Based on the real-life Operation Dynamo, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk follows the evacuation of
over 300,000 soldiers from a French beach in the opening stages of WWII.
Visually, it's a masterpiece, and one of the most unique wartime films to date.
And for the most part, the movie sticks religiously to the facts, taking inspiration from actual
wartime photos to frame the action.
Even that weird-looking sailboat at the end was there.
But it doesn't get everything right.
Here are all the ways Dunkirk lied about those historical events.
Nazi nose cones
Christopher Nolan was actually pretty candid about this historical discrepancy.
In the movie, the German planes that Tom Hardy's character fights have their nose cones painted
yellow.
That's something the Germans actually did in WWII — just not until about a month
after Dunkirk, according to Nolan.
The reason he decided to adopt the color scheme for the planes in the movie was a simple matter
of identity.
During the dogfights, the yellow identifies the planes as German at a glance, making it
easier for audiences to keep up with the action without trying to figure out who was who the
whole time.
Does it work?
Definitely.
French destroyer
Nolan also came clean about another historical alteration he had to make for the sake of
the film — namely, filming on a French destroyer instead of a British destroyer.
Nolan said:
"For someone extremely knowledgeable, they will see the differences.
It’s a bigger boat, and longer.
But we dressed it to make it look like a British destroyer."
Besides being a detail that only a hardcore history buff would ever notice, the important
takeaway here is that Christopher Nolan filmed on a real destroyer instead of falling back
on CGI.
We'll happily take an extra smokestack over another Battleship, thank you.
Farrier's fuel tank
When we first meet Tom Hardy's character Farrier, he's already in the air, and the movie announces
that his story lasts an hour.
It's an intense story arc, and we're right there in the cockpit with him, feeling the
pressure as that fuel starts to run out.
He starts with 50 gallons and has to pop his reserve tank by the time he reaches Dunkirk.
But that's a problem.
The main fighter used by the Royal Air Force at Dunkirk was the Supermarine Spitfire Mk1.
They were fast, agile planes with a fuel tank that could hold 85 gallons, giving them a
395-mile combat range.
In contrast, the evacuation route the ships used to cross the English Channel was about
55 miles.
Even accounting for the dogfights and switchbacks to chase the bomber going after the British
destroyer, he should have had plenty of fuel.
Spitfires could fly 220 miles per hour on only 26 gallons of fuel per hour.
Over more time, running out of fuel is totally plausible.
Just probably not in one hour.
Civilian volunteers
We saw in the movie how Mark Rylance's character, Mr. Dawson, risks life and limb to pilot his
small sailing yacht across the Channel and into Dunkirk.
In real life, a fleet of about 700 private craft assisted in the evacuation effort.
They were called the Little Ships of Dunkirk, and yeah, they were pretty awesome.
And it's true that some boat owners took up the call and sailed their own ships for the
evacuation.
Just… not very many.
According to the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships, the vast majority of those boats were
requisitioned by the British government, at which point Naval officers were assigned to
sail them to Dunkirk.
And speaking of the Little Ships...
The cavalry arrives
It makes a great, heart-warming climax when the flotilla of Little Ships sails up to the
beach at Dunkirk.
But there was no heroic moment where the ships arrived to save the day.
Operation Dynamo lasted from May 26th to June 4th.
Both the Little Ships and the British Navy worked tirelessly over all 12 of those days.
And while the movie makes out the arrival of the Little Ships as the turning point,
they didn't rescue the majority of the soldiers.
Out of the 338,000 men rescued, 239,000 were taken off the mole by Navy ships.
Less than 100,000 were picked up off the beaches, and many of those were ferried out to larger
ships by the ships' own light craft.
Only 6,000 soldiers made the trip across the Channel in one of the Little Ships.
Their contribution to the evacuation effort can't be understated, of course.
But it can be overstated.
And it often has been.
The French connection
At one point in the movie, we see French soldiers clamoring to get onto the East mole that leads
to the evacuation ships, only to get turned away by a British officer who tells them that
the British ships are for the British soldiers.
That's about the last we hear from the French until the end, when Commander Bolton says
that he'll stay behind to help evacuate the French.
But the French army was front and center in Dunkirk.
Of the 338,000 soldiers taken off the beach, 123,000 were French soldiers.
That's more than a third of everyone who got rescued.
As for the French soldiers who didn't make it off, they weren't fighting to get on an
evac boat.
No, they were back in the actual town of Dunkirk, holding back the Germans while the evacuation
took place.
Estimates put French casualties at Dunkirk between 50,000 and 90,000, and thousands more
were taken captive because they took a stand and dug in to defend the other soldiers on
the beach.
Ruins of Dunkirk
The majority of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk takes place on the beach, at sea, and in the
air, the trifecta of Nolan-Time that makes up the narrative of the film.
However, we do get a few glimpses of the town itself, mostly in the beginning.
What we see is apocalyptic vacancy, but no real destruction.
Except for the pile of sandbags in one scene, it looks less like a warzone and more like
everybody just left for lunch at the exact same time.
What should we be seeing?
Utter devastation.
Between the Luftwaffe bombers and shelling from the German approach from the East, Dunkirk
was brought to its knees during the evacuation.
Christopher Nolan actually filmed in the town of Dunkirk, which lends historical presence
to the film, but it doesn't relate the true gravity of the situation.
Thousands of everyday lives ground to a halt the minute Allied troops retreated to Dunkirk,
and it took years after WWII to rebuild those lives to something resembling normalcy.
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