Corrected entry: The two helicopters arrive at the ice floe seconds after Gant has taken off in the Firefox. None of the pilots or observers hear or see the receding aircraft or its exhaust trail? None of them see the runway flattened out in the surface of the ice? It would be visible! Are people with such poor eyesight allowed to fly helicopters?
Corrected entry: The Firefox was initially shown as a silver / chrome aircraft. When Mitchell Gant lands on the ice cap, the aircraft is black. After he flies away after refueling, it turns back to the original color.
Correction: At no point in the film is the Firefox silver.
Corrected entry: After Clint Eastwood shoots down the 'Badger' reconnaissance plane, it should have given away his position. But the Russians at the command centre still had no clue as to where the Firefox could be. There isn't even a mention of the missing recon plane.
Correction: Meaning they weren't aware of it yet.
Corrected entry: When Clint Eastwood is confronted with the Russian cruiser, he says he can't take evasive action because he is low on fuel, so what does he do? he flies over the cruiser at full throttle. This would burn more fuel than if he had taken evasive action.
Correction: The trouble in this case is that fuel was already quite low enough for reaching the pre-established rendevouz point; taking evasive action (especially at high speed) and correcting the course again would certainly use more fuel than going in a straight line. Therefore, it is only logical that Gant has to barge right into the cruiser.
Corrected entry: About 5 minutes into the film Clint Eastwood is having a Vietnam flashback where he is being rescued by American aircraft. One plane is a World War II era fighter used more than 20 years before the Vietnam war.
Correction: This is not a mistake, these planes were still used in Vietnam for ground attack as they were far harder for new Russian-made SAM's to home in on. They were nicknamed "Sandies".
Technically, the prop aircraft known as Sandys were A-1 Skyraiders designed and brought into service after WW2.
Corrected entry: It's funny how when Clint Eastwood lands the Firefox on the ice to refuel, the American submarine crew immediately attach the U.S designed fuel pump nozzle perfectly onto the Russian designed fuel intake on the Mig that the Americans knew nothing about. How did they even know what type of fuel it takes?
Correction: MiG-29's and SU-27's were designed to operate from captured airbases in Europe in the event of a massive land war. Most of the fittings are desinged to work at these Western bases. Since the "MiG-31 FIREFOX" was supposedly built at the height of the Cold War and after the MiG-29, this is perfectly reasonable.
Correction: The movie says specifically when they are refueling that they took the spare missiles from an Indian MIG-25 (the plane the real MIG-31 is based on and in the book it was a super-evolved MIG-25 as well) so it means the fuel socket and stuff are the same as the MIG-25... which is true also in real life as most Soviet fighters had common elements for simple practicality (field commonality).
Correction: Good points, but essentially meaningless. Had the Soviets seen the Firefox sitting on the ice, they might have tried to destroy it before it could take off, assuming they were armed. Even that is not assured. The choppers attacking a US sub in international waters would be an act of war. Desperate or not, its highly unlikely the USSR would risk that, particularly since the plane was already gone, it would only be a revenge attack.
Grumpy Scot