Factual error: Both the Duke Class Frigates fire cruise missiles from the tubes. The tubes on the duke are purely for harpoon missiles and cannot be reloaded. Nothing in the missile room is actually used in the navy. (00:03:00)
Factual error: At the start, when the two L-39 'Albatros' jet aircraft are approaching head-on towards each other on the runway, Bond throttles his engine to afterburner. The real L-39 is a subsonic aircraft and does not have an afterburner. (00:07:26)
Factual error: The scene during Carver's big speech in Hamburg. Bond is being beaten up by 3 German guys in a small room away from Carver. One of the guys throws bond through the glass window separating it from the next room alone. This glass is extra tough given that it is, according to one of the security guards, completely soundproofed. As Bond is thrown through the window, the glass shatters smoothly. If you watch, in a smooth rippling affect from top to bottom the glass falls away - it is evidently not glass here. Glass would not shatter in a neat line, and would leave shards in the window frame. (00:36:15)
Factual error: To know this you have to live in Hamburg, Germany : The hotel park deck Bond's BMW is chased on is on the left side of the big shopping street. But his jump across this street is from the right to the left. (01:00:35)
Factual error: As Bond is preparing for the HALO skydive, he is warned that he has to freefall for 5 miles, and without oxygen, he will be asphyxiated. However, he jumps from a non-pressurized aircraft. Surely, when the back hatch opened, the other people standing around would either also start to suffocate or be sucked out.
Factual error: The helicopter, in the motorbike scene, does a strafing in a narrow road. That's absolutely impossible, as either some cloth would get clogged into the main rotor or it would hit something and break. But that doesn't matter much, as the 'copter is going too slow to be tilted at that angle anyway.
Factual error: In the scene where HMS Devonshire is allegedly being sent off course because of spurious GPS signals, a brief space shot shows a CMGN communications satellite orbiting close to a GPS satellite. The CMGN satellite would need to be in geo-stationary orbit. The GPS satellites are in quite different polar orbits, much closer to earth. Moreover, GPS position-fixing requires data from several satellites, not just one. The alleged interference could not be made in this way.
Factual error: In the scene with Bond in Oxford, the audience sees an aerial shot of the college he is supposedly studying Danish in. The college shown is Brasenose. However, in the next shot showing the college courtyard, the college has magically switched to New College - 10 minutes' walk from Brasenose.
Factual error: Carver tells Stamper to be sure and use the correct ammunition when shooting the British sailors. Stamper then uses an M60E3, an American light machine gun firing 7.62x51 mm ammo. To properly frame the Chinese, he should have used a weapon firing 7.62x54R mm, 7.62x39 mm or 5.45x39 mm ammo.
Factual error: During the motorcycle chase scene, Wai Lin shouts something at the crowd in the street. Unfortunately the presumably Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese agent shouts in Cantonese at a bunch of Vietnamese. She may as well have used English...
Factual error: Carver's ship would not be even close to stealthy. Every angle and crevice on it, while cool looking, would be a beacon for radar. Nothing stands out on radar more than a right angle. A picture of the real stealth ship can be found here. http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/sea_shadow.htm.
Factual error: A Type 23 Duke Class Frigate is used as 'flagship' for the fleet at the end of the film. The Type 23 is way too small and undermanned to act in such a capacity; it has no command and control facilities. They should have used at least a Type 22 Batch 3 Frigate, a carrier or an LPD (Landing Ship). We also see the evidence of a fleet on their radar screen, but nothing more of them.
Factual error: Carver successfully frames the Chinese airforce for sinking the HMS Devonshire, making everyone believe that they torpedoed the ship. The problem with this is that the Nanchang Q-5 can't carry torpedos.
Factual error: In the Oxford scene, Bond is in bed with the Danish professor in the New Buildings wing of New College. The problem is that all the rooms in the New Buildings are student rooms and have always been so since they were built - no professors live or teach in this building. The professors are on the other side of college.
Factual error: In the first minutes of the movie, Bond is in an Albatross L-39 ZA, ejecting his enemy (in the back seat, who wants to strangulate him), not himself (in the front seat). Bond unlocks the ejection system with the switch on the console, but in reality ejection in that aircraft is triggered by a double firing handle on the seat pan.
Answer: Elliot Carver arranged it, he called Dr. Kaufman, who said, he is a specialist in arranging the perfect murder. His specialty is the celebrity suicide.