History Main / JustPlaneWrong

* In ''VideoGame/JurassicWorldEvolution'', ACU helicopters can lift 88 ton brachiosauruses without a problem. There is a chopper that can lift up to 80,000 lbs, but that’s clearly not what these are, and even so, the brachiosaurus is twice that weight.

* Calling all Soviet/Russian aircraft [=MiGs=] is equivalent to calling all US aircraft Boeings. Factually speaking, there are plenty of non-Mikoyan aircraft in Russian service — such as Sukhoi's Su-27 "Flanker". This habit is the result of SmallReferencePools: back in the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, the only time that Western civilians actually paid attention to Russian military aviation, most of their planes ''were'' indeed Mikoyan aircraft, and American ace pilots and the aircraft they flew who scored many kills against Cold War opponents were called "[=MiG=] Killers". Sukhoi did not come into much prominence until they introduced the Flanker, which was so close to the end of the Cold War that no American pilots ever flew in combat against them before the war ended (the only Sukhois involved in live combat during the Cold War, at least as reported by the US, were the Su-22s shot down in the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident).

*** The PBY Catalina the player mans the guns of in "Black Cats" has both Oerlikon 20mm cannons and Browning M1919 machine guns mounted on the bow. The cannons were often reported as a field modification to Catalinas in the Pacific, but they'd have to remove the machine guns to make the room for them - they weren't meant as an additional set of guns to support the M1919s but rather as straight-up replacements with better range and power. Additionally, the player's Catalina is severely undermanned - the real things had a crew of ten (pilot, copilot, flight engineer, navigator, radio and radar operators, and four gunners), but the player's crew is at half that (pilot and copilot alongside only two gunners, forcing the player character to waste time clambering between individual guns, and ''one'' guy [[CrewOfOne handling everything else]]), though in turn this helps answer the question of how your Catalina also has the room and engine power to carry up to six sailors pulled out of the ocean over the course of the mission.

** While a "Jug" certainly couldn't have a "reheat", the afterburner was actually around back then. The Italian Caproni-Campini [=CC1=] fighter prototype of 1940 used a radial engine to run a ducted fan (much like many modern radio-control flying models), and it did have a "thrust augmentator", which squirted aviation-grade gasoline into the duct behind the fans and ignited it. In other words, an afterburner. [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness Early jet technology could get a little strange]], by modern standards.

** Every jet in the game with more than one variant uses the exact same model for each one, even when later variants add or remove extra seating, switch out the engines, or the like. The sole major exceptions are the F/A-18E Super Hornet, which has the proper wider fuselage than the other Hornet variants,[[note]]appropriate, since the real Super Hornet has been described as closer to a new plane advertised as a variant for the purposes of not inviting budget scrutiny[[/note]] and the F-15 ACTIVE, which lengthens the fuselage to fit a second seat in the cockpit, but even that omits the thrust-vectoring engines the real thing has - and the game also fails to make the same modification for the F-15E that the ACTIVE was based on. The only other exceptions are when a variant of a plane adds canards, but that's the only difference, and if you look at the textures, you'll note that for most craft with canards like the Flanker family, they're lazy enough about it that canards are textured even on variants that don't have them.

** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare3'''s second mission starts with a transmission from F-22 pilots preparing for a bombing run, but the wireframe models and information on the screen, along with the planes that actually show up in the mission, are all once again F-15s. On top of that, the loadout shown for them tries to claim that an external fuel tank is a JDAM, and for the actual air strike they launch "JDAM Missiles", which A) don't exist ([=JDAMs=] are a conversion kit for unguided bombs), and B) are actually AIM-120 Sparrows, a dedicated air-to-air weapon.

** In ''VideoGame/AceCombat2'', an F-22's thrust vectoring is shown off at one point in the intro cinematic, but its engines point in different directions during a roll, which the real F-22's engines can't actually do (their thrust-vectoring is two dimensional, and only assists with pitch). There's also the issue of it and its Su-35 wingmate taking off from an aircraft carrier when neither of them are carrier-capable.

* Despite [[BackedByThePentagon the support of the U.S. Military]], the 2007 ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie contains a number of errors. An AC-130U Spooky gunship is used to take down the Decepticon Scorponok using "105 sabot rounds". The AC-130 is armed with a 105 mm howitzer, but there is no such thing as a sabot round for this type of weapon.[[note]]The cockpit dialogue during this sequence is accurate, though, since it was an actual AC-130 crew - Creator/MichaelBay simply gave the crew the target details and rolled camera.[[/note]] Later, F-22 Raptors were used to attack the Decepticons during the final battle using laser guided air-to-ground missiles. In real life, the F-22 cannot carry any laser guided missiles; it is designed to use GPS-guided bombs for air-to-ground attacks. Also, freaking jet powered Predator. While the C variant of the Predator is jet powered, it also has substantially redesigned wings and fuselage. Putting a jet engine in a Predator B frame and putting it through the maneuvers it goes through in the movie would probably have snapped the wings off. The first scene in the film also has an army spec-ops team return to base on V-22 Ospreys but the interior shots appear to be from a CH-47 Chinook.

** Army B-26s from Midway attack the Japanese fleet in a level bombing attack. Midway ''did'' contribute B-26s to the battle, however they were armed with ''torpedoes'', not bombs. There was a level bombing attack against the Japanese as well,[[note]]two, in fact: the very first action of the day unsuccessfully attacked the transports carrying the invasion force, and a second against the carriers later in the day[[/note]] however this was carried out by B-17s ([[RuleOfThree also]] entirely absent from the film).

** There's also the infamous exploding plane scene, where Jessica Biel punches out seconds before her plane explodes. Next, the pilotless-but-still-in-one-piece plane twists around and starts ''barreling after her'' (although it ''had'' been twisting around before she hit the eject). '''Then''' it explodes, and an enormous cloud of wreckage chases her down. The "LudicrousGibs" level of debris rather suggests she was carrying a Lockheed C-130 troop transport in her missile bay.

** Made even worse when you know that those very same maneuvers are reserved for airshows and technology demonstration, and that no competent pilot would actually be stupid enough to attempt one in an actual dogfight. Made even more worse (worser?) that they are in a dogfight at all, when both sides are equipped with Beyond Visual Range missile technology, which means dogfighting is your last resort, not your go-to strategy for an engagement. Or the fact the non-stealth Faux-37s weren't even detected until they were only 25 miles out, etc. There's also the fact that these Su-37s are shown as two-seaters, when the only two Su-37s in the real world only have room for the pilot.

* Going over every other example in each film would probably double the length of the page but one of the worst is in ''Film/TransformersTheLastKnight'': before [[spoiler:the TRF go to attack the Ignition Chamber and save the Earth,]] Lennox explains how crazy their plan is by stating that the Osprey has a flight ceiling of 12,000 feet but they would be launching them from "almost double that". In reality the Osprey has a flight ceiling of 25,000 feet, perfectly capable of reaching the TRF's target. A better issue to bring would be that the Osprey would have trouble getting through the literal maze of [[spoiler:Cybertron chunks to the Ignition Chamber.]]

* Averted in the ''[[Series/TheTwilightZone Twilight Zone]]'' episode "The Odyssey of Flight 33". Creator/RodSerling used his brother Robert, who was an aviation writer, and an airline-pilot friend as sources for the cockpit dialogue.

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** The US built [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-5 F-5E Tiger II]] stood in for [=MiGs=], just as various models of Sikorsky helicopters with wings stuck on have had to stand in for Soviet/Russian Mi-24 "Hind" gunships. And the aircraft was called a [=MiG=]-28 — no such bird exists due to naming conventions.[[note]]Mikoyan have always built fighters. Back in the Cold War days, in addition to indicating the design bureau ("[=MiG=]", "Su", "Tu", "Yak", etc.), Soviet designations made the distinction between fighters and other aircraft; odd numbers were fighters, even ones bombers and everything else (though with specialized ground attack aircraft like the Su-25, the difference did get fuzzy at times, and the iconic "Bear" four-engine heavy bomber inexplicably ended up with the Tu-95 designation, used internally by the design bureau, instead of the official Tu-20 designation issued by the Red Air Force). So there was a [=MiG-27=] and a [=MiG-29=], but no -28. There was at the time no [=MiG-33 or -35=] (the former was a WorkingTitle for the [=MiG-29, the latter a MiG-29=] variant that didn't fly until 2007), so either of these names would've been better for a fictional [=MiG=].[[/note]] This may be [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality somewhat justified]], since the alternative of calling the Tigers by the name of a ''real'' Soviet plane would arguably be worse.

* ''Film/{{Midway|1976}}'':

** During the same scene, the terrorist trying to get AF1 back in the air is steering around Ramstein by turning the yoke like a steering wheel. Airplanes move on their horizontal axis by pushing foot pedals. If turning the yoke like that would have actually worked, the wings would have smacked the ground.

[[caption-width-right:350:Concorde, X-Wing, what the hell's the difference?]]

** Like ''Ace Combat'', the planes are all given ludicrous amounts of missiles (this time the absolute minimum is about 88, flying a "Low Payload" craft on the highest difficulty which cuts missile counts) that can target both fast-movers and stationary ground installations. The second game still gives planes at least three-fourths of a full ton worth of missiles, but the default ones are now explicitly-labeled "Heat-Seeking Missiles" that can only target other aircraft.

* In ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'', the "sphere" and robot sitting in Central Park are attacked by Predator [=UCAVs=], armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Hellfire anti-armor missiles, said [=UCAVs=] being flown by U.S. Army operators. First of all, the Army doesn't fly Predators[[note]]The US Army did actually fly the MQ-1C variant, called Grey Eagle or Sky Warrior[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1C_Gray_Eagle]][[/note]], they belong to the U.S. Air Force (and the CIA, but we don't talk about that). Second, when the order to launch is given, the operators fire the Sidewinders, which are infra-red homing air-to-air missiles with relatively small annular blast-fragmentation warheads intended to shred fighter aircraft like a duck hit by birdshot. Not only are such light warheads useless against what is pretty obviously a pair of heavily-armored targets, they aren't generating enough heat to let the missiles' infra-red guidance systems lock on to them to begin with. In such a situation, the Sidewinder will "go dumb", and probably miss, and even if it hits, it won't accomplish much. And since the operators were supposed to be from the Army, you'd think they'd know enough to use the Hellfires, which are ''intended'' for use on heavily-armored ground targets (like tanks, for instance) when shooting at the equivalent of a small warship.

** The [=Me-262s=] like the one flown by Pretty Boy during the final battle were armed with four [=30mm=] cannon, firing explosive shells. [[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]].

* The CGI flying sequences were were spot on, but the scriptwriters for The Aviator (2004) just used random aviation terms in any dialogue between Howard Hughes and Odie. Interwar-era biplanes did not produce reverse thrust, for example.
* In ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'', the heroes find a hangar full of Harriers, all of which aren't used for a '''millennium'''. Nothing should be working after about a millennium, it takes years, not weeks to learn to fly a plane, none of them have flight-suits and yet they're all stunt dogfighter material. On the positive side, they ''do'' mention that Harrier jets can hover. Note that Harriers are so unreliable that the fact that they can even be repaired is implausible.

* In the film ''The Guns of Navarone'':

*** One scene features a prototype "Skyfleet S570", possibly intended as a BlandNameProduct version of the then-new Airbus A380. The actual plane we see, however, is obviously a Boeing 747 with external fuel tanks hanging from the wings (specifically, it's the decommissioned 747 that lives on the ''Series/TopGear'' test track). This makes very little sense for any civilian aircraft.

** If you freeze-frame during the part of the final battle when all the fighter planes are forming up, you can see a couple of Harriers, A-10s and F-16s in the mix, however that's the only time you ever see them and they're way in the background. They only budgeted for one extreme-detail fighter CG-model. Guess which one? Yup. The F/A-18. That's why there was such a fuckload of just those for the finale.
** The number of F/A-18s flying in the final battle was more than have ever existed at any time in history. And this was ''after'' the aliens shot down the entire first counterattack earlier in the movie.
** The novelization is a little more realistic in this department. Eagle squadron (the one the president commands) is formed of F-15s found stored at a "satellite" base part of the {{Area 51}} complex. They are in a grave state of disrepair and several have to be cannibalized to make the others flightworthy, so that only about 8 fly in the actual battle. The rest of the force is formed from what ever they can find, including Russian fighters (acquired through various means during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar for study at Area 51, TruthInTelevision actually), and even UsefulNotes/WorldWarII fighters (a P-51 is mentioned). During the battle the planes are split into two groups: the shooters, modern American planes, and the decoys, Russian and other planes for which ammunition did not exist on base. The latter group was meant to go in first and [[HeroicSacrifice attract the attention of the alien fighters and draw them off]], allowing the former group to close in and open fire.

** The attack on the alien ship with [=AMRAAMs=] and Sidewinders in itself is another example, considering the sheer size of the target. Even the biggest air-to-air missiles in reality only have a 75-kilogram warhead - not much threat to a ship the size of a city. Air-to-ground weapons are closer to 500 kilos... or since the F/A-18 is cleared for the whole gamut of US Navy aircraft weapons, they could have led with something even ''[[NukeEm bigger]]''. Not that this would really have helped, since [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale the entire nuclear arsenal of the world could only vaporise less than 1% of the volume of one of the saucers]].
*** Never mind the question of whether or not the missiles' guidance systems (programmed to look for airplanes) could actually recognize the damn thing as a target to be engaged rather than a mountain to be avoided.

** The film was made with essentially no special-effects budget. One effect of this is that flying scenes are done with whatever StockFootage they could get their hands on. It's common for airplanes to change model in mid-flight; the most JustForFun/{{egregious}} example is an airplane that makes its landing approach as single-engine propeller-driven SBD Dauntless dive-bomber, but crashes onto the carrier's flight deck as a single-engine jet fighter (a [=McDonnell=] Banshee).
** 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, a SBD Dauntless turns into a [=F4U=] Corsair in the middle of a bombing run, and a TBD Devastator (actually depicted by a [=SB2U=] Vindicator) turns into a TBM Avenger and in the next shot becomes another Hellcat. Almost all of the Japanese aircraft in the film were the same modified T-6 trainers used as WeaponsUnderstudies for ''Film/ToraToraTora'' a few years earlier. All the scenes of TBD Devastators and SBD Dauntlesses flying in formation are actually [=SB2U=] Vindicators.
* Despite [[BackedByThePentagon the support of the U.S. Military]], the 2007 ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie contains a number of errors. An AC-130U Spooky gunship is used to take down the Decepticon Scorponok using "105 sabot rounds". The AC-130 is armed with a 105 mm howitzer, but there is no such thing as a sabot round for this type of weapon.[[note]]The cockpit dialogue during this sequence is accurate, though, since it was an actual AC-130 crew - Creator/MichaelBay simply gave the crew the target details and rolled camera.[[/note]] Later, F-22 Raptors were used to attack the Decepticons during the final battle using laser guided air-to-ground missiles. In real life, the F-22 cannot carry any laser guided missiles; it is designed to use GPS-guided bombs for air-to-ground attacks. Also, freaking jet powered Predator. While the C variant of the Predator is jet powered, it also has substantially redesigned wings and fuselage. Putting a jet engine in a Predator B frame and putting it through the maneuvers in the movie would probably have snapped the wings off. The first scene in the film also has an army spec-ops team return to base on V-22 Ospreys but the interior shots appear to be from a CH-47 Chinook.
* Going over every other example in each film would probably double the length of the page but one of the worst is in ''Film/TransformersTheLastKnight'' before [[spoiler: The TRF go attack the Ignition Chamber and therefore save the Earth]] Lennox explains the Osprey has a flight ceiling of 12,000 ft but they launching them from "almost double that" when bringing how crazy their plan is. In reality the Osprey has a flight ceiling 25,000 ft - perfectly capable of reaching the TRF's target. A better issue to bring would be that the Osprey would have trouble getting through the literal maze of [[spoiler: Cybertron chunks to the Ignition Chamber.]]

* ''Series/{{Mayday}}'' has a tendency to fall into this as well. One example is in the episode "Bomb on Board", which recycles the same clip for taking off and landing ''with the thrust reversers deployed.'' Another episode about the Tenerife disaster, which involved a collision between two 747s, Pan Am and KLM, introduces the KLM plane with a shot of it in flight... with winglets, identifying it as a 747-400, which would not be in production until 11 years after the disaster in 1977. In another episode, it is made clear that the people making the show believe that any twinjet in an American Airlines livery must be an A300.

* The "Creator/JRRTolkien, Jr., Jr." sketch in ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' has one scene in which the protagonists fly F-14 jets, but Gandalf refers to them as F-16s, which isn't even getting into [[AnachronismStew/WesternAnimation fighter jets in Middle-Earth in the first place]]. Justified in that the whole sketch is supposed to be a sneak peek at the movie adaptation of a half-finished ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' sequel [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext as completed by Tolkien's six-year-old grandson]], a six-year-old being exactly the sort of person who would assume "F-16" is shorthand for "awesome jet that does anything"... not to mention be responsible for the ''rest'' of [[MindScrew the weirdness in that sketch]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' episode [[Recap/PhineasAndFerbDePlaneDePlane "De Plane! De Plane!"]], Phineas and Ferb built a giant papier-mache plane, which takes off by... tilting upward and then immediately shooting up into the sky, without building up any speed first. They didn't even build a runway.

* In the film version of ''Film/TheHuntForRedOctober'', Robby Jackson's crash is changed rather significantly from the book, becoming only a very minor point with an entirely different cause. That's understandable given the movie's time constraints; less understandable is the use of StockFootage to depict the crash of an F-14 Tomcat on a modern carrier... stock footage that shows the UsefulNotes/KoreanWar crash of an [=F9F=] Panther on a straight-deck carrier. Oi vey.

* Creator/DanBrown committed an especially JustForFun/{{egregious}} one of these in ''Literature/AngelsAndDemons'' when portraying Robert Langdon's transatlantic flight in a "Boeing X-33". In RealLife, the X-33 project never produced a working prototype, but even if it ''had'' done so, the X-33 was unmanned, too small to accommodate any payload at all, let-alone adequate life-support, and was built not by Boeing, but by their arch-rival Lockheed-Martin. While straying from factual accuracy in ''Literature/TheDaVinciCode'' could be chalked up to ArtisticLicenseHistory, the aviation inaccuracies here really can't be called anything short of CriticalResearchFailure.

** In ''Scarecrow'', a French Harrier is hit by a truck, after hovering like a gunship. There is no external damage, but it blows up a few seconds later.

* In ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'', the "sphere" and robot sitting in Central Park are attacked by Predator [=UCAVs=], armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Hellfire anti-armor missiles, said [=UCAVs=] being flown by U.S. Army operators. First of all, the Army doesn't fly Predators[[Note]]The US Army did actually fly the MQ-1C variant, called Grey Eagle or Sky Warrior[[/Note]], they belong to the U.S. Air Force (and the CIA, but we don't talk about that). Second, when the order to launch is given, the operators fire the Sidewinders, which are infra-red homing air-to-air missiles with relatively small annular blast-fragmentation warheads intended to shred fighter aircraft like a duck hit by birdshot. Not only are such light warheads useless against what is pretty obviously a pair of heavily-armored targets, they aren't generating enough heat to let the missiles' infra-red guidance systems lock on to them to begin with. In such a situation, the Sidewinder will "go dumb", and probably miss, and even if it hits, it won't accomplish much. And since the operators were supposed to be from the Army, you'd think they'd know enough to use the Hellfires, which are ''intended'' for use on heavily-armored ground targets (like tanks, for instance) when shooting at the equivalent of a small warship.

* In ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'', the "sphere" and robot sitting in Central Park are attacked by Predator [=UCAVs=], armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Hellfire anti-armor missiles, said [=UCAVs=] being flown by U.S. Army operators. First of all, the Army doesn't fly Predators, they belong to the U.S. Air Force (and the CIA, but we don't talk about that). Second, when the order to launch is given, the operators fire the Sidewinders, which are infra-red homing air-to-air missiles with relatively small annular blast-fragmentation warheads intended to shred fighter aircraft like a duck hit by birdshot. Not only are such light warheads useless against what is pretty obviously a pair of heavily-armored targets, they aren't generating enough heat to let the missiles' infra-red guidance systems lock on to them to begin with. In such a situation, the Sidewinder will "go dumb", and probably miss, and even if it hits, it won't accomplish much. And since the operators were supposed to be from the Army, you'd think they'd know enough to use the Hellfires, which are ''intended'' for use on heavily-armored ground targets (like tanks, for instance) when shooting at the equivalent of a small warship.

** ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 2'' falls into this trap by showing F-15Cs in "The Gulag" mission but later referring to the Navy as bombing the gulag. The Navy uses F/A-18s and eventually will use F-35s for combat missions.[[note]]Ironically, this mission is clearly influenced by ''Film/TheRock'', and yet it makes the exact opposite error that movie does.[[/note]] Apparently the developers didn't want to bother modeling another aircraft. It's also rather sad considering ''Call of Duty 4'' correctly showed the Marines getting their air support from [=SuperCobras=] and Harriers - except in multiplayer, where again the F-15 carries out both their airstrikes and those of the SAS. A lesser goof is that the launching of AGM-88 [=HARMs=], which no F-15 variant is compatible with, is announced with a call of "Fox Three", which is the brevity code for ''air-to-air, active radar-guided'' missiles. An anti-radiation air-to-ground missile would be fired with a call of "Magnum".

** ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps'' has U-2 spyplanes in multiplayer, which can be hit from the ground with small-arms fire. The actual U-2s were designed specifically to fly so high that then-existing anti-aircraft weaponry couldn't reach them. There is no in-game justification for why they would be flying so low, it's pure game balance. It also features both NPC and player-controlled Hind gunships in Vietnam in 1968, a full year and a half before its first flight and four years before it entered military service, [[AnachronismStew but that's one of the lesser anachronisms in this game.]] A less noticeable but even more anachronistic goof is that the in-game Hind also has a missile warning system for when enemies acquire a lock with a missile launcher, and an automated countermeasure system to redirect the first such missile fired at it; the real craft didn't have such systems until they started losing a handful of Hinds to Mujahideen fighters utilizing Stinger missiles partway through the UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan almost two decades later.
** ''Modern Warfare 3'''s second mission starts with a transmission from F-22 pilots preparing for a bombing run, but the wireframe models and information on the screen, along with the planes that actually show up in the mission, are all once again F-15s. On top of that, the loadout shown for them tries to claim that an external fuel tank is a JDAM, and for the actual air strike they launch "JDAM Missiles", which A) don't exist ([=JDAMs=] are a conversion kit for unguided bombs), and B) are actually AIM-120 Sparrows, a dedicated air-to-air weapon.

** Zigzagged in the bomber level of ''United Offensive''. B-17s were in fact used by the RAF's 90 Squadron under the designation Fortress I, and were flown by them on daylight raids over Europe... but they were the B-17C model, a plane with a dramatically different appearance than the "classic" look of the B-17E and F models depicted in the game. These models were only used by the RAF in Coastal Command roles, under the designation Fortress IIA and Fortress II, respectively. The bombers also appear to have a mix of British and American markings, wearing RAF roundels but USAAF tail codes.

* ''F-19 Stealth Fighter'' was a combat flight simulator produced by Microprose in 1986. Its fictional plane used the same general appearance as the Testor Corporation's model kit, and was similar in capability to the F-19 featured in Tom Clancy's Literature/RedStormRising a few years earlier. Ironically the game was released on the same day that the U.S. military admited the existence of the F-117, the RealLife "stealth fighter", which turned out to be quite a different bird. The 1991 sequel/remake added the real F-117, with real-world capability to match (flying the F-117 made for an easy mission, while flying the less-stealthy but air-to-air combat-capable F-19 made for a more exciting one).

* Particularly jarring to anyone with half a brain in ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', where the main character reports seeing a Tupolev "Bear" and some escorts, when the plane in question is clearly is a C-130 Hercules, the single longest-produced ''American'' military aircraft of all time.

* Despite [[BackedByThePentagon the support of the U.S. Military]], the 2007 ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' movie contains a number of errors. An AC-130U Spooky gunship is used to take down the Decepticon Scorponok using "105 sabot rounds". The AC-130 is armed with a 105 mm howitzer, but there is no such thing as a sabot round for this type of weapon.[[note]]The cockpit dialogue during this sequence is accurate, though, since it was an actual AC-130 crew - Creator/MichaelBay simply gave the crew the target details and rolled camera.[[/note]] Later, F-22 Raptors were used to attack the Decepticons during the final battle using laser guided air-to-ground missiles. In real life, the F-22 cannot carry any laser guided missiles; it is designed to use GPS-guided bombs for air-to-ground attacks. Also, freaking jet powered Predator. While the C variant of the Predator is jet powered, it also has substantially redesigned wings and fuselage. Putting a jet engine in a Predator B frame and putting it through the maneuvers in the movie would probably have snapped the wings off. The first scene in the film also has an army spec-ops team return to base on V-22 Ospreys but the interior shots appear to be from CH-47 Chinook.

* In ''Film/AceVenturaWhenNatureCalls'', the opening sequence features Ace climbing some Alpine-looking mountains, dressed in suspenders and shorts often stereotypically portrayed on Swiss alpinists, and there is a helicopter flying around him painted in crimson red with a white cross at each side — the symbol and flag of Switzerland. The aircraft's tail number (license plate)? Canadian registration. [[CaliforniaDoubling Location shooting indeed...]]

* In ''Film/TheRock'', a flight of Air Force F/A-18 Hornets are sent on a bombing mission when it appears that the heroes have failed to neutralize the threat. The Air Force does not use F/A-18s in real life; only the Navy and the Marine Corps do. This was strange considering that the rest of the movie focused on the Marines and Navy.

* Averted in, of all things, ''Film/DrStrangelove'': not only was the B-52 correct in exterior shots (save for casting the shadow of a B-17), the B-52's cockpit avionics, especially the arming console, shown were so accurate that the Air Force freaked out (the bomber's interior was still classified). As it happened, [[Creator/StanleyKubrick Kubrick]] and his crew were familiar with B-17s and B-29s [[DuringTheWar from the War]] and had simply done an amazing job of extrapolation.