Corrected entry: When reading the dear John letter, his wife is asking for a divorce, saying she fell in love with an Air Force Captain. At that point in history, it was the Army Air Corps. The Air Force was not an entity yet.
Corrected entry: When the guy pulls the pin out of the grenade, he turns away from everyone and although it should have blown him to pieces like any other normal grenade would, it only blows off a small portion of his body.
Correction: Actually, grenades aren't that powerful. There were many cases in WW2 when a grenade would explode in a soldiers hand for example and he would only lose a few fingers or the hand. They don't blow people into pieces.
Corrected entry: At the end when the American soldiers get ambushed in the creek, no platoon in their right mind would walk down a creek all exposed to enemy fire like that.
Correction: Wasn't the entire point of the scene the fact that their leader was a rookie, and making poor decisions, like having them walk through water, rather than the jungle?
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film set in the village when the patrol boat is spotted you will notice in the foreground a surfboard resting on a log. Such surfboard design was not introduced until at least 1976 by Simon Anderson when he invented the Thruster.
Correction: It's not a surfboard but a small canoe. The angle makes it look like a surfboard.
Corrected entry: One contributor was assured by their Grandfather that an officer being as negligent and unruly as Nick Nolte's character in battle, or indeed any situation, is completely unfeasible, as is a soldier disobeying orders. Granted, this sort of thing happens all the time in Hollywood war movies, but for a film aiming to be as truthful and individual is this it seems a little inaccurate.
Correction: Gona, New Guinea, General MacArthur ordered Australian soldiers into a frontal attack after ordering them to not recon or attack the Japanese's flanks. Officers like Nick Nolte's character did get away with stupid orders.
Corrected entry: At Guadalcanal, American marines were armed with outdated weaponry. (So what else is new?) They had Springfield 1903 bolt action rifles and Model 1927 Thompson Submachine guns. In this movie, they have modern weapons: i.e. M-1 Garand rifles, and Thompson M-1 Submachine guns, none of which were, at this point, issued to any marines.
Correction: This movie focuses on the soldiers that were there, not marines. The statement is made by John Travolta's character that "the Marines have done their job and now its our turn." The soldiers did have M1 rifles and subguns, the marines didn't.
Correction: At the beginning of World War II, the Army Air Corps became the Army Air Forces. The Air Force became a separate branch of the American military after the war (in 1947). The wife would surely have referred to an Air Force captain.