Film ``Thirteen Days'' pulls newspaper ads due to inaccuracies

<br>NEW YORK (AP) _ The makers of a film described as dead-on accurate and a ``by-the-numbers recreation'' of the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 were not as precise when it came

Saturday, January 13th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ The makers of a film described as dead-on accurate and a ``by-the-numbers recreation'' of the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 were not as precise when it came to the print advertisements for the movie.

New Line Cinemas, which is distributing the Kevin Costner vehicle, ``Thirteen Days,'' is pulling a two-page ad that ran in some newspapers, because the collage-like images include military equipment that did not exist at the time of the missile crisis, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The advertisements _ which will be taken out of papers including the Times and The Los Angeles Times _ feature a Spruance-class destroyer and F-15 fighter jets, equipment not built until well after 1962.

A spokesman for New Line said that all equipment featured in the film is ``absolutely authentic to the time period,'' but that the ad had been created by an outside agency.

The advertisement appears as a photomontage, with still images from the movie arranged around a hazy, airbrushed image of the Spruance-class destroyer floating next to the capped dome of Congress.

Above that is an image of three aviators in flight suits walking away from a pair of parked F-15's.

The first F-15's flew in 1972 and the first Spruance destroyers appeared sometime later in the mid-1970s.