If you're a fan of war films and have experience in the Armed Forces, you're probably one of the people that seriously cringe when something is portrayed totally inaccurately. The problem with movies is that they are often made by those with no military experience and are meant to entertain, which can mean they don't always make sense.

While we're sure you've seen some awful interpretations of life in the Armed Forces in films over the years, we've picked out five of the worst films. These may be entertaining, but there's no excuse for inaccuracies, even in the name of entertainment.

Windtalkers

This movie had the potential to be great as it deals with a part of World War Two history that isn't common knowledge. However, there are far too many things wrong with it to be forgiven, which is why it has made it onto this list.

The film is about the Native American Navajo Indians, who served during the war so that messages could be send in the Navajo language in order to avoid them falling into enemy hands. This much actually happened during WWII.

However, the film shows that each of the Navajo Indians had a bodyguard who had orders to kill them should they be captured by the enemy. This was not the case, although it does make for an interesting plot point.

It also shows ground battle scenes that are far from accurate, with soldiers fighting each other around ten feet apart and a lack of concealing or cover fire when troops started advancing.

Pearl Harbour

You probably knew that this film was going to end up on the list. As well as turning a hugely tragic event into a romance story, there are far too many inaccuracies to list – but we're going to try!

For starters, there is no way that Ben Affleck, as a member of the US Air Force, would have been allowed to join the British Eagle Squadron. If he were a civilian, that would have been fine as he could have joined the FAR. Even if he had joined the squadron, his plane wouldn't have had the Polish Fighter Squadron insignia on it.

A huge historical error in the film – there are more than one but this is pretty big – is that Admiral Kimmel wasn't actually notified of the attack on Pearl Harbour until hours after it happened. In the film, it shows him being told that something was happening before it had really started, but it was long over before he got word.

Our final big error – we struggled to pick just three – is that a soldier is shown firing at a Japanese fighter plane flying between two battleships with a large gun. However, this would have meant he was spraying the other vessel with bullets, which wouldn't have happened.

The Hurt Locker

Another World War Two film with a lot of inaccuracies – what is it with filmmakers getting historical events wrong? – is the Hurt Locker. While it's an entertaining movie, the drama throughout it is totally over the top.

To start with, the men who are focused on openly show disrespect to their officer, which we all know would not be allowed to fly. They also operate without any support, which was highly unlikely to be the case.

On top of this, one of the men has apparently disposed of 870 bombs during his career, which is highly unlikely. Saying that, if you want an entertaining film, this is pretty good – so long as you just ignore everything it gets wrong.

Jarhead

A more modern movie, Jarhead won a slew of awards for its portrayal of the first Gulf War. Saying that, if there was an award for accurate military details, this move wouldn't even have been in the running.

To quote the Marine Corps Public Affairs, this film “is an inaccurate portrayal of Marines in general and does not provide a reasonable interpretation of military life.” Ouch.

A lot of veterans have stated that many of the events shown in the film are implausible and totally over the top, with the scene where a character is killed during a live-fire exercise and another when Marines fire their weapons into the sky while dancing around a bonfire being highlighted as two of the most inaccurate.

Other things wrong with the movie include soldiers being abandoned on the battlefield and the physical and mental abuse experienced by soldiers, with both of these depictions coming under fire.

U-571

This film is possibly the worst on the list purely because it depicts achievements that were actually made by the British Royal Navy as being accomplished by the US Navy. Great job downplaying the role the allies played in World War Two, America.

The movie is all about the first capture of an Enigma machine, with it showing US submariners boarding a Nazi vessel in disguise. In order to escape with the machine, they have to fight off attacking German Navy ships. None of this is accurate.

In actual fact, it was a British warship that managed to capture the Enigma machine in 1941. Us Brits actually got our hands on it a full seven months before the US got involved in the war. The US Navy didn't capture an Enigma machine until 1944. It's no wonder this film got a lot of flack upon release.