Saving Private Ryan Historical Accuracy

Saving Private Ryan is a film about the behind enemy lines rescue of Private James Ryan of the 101st Airborne. Although Private Ryan and the rest of the characters, and some of the locations are completely fictional, the film portrays the grit and destruction of the war very well. The film starts with soldiers in the LCVPs (or the Higgins boat) waiting to land on the beach. Some soldiers are seen vomiting while on the Higgins boats, this is accurate, it was caused by seasickness, or by nervousness. One thing that is inaccurate is when the boat pilot yells “thirty seconds”, this is inaccurate because he would not have been american. All Higgins Boat pilots landing at Omaha beach were british, scottish, or some other ethnicity of english descent

Some of the soldiers are seen jumping out of the sides of the landing craft, some drowned, this is accurate. One inaccuracy with this scene is when they are being shot under water and bullets are zipping through, this is just not possible, once a bullet hits water it stops rather quickly. All though this film does have some inaccuracies, it also has a few very realistic details, for example when a soldier is walking around on the beach looking for his arm and does not seem distressed, this man is obviously suffering from some form of PTSD. Some other realistic details is the posts that stick out of the water in the beginning scene, these posts had landmines on top of them for the purpose that if the Allies invaded at high tide, the landing boats would set them