The movie follows Captain Benjamin Willard in his search for Colonel Walter Kurtz, whom Willard is being sent to kill. Kurtz is wanted for ordering the execution of some Vietnamese agents that he thought were double agents. On Willard's journey to find him, he ends up doing drugs and becoming more and more like Kurtz. Kurtz tells Willard the story of what he did to make himself wanted by other army officials, and Willard takes it as Kurtz asking him to kill him.

Captain Benjamin Willard is the main character in the film, but it turns out that he was not actually a Captain in the Vietnam War. The actual person Willard is inspired by is named Marlow. The only misrepresentation in the film, though, is the name. Willard does all the same things in the film that Marlow actually did in the war. In the film and in real life, they were sent to terminate Colonel Kurtz. Another difference, though, is in the way that Kurtz dies.

Colonel William E. Kurtz is accurately represented in the movie as he was in real life. In the film, Willard kills him when Kurtz basically asks him to. However, in actual events, Kurtz has gone insane and ends up dying on the trip back. He had been in Korea and had an extremely impressive, even perfect, career. At the age of 38, he wanted airborne training, and he returned to Vietnam in 1966.

Operation Archangel was established in October of 1967 according to the film. Accordingly, this is also when it was established in history. The operation was created by the air force to come up with a new airplane that would be better than the U-2 that was already in use. They wanted something that would travel higher and faster. The result of Operation Archangel was the A-12 aircraft.

In the film, Willard and some of the men in the crew on his boat used drugs like LSD during the war. In the actual war, marijuana was the first drug used by American soldiers when they got over to Vietnam because it was the most abundant, and Vietnam did not have any well defined or enforced drug laws at the time. Other drugs that were widely available to soldiers at this time were opium, morphine, Binoctal, and heroin. Heroin was very widely available to the US forces during this time. It seemed that while at war, most of the men who were using these drugs would not have ever used them at home.

"Apocalypse Now" gives a good basic overview of what the Vietnam War was like, however there are several historical inaccuracies that could prevent it from being a good aid in teaching US history in a classroom.