Goofs

At the airport near the end, the weather changes from cloudy and misty to clear blue sky and sunshine between shots.

When Major Smith goes into the Bier Keller, he is wearing an officer's peaked cap. He takes it off and places it on the table and we never see it again. (Apparently, it was stolen from the set during the lunch break.)

After Smith and Schaffer initially climb into the Schloss Adler, Schaffer puts on a cap and Smith doesn't have one as they walk out the door of a room and into a hall. Less than a minute later, both of them are walking down another hall, and Smith now has a hat similar to Schaffer's.

After the swim in the river all four heroes are soaking wet. Yet when they are in the plane, Major Smith produces an immaculately dry notebook with the incriminating evidence. No wet pages or blurred ink.

The scenes showing the escape out the window shows the stunt people rappelling normally with full rigging in the long shots, yet in the close up shots the actors are just holding onto the rope and they were not shown rigging the ropes for rappelling and did not show the use of any "D" rings or other rappelling gear.

The helicopter seen landing in the castle courtyard is a Bell model 47G, not built until well after the war in 1953. While the Germans had a small number of working helicopters during the war (none of which would have been readily available to the filmmakers), the Bell does not make a convincing stand-in for any of them.

Everyone, Allied and Axis alike, refer to the German mountain troops as the "Alpenkorps" throughout the film. The Alpenkorps was a real unit, but it was disbanded at the end of WWI. The WWII incarnation was known as the Gebirgsjäger, the designation it carries to this day.

At the beginning of the film, during the initial briefing for the mission, Schaffer is wearing the same colored green necktie that the British are wearing. Members of the U.S. Army wore khaki ties during that period.

Early in the film, Christiansen makes reference to a "Pathfinder squadron... with ten-ton bombs". The film is set some time before late 1944 which is when bombs of this size were developed, and the first wasn't dropped until March 1945. Also, the role of Pathfinder squadrons was marking targets, and they wouldn't have carried the bombs themselves.

During the briefing, early in the movie, the team is told that General Carnaby had been on his way to meet with his Russian counterpart regarding D-Day plans and that the meeting place was to have been Crete. That would be impossible as Crete had been seized in a German airborne assault in the spring of 1941 and remained in German hands until the war ended. Moreover, the Western Allies would not share top secret operational plans with their Soviet Allies.

On the ride up to the castle, Smith and Schaffer climb down onto the roof of the cable car gondola without making enough noise to alert the occupants inside. On the ride down, Smith again descends from the cable gripping device onto the roof, but this time the occupants hear his footsteps and begin shooting up through the roof. This can be explained by the people in the gondola on the trip down were trying to escape and so would be more alert for any suspicious noises.

It is assumed that in the cable car, Maj. Jonathan Smith screws the light bulbs in, not out, to extinguish them. However light bulbs in public transport stations and vehicles (such as an aerial tramway) have reversed threads to prevent passengers from stealing them for their home.

Booby traps using wires are placed by the road used for the escape yet there is a substantial period between this point and the eventual escape using the bus. However, the trip wires are fastened to posts at the roadside, not all the way across the road, so any passing traffic would not rip through them before the escape. The bus then knocked over the posts during the escape, triggering the timer mechanisms.

Over schnapps in the nightclub, Major von Hapen and Mary/Maria have a dispute over the location of the cathedral in Düsseldorf. While the city does have a large church (the collegiate church of Saint Lambert), it is not a cathedral, as Düsseldorf has never been a bishop's seat.

That is the whole point of the scene, the Major is suspicious and is telling Mary incorrect or misleading information in order to assess whether she is honest about who she is.

While the presence of signs reading "Militärkommando Hohenwerfen" in the castle would, at first glance, appear to be an error caused by using the actual name of the shooting location Schloß Hohenwerfen (called "Schloß Adler" in the film), similar signs can be seen on other buildings. This indicates that "Hohenwerfen" does not refer to the castle, but to the administrative region (e.g. a municipality) that contains both the village of Werfen and the Schloß Adler.

The tree stump of a tree supposedly blown off by dynamite shows clear signs of being cut down with a chainsaw.

When the Nazi car (after Smith and Schaffer's arrest) is pushed into the ravine, it explodes without apparent reason before touching the ground. The same happens to the planes on the airfield being lightly hit on the tail by the German Alpine Post Bus.

When von Hapen walks across the square whilst it is snowing, the falling snowflakes move with the camera as it pans across, showing them to have been added afterwards.

Near the end of the corridor firefight, Schaffer retreats into the room and a German soldier throws a grenade through the door. In the widescreen version you can see the grenade strike the door frame and bounce back at the actor's feet, yet there is an explosion inside the room where the grenade would have landed. And grenades do not explode in a fireball as shown in this, (and other) movies.

In the cable-car fight scene, Christiansen fires the silenced pistol five times and then throws the gun on the cable-car floor after the bullets run out. The gun immediately bounces several times, even up to shoulder height, suggesting it is in fact a prop-gun made of rubber or some other material besides metal.

After the team parachute lands in the valley, presumably in the middle of German occupied territory, they soon realize that one member is unaccounted for. In the next scene, one soldier locates the missing team member. He yells loudly, "Major", loud enough for his voice to echo in the hills and mountains. Any experienced soldier, part of a stealthy secret invasion force, would know better than to yell that loud possibly notifying the enemy of their presence.

The sirens used at the castle and at the airfield are Allied sirens, German sirens of the time being lower pitched.

When Smith and Schaffer first sight the Schloss Adler through binoculars, they also look at a German military training camp nearby. During this shot, the matted image moves noticeably within the still frame image; a poorly executed special effect.

In the final scene, Smith pronounces Admiral Rolland's name two different ways within a few seconds - as "Admiral ROWland" and as "Admiral RAWland".

Did any one notice the modern tracked APC (left of frame) when Smith and crew drove out of the town on the way to the airfield.

The bus the team drives away in near the end is a 1952 Steyr built bus, a design that did not exist at the time.

When Cpl. Cartwright Jones (formerly posing as "Gen. Carnaby") is being interrogated he states his name, rank and serial number. He prefixes his serial number with RA, which stands for Regular Army. The Army did not start using this designation until after WWII. Also, RA was a serial number prefix solely for enlisted men - not commissioned officers.

During the briefing sequence, when Schaffer is in Army dress uniform, he is wearing a Senior Parachutist Badge, designating him as a jumpmaster. The Senior badge was not created until 1949.

Scopolamine hadn't been used as a truth drug before the 1950s.

If you look really carefully you can make out that the timer used on the bombs (in particular the one on the cable car) is a Heuer Sebring, a model that wasn't made until around 1958.

When Smith shoots the radio operator twice in the back, the second blood bag fails to go off in sync with the gunshot

When the captured German Alpine Post Bus races throughout the airfield, Schaffer and Mary shoot several small jeeps which flip over. As they do, the rope that flipped them can be seen being pulled off screen.

When Smith leads the group across the railroad tracks in Werfen, members of the film crew are reflected in the windows.

After setting explosives in the hut, Smith and Schaffer climb through the back window to take shelter under the bridge. The shadows of the camera crew are visible on the snow.

When they are swimming in the river after jumping from the cable car, they are clearly all wearing flotation vests under their clothes, as they float too high in the water, (their shoulders are clear of the water) and struggle to swim because the vests hold them upright.

Smith and Schaffer have been arrested and are being transported by a staff car and subsequently cause the car to crash. The vehicle careens up and through a wood barricade and then slams into a pile of gravel. The hinged windshield flies open and one of the Germans inside the car is ejected over the hood. Visible briefly is a small cable attached to the top of the windshield that was used to pull the windshield open so the prop dummy of the German could fly through the opening.

Although several stylish call signs are used in the radio transmissions ("Broadsword", "Danny Boy", "Father McCree"), most of the other operatives and Colonel Turner, as well as the team's location, are referred to by name in open transmission.

When the men first land by parachute, Sgt Harrod is discovered with a broken neck, which appears to Smith to evidence of foul play. However, in the deep snow where Harrod is lying, foot prints would be obvious, proving that someone else had approached him, murdered him and then left. Nobody appears to notice any footprints, not even Smith, who is convinced the Sgt was killed deliberately by someone in his group.

When Col. Kramer confronts Von Hapen, he tells Von Hapen that he sent out an order that there were five enemy agents in the area. However, there were originally seven men in the group. Col. Kramer could not have known that two had been killed. The traitor Col. Turner could not have told Col. Kramer of the two dead commandos by radio as he was with Adm. Rolland and the radio operator for the entire operation and could not have made a radio call to Col. Kramer with either of them knowing.

With the action in the latter half of the movie taking place more or less in real time, it is never explained from where the Junkers Ju 52 operates, and how Colonel Turner could get on board on such short notice. The only country from which he could have flown is Switzerland, and somehow it seems unlikely that the Swiss authorities would've allowed British uniformed personnel operating in Switzerland, much less allowed operations from her territory.

In Europe most bus bodies are made from aluminum. During the chase sequence the Germans repeatedly spray the back of the bus with bullets, somehow the thin aluminum skin of the bus and the soft bus seat manage to protect the occupants.

The RAF airman in the plane at the start ends a transmission with "Over and out". While common in films and TV, this is incorrect radio procedure. "Over" means you expect a reply. "Out" means you are ending a transmission. "Over and out" is contradictory.

During their escape, Schaffer kills another radio operator who sets off the alarm (to make the film more exciting). Before he dies, the operator turns off his radio, turns to face Shaffer who is in German uniform, and sets the alarm off. However, the German would not have suspected Schaffer of being an agent, so Schaffer would have killed him in a more careful way without the alarm being sounded.

Throughout most of the film, Smith refers to Schaffer as "Lieutenant," using the British pronunciation "lef-tenant." But in the final scene in the airplane, he uses the American pronunciation "loo-tenant."

General Carnaby enters a room pointing his gun at the double agents. When secure, he intends to pocket his gun, but misses his pocket the first time and has to do it again.