10 Huge Historical Inaccuracies In Chris Nolan's Dunkirk
7. Tom Hardy's Empty Spitfire
Tom Hardy conducts the greater part of the movie's derring-do as he zooms about over the English Channel downing Messerschmidts. He finally runs out of fuel and lands his Spitfire on the beach at Dunkirk, an improbable enough feat but one which is at least possible.
What isn't possible is the fact his Spitfire appears completely hollow after he sets fire to it to deny it from the advancing Germans. The nose of a Spit was, in fact, taken up with the fairly vital component of the engine - the same Rolls-Royce Merlin whose virtues are poetically evoked by the movie's salty boat captain. Instead the burning Spitfire just has a flame-filled tube with the propeller attached to a shaft apparently turned by nothing.
Nolan can be forgiven for using a mockup since burning an actual Spitfire would be tantamount to sacrilege (as well as prohibitively expensive). Unfortunately, it's not a very convincing mockup for anyone who has filled their brain with every detail on the Spitfire, and there are a lot of those around.