Goofs for
Above and Beyond (1952) More at IMDbPro »

• Factual errors: Toward the end the ground crew is seen pushing the atomic bomb over to the Enola Gay's bomb bay for apparent loading then scene cuts. In fact "Little Boy" was so big that it would not fit under a B-29 to load in a conventional manner. A concrete pit was built to lower the bomb into and the Enola Gay was then positioned over the pit to be able to upload the bomb.
  
  
• Factual errors: When we see the bomb drop out of the bomb bay it is not the "Little Boy" atomic bomb. It appears to be footage from a drop of Britain's Tallboy bomb which was long and bullet shaped with some animation added such as the nose protrusion of the detonation device. In actuality Little Boy was blunt nosed like a loaf of bread and the detonation device was inside the bomb not a protrusion on the front of the bomb.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the B-29 is on final approach for the crash landing the wheels are up but when it crashes the left wheel is down. It's also a B-17 crashing, not the B-29.
  
  

• Factual errors: Last scene of film depicts a DC 6 aircraft. The DC 6 began operation in 1946 one year after the WWII ended.
  
  
• Factual errors: The name Enola Gay is inscribed on the left (pilot's) side of the real airplane, not on the right as shown in the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Lt. Col. Tibbets first gets to Wendover he is asked for his ID three times. The third MP is wearing a USMC armband. Army military police armbands are only the letters MP, USMC ones are M.P., with the periods.
  
  
• Factual errors: In going over events in Tibbets's life, Mayor Uanna reads Tibbets a report of his having been arrested for stealing a car in 1927. Tibbets interrupts and says he was only 16 years old at the time. In actuality, the real Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets was born on February 23, 1915, which would have made him only 12 at the time of this alleged incident in 1927. (However, actor Robert Taylor, who played Tibbets, was born in 1911 and was himself in fact 16 years old in 1927.)
  
  
• Errors in geography: Most of the scenes showing Tibbets piloting a B-29 around the Wichita area show tall, arid mountains and desert terrain - definitely not the topographical characteristics of Wichita, or anywhere else in Kansas.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the first bombing scenes with the B-17's, they actually show a twin engine B-26 dropping the bombs...
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the scene where Tibbets and his flight crew are taking off for the test flight where the plane has been deliberately overloaded by four tons, after Tibbets gives the command to retrack the landing gear, the plane is shown taking off with the landing gear still down.
  
  

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