Excellent article “The Real Twelve O’Clock High” By John T. Correll

[jody]

Pdf file at http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2011/January%202011/0111high.aspx

The best movie ever made about the Air Force may be "Twelve O’Clock High," released in 1949. It is the harrowing story of the first B-17 bombers in England in World War II and the terrible losses they took before long-range fighters were available to escort them on combat missions over Europe.

It had an authenticity seldom seen in war movies. It pushed all the right buttons for airmen, who held it in such regard that the movie became something of a cult film for several generations of Air Force members.

In those days, almost everybody in the Air Force had seen it at least once, and the film was used for many years in USAF leadership courses.

"Twelve O’Clock High" was based on actual persons and events. Very little of it was pure fiction. The film was adapted from a novel of the same name by Beirne Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett, who drew deeply on their own wartime experiences. Both had been successful Hollywood screenwriters before the war, but in 1943, when "Twelve O’Clock High" takes place, they were Air Force officers in England.

[Crowman1979]

1. It sure was better than those propaganda pieces with actors delivering lines as if it were...

...a Shakespeare drama.