War Myths You Believe Because Of the Movies

Even though the war films we often see are well-made, the need to keep them entertaining and easy to follow usually leads to inaccuracies in how events are shown.

Artillery as an Afterthought

One of the most common myths, especially in depictions of wars, is the idea that most of the combat is made up of gunfights of individual soldiers or hand-to-hand combat.

While this played a key role in the fighting, it pushed aside the immense role that artillery played in many of these conflicts. In reality, the unreal thundering of a true artillery barrage would have dwarfed everything else in sight. In many instances, artillery was responsible for more deaths than anything else. During the Battle of Verdun, there were about 800,000 casualties.  There was also an estimated 70% of all those casualties were from artillery alone.

Perfect Hearing

Perfect hearing wouldn’t be so simple in real life as it is in the movies. That’s because guns are way louder than they appear to be. Not only are they loud, but they’re dangerously loud.

Even a 22-caliber rifle, one of the smaller ones, can produce sound reaching 140 decibels – the threshold that can cause permanent hearing damage. This is why modern militaries wear proper ear protection but also link their communications allowing them to communicate effectively on the battlefield.

Some Tank Issues

Movies love to feature tanks– they’re huge, intimidating, and heavily armed. However, they still got quite a few things wrong about them. The most glaring of these issues is obvious to anyone familiar with tanks. Producers will often try to replace more historical tanks with more readily available models. This is mostly because of the fact that historical models aren’t always available, especially in large quantities for a big scene.

Another mistake is making tanks appear far too weak, giving audiences the impression they’re not a force to be reckoned with. Some movies give the impression that tanks are invincible. In reality, how easy a tank is to destroy depends on many factors, such as which munitions are being fired at it and where on the tank they’re striking.

Infinite Ammo

By far, the most prevalent inaccuracy across all war movies depends on the amount of ammunition expended by both sides in a firefight. This gives the impression that in combat situations, the most effective thing to do is to fire everything at your disposal in the general direction of the enemy and the hope that you hit them.

However, it completely ignored the fact that soldiers simply don’t have much ammunition, as these films liked to show. The standard soldier in most Western armies is issued 210 rounds for their rifle carried in 7 magazines. This may also vary depending on the weapon and the specific mission to be embarked on. This really isn’t as much firepower as you’d think, especially when you consider how fast these magazines can be used up.

For example, the M4A1, the standard-issued rifle of the US Army and the US Marine Corps fires at a rate of up to 900 rounds per minute. Meaning, that if you hold the trigger without a care in the world, your magazine would be empty in just a few seconds.