Twelve O'Clock High

In 1949, former United States Army Air Forces officer Harvey Stovall spots a familiar Toby Jug in an English antique shop and learns it came from Archbury, where Stovall served during World War II. Convinced it's the same jug from the airfield's officers' club, he buys it and journeys to the derelict airfield, where he reflects on his wartime experiences. as Brigadier General Frank Savage In a flashback, the setting shifts to 1942, when the 918th Bomb Group at Archbury has gained a reputation as a "hard luck group". After a disastrous mission, group commander Colonel Keith Davenport appears exhausted and demoralized. His defeatist attitude spreads through the group's senior leadership, including his Air Exec, Lieutenant Colonel Ben Gately. Ordered to fly another mission the next day at a dangerously low altitude, Davenport protests to his friend, Brigadier General Frank Savage, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations at VIII Bomber Command. Savage reluctantly shares with Major General Pritchard, the commanding general of VIII Bomber Command, his belief that Davenport has become too emotionally close to his men and may no longer be fit to command. That night, Pritchard and Savage visit the group headquarters to investigate the cause of the mission's heavy losses. When Davenport refuses to discipline failed navigator Lieutenant Zimmerman, Pritchard realizes Savage is right, relieves Davenport of command, and places Savage in command. Savage takes a harsh approach to restoring the group's discipline and morale. He reprimands Gately, demotes him to aircraft commander, and insists he fly every mission. Savage assigns Gately the least competent crewmen and orders him to paint the name "Leper Colony" on his airplane. Rough-and-ready Major Cobb impresses Savage with his independent spirit and replaces Gately as Air Exec. Savage conducts a series of training missions and waits for an opportunity to restore the group's pride in its abilities. Upset by the contrast of Savage's stern leadership with Davenport's easygoing ways, all of the group's pilots apply for transfer. Savage asks the Group Adjutant, Major Stovall, to delay processing their applications to buy him some time. When several groups are ordered to abort a combat mission due to heavy weather, Savage ignores the recall order and the 918th is the only group to successfully bomb the target. Savage claims he didn't hear the recall due to a radio malfunction and persuades a furious Pritchard to recommend the group for a Distinguished Unit Citation. Savage also convinces Lieutenant Jesse Bishop, a Medal of Honor recipient, to be Savage's eyes and ears among the combat aircrews. When the Inspector General arrives to investigate the transfer requests, Savage packs his belongings, expecting to be relieved or court-martialed. But, led by Bishop, the pilots withdraw their requests. Savage softens his attitude towards the men as he becomes more closely involved with them. Gately goes on to win Savage's respect by demonstrating extraordinary leadership and courage in combat. With enemy resistance intensifying as the air war advances deeper into Germany, missions become longer and riskier and many of Savage's best men are shot down or killed. Pritchard tries to get Savage to return to a staff job at VIII Bomber Command, but Savage feels that the 918th is not yet ready to do without him. Reluctantly, Pritchard leaves him in command. Ordered to return to the same target after a particularly brutal raid on a ball bearing factory, Savage finds himself physically unable to haul himself up into his B-17. Gately takes his place as lead pilot and strike commander for the mission. While waiting for the group's return, Savage becomes catatonic. Only as they return to Archbury does he regain his composure and fall asleep. The story then returns to 1949, as Stovall pedals away from Archbury. ==Cast==

• Gregory Peck as Brig. Gen. Frank Savage • Hugh Marlowe as Lt. Col. Ben Gately • Gary Merrill as Col. Keith Davenport • Millard Mitchell as Maj. Gen. Pritchard • Dean Jagger as Major Harvey Stovall • Robert Arthur as Sgt. McIllhenny • Paul Stewart as Major "Doc" Kaiser • John Kellogg as Major Joe Cobb • Robert Patten as Lt. Bishop (credited as Bob Patten) • Lee MacGregor as Lt. Zimmerman • Sam Edwards as Birdwell • Roger Anderson as Interrogation Officer • Kenneth Tobey as Guard Post Sergeant (uncredited) ==Historical counterparts of characters==

The character Brigadier General Frank Savage was a composite of several group commanders, but the primary inspiration was Colonel Frank A. Armstrong, who commanded the 306th Bomb Group on which the 918th was modeled. The name "Savage" was inspired by Armstrong's Cherokee heritage. While his work with the 306th, which lasted only six weeks, consisted primarily of rebuilding the chain of command within the group, Armstrong had earlier performed a similar task with the 97th Bomb Group. Many of the training and disciplinary scenes in ''Twelve O'Clock High'' derive from that experience. Towards the end of the film, the near-catatonic battle fatigue that General Savage suffered and the harrowing missions that led up to it were inspired by the experiences of Brigadier General Newton Longfellow. The symptoms of the breakdown were not based on any real-life event, but instead were intended to portray the effects of intense stress experienced by many airmen. a qualified gunner who was assigned ground jobs, including part-time driver for the commander of his squadron. Bevan had received publicity as a stowaway gunner (similar to McIllhenny in the film), though in reality, he had been invited to fly missions. Like McIllhenny, he proved to be a "born gunner". The "tough guy" character Major Joe Cobb was inspired by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who had flown B-17s with Colonel Armstrong. ==Production==

deliberately crash-lands B-17G AAF Ser. No. 44-83592 at Ozark AAF, Alabama, in June 1949 for the filming of ''Twelve O'Clock High''. According to their files, 20th Century Fox paid $100,000 outright for the rights to the unfinished book, plus up to $100,000 more in escalator and book-club clauses. Darryl Zanuck was apparently convinced to pay this high price when he heard that William Wyler was interested in purchasing it for Paramount. Even then, Zanuck only went through with the deal in October 1947 when he was certain that the United States Air Force would support the production. A good deal of the production was filmed on Eglin Air Force Base and its associated auxiliary fields near Fort Walton, Florida. Source material Screenwriters Bartlett and Lay drew on their own wartime experiences with Eighth Air Force bomber units. At the Eighth Air Force headquarters, Bartlett had worked closely with Colonel Armstrong, who was the primary model for the character General Savage. The film's 918th Bomber Group was modeled primarily on the 306th because that group remained a significant part of the Eighth Air Force throughout the war in Europe. Casting Clark Gable was interested in the lead role of General Frank Savage. Gable, who had served in the USAAF during World War II, played a similar role in the 1948 film Command Decision. John Wayne was offered the leading role, as well, but turned it down. Burt Lancaster, James Cagney, Dana Andrews, Van Heflin, Edmond O'Brien, Ralph Bellamy, Robert Preston, Robert Young, and Robert Montgomery were also considered for the role. Eventually, the role went to Gregory Peck, who initially turned it down because the script was similar to Command Decision. Peck changed his mind because he was impressed with director Henry King, finding his empathy with the material and the cast and crew appealing. The two made more films together: The Gunfighter (1950), David and Bathsheba (1952), The Bravados (1958), and Beloved Infidel (1959). Filming Veterans of the heavy bomber campaign frequently cite ''Twelve O'Clock High as the only Hollywood film that accurately captured their combat experiences. Along with the 1948 film Command Decision, it marked a turning away from the optimistic, morale-boosting style of wartime films and toward a grittier realism that deals more directly with the human costs of war. Both films deal with the realities of daylight precision bombing without fighter escort, the basic USAAF doctrine at the start of World War II (prior to the arrival of long-range Allied fighter aircraft such as the P-51 Mustang). As producers, writers Lay and Bartlett reused major plot elements of Twelve O'Clock High in later films featuring the U.S. Air Force, the 1950s-era Toward the Unknown and the early 1960s Cold War-era A Gathering of Eagles''. Paul Mantz, Hollywood's leading stunt pilot, was paid the then-unprecedented sum of $4,500 in 1948 ($58,000 in 2024) to crash-land a B-17 bomber for one early scene in the film. Frank Tallman, Mantz' partner in Tallmantz Aviation, wrote in his autobiography that while many B-17s had been landed by one pilot, as far as he knew, this flight was the first time that a B-17 ever took off with only one pilot and no other crew; nobody was sure that it could be done. " The footage was used again in the 1962 film The War Lover. Locations for creating the bomber airfield at the fictional RAF Archbury were scouted by director Henry King, flying his own Beech Bonanza some 16,000 miles in February and March 1949. King visited Eglin AFB on March 8, 1949, and found an ideal location for principal photography several miles north of the main base at its Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field No. 3, better known as Duke Field, where the mock installation with 15 buildings (including a World War II control tower) were constructed to simulate RAF Archbury. The film's technical advisor, Colonel John de Russy, was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, at the time, and suggested Ozark Army Air Field near Daleville, Alabama (now known as Cairns Army Airfield, adjacent to Fort Rucker). The opening and closing scenes of the derelict RAF Archbury, referencing themes in the film, have a very similar approach to the opening scenes of the derelict fictional RAF Halfpenny Field in the earlier 1945 film The Way to the Stars. Additional background photography was shot at RAF Barford St John, a satellite station of RAF Croughton in Oxfordshire, England. Officially, the airfield is still under Ministry of Defence ownership following its closure in the late 1990s as a communications station linked to the since-closed RAF Upper Heyford. Other locations around Eglin AFB and Fort Walton also served as secondary locations for filming. The crew used 12 B-17s for filming, which were pulled from QB-17 drones used at Eglin and other B-17s from depot locations in Alabama and New Mexico. Since some of the aircraft had been used in the 1946 Bikini atomic experiments and absorbed high levels of radioactivity, they could only be used for shooting for limited periods. Although originally planned to be shot in Technicolor, it was instead shot in black and white, allowing the inclusion of actual combat footage by Allied and Luftwaffe cameras. ==Reception==

''Twelve O'Clock High premiered in Los Angeles on December 21, 1949, and opened in New York City on January 26, 1950. It went into general release in February 1950. An influential review by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was indicative of many contemporary reviews. He noted that the film focused more on the human element than the aircraft or machinery of war. The Times picked Twelve O'Clock High'' as one of the 10 Best Films of 1949 and, in later years, it rated the film as one of the "Best 1000" of all time. After attending the premiere, the commander of the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay, told the authors that he "couldn't find anything wrong with it." It was required viewing at all the U.S. service academies, college/university Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps detachments, Air Force Officer Training Schools, the U.S. Navy's former Aviation Officer Candidate School, and the Coast Guard Officer Candidate School, where it was used as a teaching example for the situational leadership theory, although not currently used by the USAF. The film is also widely used in both the military and civilian worlds to teach the principles of leadership. Michael Gebert declares it the best film of 1949. and Christopher Tookey writes, it is "probably the best picture about the pressures which war imposes on those at the top." In its initial release, the film took in $3,225,000 in rentals in the U.S. alone. ==Awards and honors==

''Twelve O'Clock High'' won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Dean Jagger and Best Sound Recording. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Gregory Peck and Best Picture. ==Meaning of the title==

The term "twelve o'clock high" refers to the practice of calling out the positions of attacking enemy aircraft by reference to an imaginary clock face, with the bomber at the center. The terms "high" (above the bomber), "level" (at the same altitude as the bomber) and "low" (below the bomber) further refine the location of the enemy. Thus "twelve o'clock high" meant the attacker was approaching from directly ahead and above. This location was preferred by German fighter pilots because, until the introduction of the Bendix chin turret in the B-17G model, the nose of the B-17 was the most lightly armed and vulnerable part of the bomber. Enemy fighter aircraft diving from above were also more difficult targets for the B-17 gunners due to their high closing speeds. Bartlett's wife, actress Ellen Drew, named the story after hearing Bartlett and Lay discuss German fighter tactics, which usually involved head-on attacks from "twelve o'clock high". ==Radio and television==

Gregory Peck repeated his role as General Savage on a Screen Guild Players radio broadcast on September 7, 1950. Much of the combat footage seen in the film was reused in the television series. Many of the television show's ground scenes were filmed at the Chino, California, airport, which had been used for training Army pilots during the war, and where a replica of a control tower, typical of the type seen at an 8th Air Force airfield in England, was built. The airfield itself was used in the immediate postwar period as a dump for soon-to-be-scrapped fighters and bombers, and was used for the penultimate scene in The Best Years of Our Lives when Dana Andrews relives his wartime experiences and goes on to rebuild his life. ==References ==