Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks, is usually lauded for its historical accuracy, yet not everything cut the mustard.
That’s according to World War II historian John McManus in a new interview video.
Analysing the D-Day opening sequence’s portrayal of the American landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, he largely praised the sequence.
However, it turns out there were some things that Steven Spielberg and his crew didn’t quite get right in the Oscar-winning picture.
Speaking with Insider, McManus said: “Here we have a little bit of mythology, the idea that no armour made it ashore at Omaha Beach. Actually, a lot of armour made it ashore at Omaha Beach . The reason I think that this line is in there is because you hear him refer to DD tanks. Those are duplex drive, like amphibious tanks that swam their way in. Yes, it’s true that 27 out of 32 of those sank, but at the opposite end of Omaha Beach from where they are. On the side of the beach where they are, all the DD tanks got in because they were brought in by landing craft.
“Bangalore torpedoes were a major way that the Americans got off the beach. And that’s basically just explosive-laden tubes that you had to assemble together. And why was that? Because you might need a very long tube of explosives to get over that kind of barbed wire or through a minefield to create a path somehow. On Omaha Beach that is really common, especially for some of these initial waves, to use Bangalore torpedoes to blow gaps in the barbed wire.”
But the lack of armour ashore wasn’t the only inaccuracy in Saving Private Ryan’s D-Day opening sequence.
McManus added: “Although, when you see in this last part of the clip, the way the machine gun nest is portrayed is not necessarily all that accurate. It’s certainly right out there, completely vulnerable, and the Germans probably wouldn’t have had that many sandbags at a position like that. Yeah, [overall] I would say I’ll give it an eight out of 10 [for historical accuracy]. And the only reason I knock it down a peg is because of the idea of no armour making it ashore.”
