US Army uniform question.

[ArmySGT.]

No the all time greatest is "Hot Shots".

The intentional mistakes are comedy Gold. I am laughing now about the blinking lights around the salad bar (dress ribbons).

[natehale1971]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

No the all time greatest is "Hot Shots".

The intentional mistakes are comedy Gold. I am laughing now about the blinking lights around the salad bar (dress ribbons).

Oh just admit it... you'd put blinking lights around your saldbar if you were given the chance! hell... i know someone in real life who was like that for real. He loved to wear his FULL MEDALS at any opporutunity. He even had the mini medals on the lapel of his suit jackets when uniforms were not allowed.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

This is a kind of interesting thread regarding the "illegal to impersonate a soldier bit" - I remember when saving private ryan and Band of Brothers debuted that their production values were lauded especially the attention to detail in uniforms to the point that in the case of US uniforms they got the specs from the Pentagon on the stitch count for badge lettering and in many cases went back to original manufacturers for other gear.

Of course I've also heard complaints the other way about both productions, that many of the Garands shown were (to the trained eye) clearly of the wrong production type (e.g., post 1945) and so on.

[pmulcahy11b]

If you're a movie producer and the DoD likes you (and your script), you can get permission to have your actors wear completely authentic and accurate uniforms, even if they are current-day uniforms. From what I've heard, though, getting that permission is a bitch -- even if your production is done with the active aid of the US military.

That permission, or even simple aid from the US military, can however be yanked in a heartbeat -- it's how the unit in Heartbreak Ridge, for example, went from being Rangers to Marine Recon. A lot of the actions portrayed in Heartbreak Ridge did actually happen, but to Ranger units and not Marine units. (No unit had all that happen to them, however.)

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

That permission, or even simple aid from the US military, can however be yanked in a heartbeat -- it's how the unit in Heartbreak Ridge, for example, went from being Rangers to Marine Recon.

That's kinda funny, 'cause I distinctly remember reading a newspaper interview with an Army general, I think it was the Fifth Army CG, when he came to my hometown in late 1986. When asked about recruiting, he noted the positive effect of Top Gun for the Navy, and wished someone would make a movie about the Rangers in Grenada. That would have been just as Heartbreak Ridge came out, so it might have been mentioned in respect to the Marines and their recruiting. I suspect the general did not know about the shift in the movie.

Platoon came out that same autumn, but I really don't think that did much for Army recruiting.

A lot of the actions portrayed in Heartbreak Ridge did actually happen, but to Ranger units and not Marine units. (No unit had all that happen to them, however.)

Speaking of that last movie, when I took a class on the Vietnam War, one of the guest speakers had been a rifleman in Oliver Stone's company, different platoon. IIRC, he said Stone was wounded and transferred to another division. He said that the first part of the movie was accurate, but the village sequence happened in the other division. I forgot to ask him about the big battle at the end.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Platoon came out that same autumn, but I really don't think that did much for Army recruiting.

Speaking of that last movie, when I took a class on the Vietnam War, one of the guest speakers had been a rifleman in Oliver Stone's company, different platoon. IIRC, he said Stone was wounded and transferred to another division. He said that the first part of the movie was accurate, but the village sequence happened in the other division. I forgot to ask him about the big battle at the end.

Gee, more info. I was reading Soldiering on in a dying war: the true story of the Firebase Pace incidents and the Vietnam drawdown, and on p. 214, we have this:

[The 271st VC Regiment] emerged at midnight New Year's Day 1968 to attack Fire Support Base Burt on the Vietnamese/Cambodian border. This time they clashed with elements of the 25th Infantry "Tropic Lightning" Division. In what was described as 'savage and desperate' fighting, the Vietcong were repulsed under a hail of bombs and bullets, including 1,500 mortar and artillery rounds and 200,000 rounds of small arms. When daylight came, more than 400 enemy bodies were counted. The defenders of this base included a young enlisted man named Oliver Stone. His recollections of this attack would form the basis of the climactic ending scenes in the movie Platoon twenty years later.

[dragoon500ly]

And SiFry Strikes Again...

Caught a movie that featured a Special Forces A Team....The team wore the right desert cammies....but the team leader wore Air Force E-7 stripes...last time I checked A-teams were led by Army Captains!

Loved the color-coordinated sunglasses!

M-60 gunners are so cute when they wear red lenses!

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by ArmySGT.

No the all time greatest is "Hot Shots".

The intentional mistakes are comedy Gold. I am laughing now about the blinking lights around the salad bar (dress ribbons).

My favorite uniform item in that movie was Walleye's -- Mil-spec eyeglasses, thick as a coke bottle bottom, with little fishes swimming inside the lenses...