Goofs for
MacArthur (1977)

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• Errors in geography: The general proposes landing at Leyte Beach "on the island of Luzon" in the movie. Leyte Beach, where the general made his famous landing in 1944, is not on Luzon but on the southern island of Leyte, some 500 miles southeast of the point the general indicates on the map. In fact, he is pointing to Lingayen Gulf, which is on Luzon, but is not where his first attack will be. It is where the Japanese staged their amphibious landing in December, 1941 (that eventually pushed down the island to Bataan, Manila, and Corregidor Island), and is where the U.S. forces came ashore in early January, 1945, after the first landings on Leyte in October, 1944.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the beginning of the film (and also in a briefer moment later), there are Japanese planes bombing soldiers on the field. However, you can see no bombs carried under the planes, nor being dropped from them - just a swoop of the plane and an explosion on the ground to coincide.
  
  
• Anachronisms: A Vietnam War-era F-4 Phantom fighter (first flown in 1958 and first operational in 1962) is seen (in stock footage) dropping napalm during the Inchon landing in 1950.
  
  

• Anachronisms: The map used MacArthur's 1950 invasion of Korea was a post-Korean War map showing the 1953 Demarcation line vs. the 38th parallel line that separated the two Koreas.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the surrender aboard the USS Missouri, among the quick cuts to onlooking sailors, one sailor is clearly wearing modern, 1970s-style glasses.
  
  
• Factual errors: On board the USS MISSOURI, before and during the surrender ceremony, Admiral Nimitz is depicted wearing four stars, one rank below General of the Army MacArthur. In fact, he had been promoted to Fleet Admiral, a five-star rank, the previous December, and was equal in rank to MacArthur. He actually wore his five-star insignia before MacArthur, much to the General's dismay.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When MacArthur is notified about the start of the Korean War he is watching Winchester '73 (1950). The war started on June 25, 1950 and the movie was released on July 12, 1950.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the invasion scene of the return to the Phillipines, the soldiers storming the beach are dressed as U.S. Marines were in WWII in the South Pacific. The invasion was an all Army show and soldiers did not routinely wear camouflage helmet covers nor leggings. This was probably done to match up actual combat footage since the Navy and Marine Corps filmed a great deal of combat footage in color.
  
  
• Factual errors: The film clip of the atomic bomb exploding in the film is obviously meant to represent either the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or perhaps even the first bomb test at Los Alamos). Yet the film clip used shows a United States bomb test over the ocean and these US ocean tests did not take place until well after WWII had ended.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the exterior shot of the airplane flying MacArthur to Hawaii, the side of the airplane reads "UNITED STATES AIR FORCE". The U.S. Air Force was not created until after the war, in 1947.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the credits are rolling, there is footage of army cadets parading at West Point. You can clearly see a two man camera crew running in the middle of the parade to get close up shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When MacArthur has his car stop to let the Soviet military officer out, the rear projection footage behind suddenly stops moving, so that leaves on a bush which had been visibly blowing in the breeze abruptly freeze in place.
  
  

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