So I think we’ve all seen the movie, Captain Miller and a team go to rescue a guy who lost all his brothers and he’s the last one. But did it really happen? Most people would say , yes it was the Sullivan Boys, but I think there is another family who had 5 sons and 3 lost their lives (4 was captured and MIA but he was rescued). I forgot the name of the family, and I want to here the full story again.
The name you're looking for is the Niland brothers. Two were killed on D-Day and one was in the air force and had been shot down and captured in the Pacific a couple of weeks before (he survived the war too).
SPR is basically fiction, very loosely based on the story - the "surviving" Niland brother didn't need rescuing, for instance. He went over to visit his brother in another unit, they figured out what had happened and he spent the rest of the war as an MP in New York.
Most people would say , yes it was the Sullivan Boys...
The movie wasn't inspired by the five Sullivan brothers. It's the wrong time (November 1942 vs. June 1944), the wrong place (Guadalcanal vs. Normandy), the wrong branch of service (the Sullivans were sailors on the sunken cruiser USS Juneau and Private Ryan is a paratrooper), and an impossible mission (all five Sullivans died).
Captain Miller would have needed a time machine and a teleporter to save the Sullivans...