have been one of the few things ''Film/PearlHarbor'' actually managed to get right: U.S. Airman were remarkably ignorant about the Zero's capabilities in 1941. Accurate reports out of China were dismissed as exaggerated. About the only corrrect thing they did know about the Zero was its "Type 00" designation, the "Zeke" ReportingName wasn't issued until late 1942. And the Zero wasn't that much slower than the P-40 in level flight, only in a dive.

* ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' plane on a conveyor belt. Even ''after'' the common theory about it was busted, [[FanDumb people still complained that they did it wrong]]. The initial question: if a plane was attempting to take off on a conveyor belt designed to go in the opposite way at the same speed, would it take off? General public consensus: No, it wouldn't, because the wheels would be locked in place by the conveyor belt, ''just like a car would be in that situation''. Apparently, billions of people forget that a plane's wheels are ''free-spinning'', and that it gets its thrust ''entirely'' through its engines, thus would have very little if any impact on it from the treadmill.

** The [=Me-262s=] like the one flown by Pretty Boy during the final battle were armed with four [=30mm=] cannon, firing explosive shells the size of milk bottles. [[spoiler: If Lightning had been hit by even ''one'' of those rounds in RealLife he would have been turned into a [[PinkMist red smear all over his cockpit]], much less the dozen or so that fatally wounded him in the movie]].

* Rare aversion in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'': Elasti-girl's radio dialogue when the missiles are closing in on her plane is actually accurate, save repeated misuse of the term "Buddy Spike."

* '''Cost and Availability of Aircraft:''' Sure, scoring a four-seater Cherokee or Cessna might be as easy as walking down to the nearest airfield and saying "Who wants to be in a movie?", but larger or older aircraft, especially WorldWarII era, are expensive, rare, and require special care and insurance. Before the advent of CG, most movie makers resorted to modifying or painting more commonly-available training aircraft to play the part of warbirds in movies (see WeaponsUnderstudies). Availability can also be affected by the period during which the work was filmed—it's not like the Air Force was just gonna give you the keys to their high-altitude spy planes during the ColdWar and the Soviets wouldn't let you touch theirs. Thus many films rely heavily on StockFootage.

*** Again the novelizations gets this right. The RAF pilots where flying Saudi marked Tornadoes, which they where delivering to the Saudi Air Force before all hell broke loose and they where forced to land on a dry lake-bed in the middle of the dessert together with fighters from every Air Force in the Middle East. The FridgeBrilliance is lampshaded in the book when one of the RAF pilots remarks on the impressive and impossible sight of Israeli F-15s parked next to Syrian Migs, and Iraqi fighters parked next to Iranians, when just two days before everyone of those fighters would have shot at every-other fighter present, except, maybe, those belonging to his Air Force.

** The main reason that the game can give a seemingly limitless supply of {{Super Prototype}}s and Tech Demonstrators to enemy and friendly fighter squadron [[HandWave is because it takes place in alternate universe]] [[ForeverWar that goes through at least one large-scale war per decade]], where the possibilities of such aircraft entering active service with any military are perfectly reasonable. Although this then raises the question of why an alternate Earth with different geography and politics has managed to produce the same planes, credited to the same companies, as our world.

** though the movie played this trope both ways, 5 real B-17s were used for the film and as a bonus they were the correct model for the time BUT the intercepting Bf-109 fighters were HA-1112s (though replacing 109s with 1112s was common practice at the time) but the real offenders are the Escort planes as they used early P-51 Mustangs instead of P-47s. Not only do the two aircraft look nothing alike planes that could fly all the way to Berlin and back with external drop tanks were shown pealing off early.

** This is in itself an odd example, as F-16s, which carry much smaller missile loads (A maximum of 6)and significantly less radar and fuel capabilities, is not a primary interceptor. F-15s are what probably would have been scrambled in this case. This may be an in-universe example of the staff at the airbase altering the order to the correct one.

* Blimps and airships in general are uncommon aircraft, which compounds the utter confusion Hollywood seems to have about them. Unlike an elastic balloon, a blimp simply ''does not pop'' if you shoot it or poke a hole in it. The gas inside is barely under any pressure, if it is pressurized at all. Disturbingly, the Goodyear Blimps get shot full of holes all the time(the tiny leaks are so minor they're usually only discovered during maintennance), [[AxeCrazy by yahoos who think that it WILL pop.]] Also, all modern blimps use inert Helium or hot air instead of explosive Hydrogen, specifically to avoid a repeat of the ''{{Hindenburg}}'' disaster.

** Other aircraft that appear in the film but are completely out of place are [=F6F=] Hellcats frequently shown in place of the [=F4F=] Wildcats actually flown by the Navy and Marines during the time of the battle, [=FM-2s=] (a license-built, late-war variant of the Wildcat first appearing in 1944) for hangar and flight deck scenes, [=F4U=] Corsairs making strafing runs in place of dive-bombing Dauntlesses, and [=TBM=] Avengers in place of [=TBD=] Devastators (''six'' Avengers did participate in the battle with one of the Marine squadrons, but all other torpedo bombers fielded by the Americans were Devastators, along with a handful of [=B-26=] Marauder twin-engine bombers flown from Midway). Almost all of the Japanese aircraft in the film were the same modified [=T-6=] trainers used as WeaponsUnderstudies for ''ToraToraTora'' a few years earlier.

* ''{{Stealth}}''
** The F-37s would never be able to take off from a carrier. Aside from being based on a somewhat dubious concept aircraft which would likely have trouble transitioning between wing angles, there's the minor issue that they're apparently all but VTOL-capable, swing-wing CATOBAR aircraft with comically gigantic missile loadouts and utterly insane range; there's no way an aircraft with such a laundry list of capabilities would be able to take off from a standard ''Nimitz'' catapult, and it's doubtful if it could do so at all, especially not with the stated empty weight of nine metric tons for a 70-foot aircraft. And even if all that weren't true, there's the small matter of their rear landing gear being secured to the carrier's deck with tie-down chains when they're on the catapult. Although it's worth mentioning Northrop-Grumann believed the aerodynamic concept might be feasible and as such has taken steps to ensure they had complete control over the forward swept swing wing design for the next two decades by [[http://www.google.com/patents?id=iRQXAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false patenting it]] in 2000.

** Slightly less obvious but equally hilarious case is how titular characters (planes, that is) are shown to outfly Su-37's using exactly the kind of cool supermaneuver [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ALt3m3Kkhw those very Su-37s introduce in real life]]. Somewhy ''russkies'' only know to flight in straight lines in the scene. At least the film miraclously get su-37's right (apart from 27's).

* Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus actually has a shapeshifting fighter jet due to the poor use of stock footage. In one shot the jet is an F-15, in another shot it is an F/A-18, and in yet another shot the same jet is an F-22.

** ''RamboFirstBloodII'' and ''Rambo III'': the Soviet helicopter is a French Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma, fitted with cosmetic modifications (most obviously the stub wings with rocket pods) to a decent semblance of a Mil-24 "Hind A." The fake front fuselage apparently made it stunningly hard to actually fly.
*** SA 330s stood in for Hind-As in ''Film/RedDawn1984'', as well.
*** Yes. But in ''Film/RedDawn1984'' they actually got close to early model Hinds at least in the forward fuselage. Check out the early model [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Mil_Mi-24A_Hind.jpg Hind]] vs the [[http://www.imfdb.org/w/images/b/b1/RedDawnFakeHind06a.jpg fake Hind]] from ''Red Dawn''.
** ''The Beast of War'': a French-built, Israeli-operated Aérospatiale ''Super Frélon'' stands in for the Soviet Mil-8 "Hip".
* Rare aversion in ''TheIncredibles'': Elasti-girl's radio dialogue when the missiles are closing in on her plane is actually accurate, save repeated misuse of the term "Buddy Spike."
** To clarify: "Buddy spike" is used by a friendly aircraft to reassure the "spiked" target that the lock was from a friendly and can be disregarded; the movie thinks it means "stop locking on to me. I'm on your side."

* Early on in ''[[Film/TheATeam The A-Team]]'', Murdock flies a helicopter as if it were a plane, notably [[ImprobablePilotingSkills performing a barrel roll with apparent ease]], [[YouFailPhysicsForever angling the nose of the helicopter upward to "pull up"]] and stalling to the point of tumbling out of the air, but managing to recover. Which is precisely to point out how CrazyAwesome he is. The best part is, in order to evade a heat-seeking missile, Murdock switches off the engine of the helicopter for a moment—the fact that there would ''still'' be a significant heat signature notwithstanding.

** Specifically, it's the decommissioned 747 that lives on the ''TopGear'' test track.

* In ''InterceptorForce 2'', the Russian fighters are called MiG-29s. They're really MiG-25s.
* Interceptor (1993). Oh, where to start. Supersonic, highly-agile F-117s that launch Sidewinder missiles out of the nose gear wheel well AND have folding wings? Check. Oh, those wings can deploy in flight after falling out of the back of a C-5. Also, the engines can somehow start by themselves without pneumatics, AND somehow not have a compressor stall during the aforementioned free fall. Then there's the KC-10 that the bad guys use to board the C-5 in flight, by sliding down the inside of the refueling boom and cutting through the fuselage above the crew rest compartment. If you were being EXTREMELY generous you could pretend that the bad guys had gotten a DC-10 that they modified to carry out their clever ruse, I guess. Then there's the C-5, where 90% of the movie takes place. Apparently they were allowed to film the scenes on a real C-5, but no C-5 has all the air ducts and crawlspaces that this one has. The terrorists also siphon fuel from the 5 to the 117s from inside the cargo bay, in flight. And at the climax, it is [[EveryCarisaPinto blown up]] with a Sidewinder. Empty fuel tanks notwithstanding, a C-5 has taken a missile hit on takeoff in real life, and only lost the engine the missile was locked on to. [[RealityisUnrealistic It circled around and landed safely.]]