Goofs

The gun turret atop the Zeppelin, as well as the gunner, are nowhere to be seen in the distance shots. They only appear in the close-ups.

In the bomber escort mission, the French bombers take off with no bombs attached to the bottom of the planes. Yet when they are over the target, the bombs are present.

(at around 1h 50 mins) When Rawlings and Lucienne say their final good-byes and Lucienne is on the wagon riding away, an older man with a white beard passes Rawlings on his left and looks at him. When the movie cuts to a shot behind Rawlings, you can make out the same older man except he has not yet passed Rawlings.

(at around 4 mins) When Jensen boards the train Laura runs along the platform to hold his hand. When the scene cuts to the view from behind Laura she is walking. Then from behind Jensen she is running again.

(at around 1h 30 mins) When the German soldier is drinking outside Lucienne's farmhouse, his bottle in the long shots is a squat white one like those the soldiers find in the cupboard, while the bottle in close shots is a tapered cognac bottle.

The anti aircraft artillery shown in use by the Germans was not of any type used by any side in the First World War, nor was anti aircraft fire nearly as effective or accurate as shown. Were any of the portrayed shell bursts as close as they appeared in the film, they would have instantly destroyed the aircraft with the combination of the explosive power, fire, and shrapnel.

The hammers the pilots are given to correct machinegun jams look like finishing hammers for small nails. When WW I pilots did take hammers aloft, they were mallets with large, heavy heads to exert the necessary force on a stuck charging handle.

WWI biplanes were not capable of the aerodynamic maneuvers shown in the movie. They would have stalled or crashed had they attempted those maneuvers in real life. The aerobatics shown would be tough even for modern fighter planes to accomplish.

Fokker DR-1 triplanes were never used in the great quantities seen in the film. The filmmakers used them because they were easily distinguished from the allied biplanes, and didn't want to leave viewers unsure as to who was on what side during these sequences.

The movie takes place in late 1916 and early 1917. The Fokker Dr.I triplane didn't appear until September 1917. Likewise, the Bristol Fighter and SE5a weren't available until after the time period depicted in the movie. Also, the paint schemes shown on the Dr.I triplanes are wrong. The crosses weren't painted on the upper surfaces of the lower wing and the all-red paint scheme was only used on Manfred von Richthofen's (the Red Baron's) plane; however many of the planes in his unit were partly red. Correct German fighter planes for the time frame of the movie would have been the Albatros DI, DII, and DIII, and the Halberstadt DII.

(at around 1h 35 mins) When Blaine takes off after rescuing Lucienne from the German soldiers at her farmhouse two German soldiers run in front of the plane and start shooting at him while he is taking off. One soldier is kneeling and one is standing. Blaine shoots them with the machine gun on his plane. Both soldiers die, even though the bullets should be well over their head, coming from a machine gun mounted 7-8 feet off the ground, especially since one of the soldiers is kneeling. To shoot them with the machine gun, Blaine would have had to nose dive the plane into the dirt to get the proper angle of attack.

In many of the takes of the computer generated aircraft flying through thick smoke from the battlefield, the smoke is apparently not affected by the passing of the airplanes. Real airplanes flying through real smoke will leave a very visible turbulence behind.

Although it is understandable that the movie makers wanted us to be able to "see" the paths of the machine gun bullets, such projectiles do not leave a vapor trail.

Captain Thenault's scar on left cheek moves to the right cheek in one close-up revealing flipped film to make him look the other direction.

Visible in some shots are wheel brake assemblies on some of the aircraft. In actuality no WW1 fighter aircraft featured brakes on the wheels.

(at around 1h 21 mins) When the pilot crashes into no-mans-land, the Germans soldiers are shown wearing spiked helmets. The Germans abandoned these helmets in favor of the familiar trench helmets in mid-1915. They would not have been in use during the time portrayed in this film.

When asked what his father did, Skinner says, "My daddy was a slave." The slaves had been freed about fifty years earlier and Skinner is only in his twenties, so his father did something after he stopped being a slave. However, Skinner was taking some chronological license to make a point.

The Black Falcon and the Gotha bomber bear the straight-edged Balkan Cross of 1918 instead of the Iron Cross of 1914-17.

At 00:56:22 a mirror is visible on Rawlings plane at the top of the screen. Aircraft were not fitted with mirrors during WW1.

(at around 1h 25 mins) When Lowry shares a bottle of cognac with Skinner he claims it's 'a hundred year old bottle of Louis XV'. In fact, there is no such thing. The bottle he is holding up is a bottle of Louis XIII.