Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
Directed by Henry King

Plot Summary: In this story of the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage, a desk bound staff chief, must take command of a "hard luck" bomber group after the Bomber Commander is relieved of duty. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets. Actual combat footage is used in this tense war drama.

Archbury, England, 1943. The American 918th Bomber Group has just returned from another mission. The 918th's performance is dismal. The unit cannot put steel on target and is experiencing high aircraft and crew losses. The 918th's weak demonstrations contrast with other bomber groups' success. As a result, the 918th suffers from poor morale and a reputation as "The Hard Luck Unit."

So begins the classic World War II movie Twelve O'Clock High.

Twelve O'Clock High' is essentially the best depiction of a particular theatre of World War II--the extremely hazardous, aerial daylight bombing campaign over Germany.

"We are poor little lambs who have lost our way," sing the young airmen of the 918th Bomb Group, a unit suffering from low morale. It is 1943, and the USAAF is mounting a major daylight bombing offensive against Germany from its bases in England. The great advantage of daylight raids is the enhanced precision, but the toll in lives and nervous strain is high. Colonel Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill) commands the 918th, a notorious 'hard luck outfit', and though his men adore him, his leadership style simply isn't working. He is treating discipline too lightly and driving himself too hard. "Over-identification with his men," is how Brigadier Frank Savage defines it. Savage (Gregory Peck) is a good, kind man with an excellent service record, and when Davenport is stood down, command of the 918th passes to him.

Things change instantly. Savage roasts a sentry as he enters the base because the sentry did not scrutinize his papers closely enough. From now on, the 918th will be committed to 'maximum effort'. Daylight bombing might win the war, and Savage isn't going to allow any failure. In the scene where he tears into Ben Gateley (Hugh Marlowe) for being a slack officer, Savage's stillness is awesome. He has the might of the Air Force behind him, and he knows it.

Harvey Stovell is the adjutant, and the spiritual barometer of the entire Bomb Group. Genial, wise Harvey (Dean Jagger) was a country lawyer back in peacetime, and as he draws on his pipe we can sense his emotional balance and homespun goodness. Like the men, Harvey had a deep affection for Davenport. He bristles at the methods of the new commander, but gradually learns to trust Savage and to work with him. He delays transfer requests in order to buy time for Savage, and because Harvey is our yardstick of human decency, we respect Savage along with him.

Some minor quibbles may be cited. Listening on the wireless to the Benedict Arnold of World War Two, Lord Haw Haw, was a serious criminal offence. Would USAAF officers allow the broadcast to wash over them so casually? Did Brigadier Generals really pilot bombers on daylight raids, as Savage does? It is hard to believe that senior officers stowed away on combat missions at all, let alone with the frequency suggested here.

Peck runs roughshod over his new outfit, but he has a secret Achilles' heel--he fears he will grow too fond of the men he commands, the emotional link rendering him as ineffective as his predecessor (played by Gary Merrill).

There are crisp, well-directed scenes where the stiff-necked Peck rides his men with extra fury in order to steel himself against all attachments. Yet as we and Peck learn by the end of the film, it is impossible. Despite Peck's best preventive measures, the squadron continues to suffer heavy casualties, and Peck, no matter how hard he resists, is drawn into an emotional attachment with the young pilots he must order into battle each morning.

All soldiers know that comradery is the sharpest of double-edged swords during combat. You can never predict when you will lose a buddy--thus its a common practice for soldiers to keep their relationships light. This storyline has been treated loosely by a slew of later films, but never as successfully as it is done here. Every aspect of the emotional hazards of this type of wartime bond is fully dissected, and the film is filled with scenes containing extraordinary close-ups where the actor's facial expressions alone reveals the character's bitten-back response. This is especially gripping during the film's many vehement, man-to-man exchanges involving discipline, implied cowardice or dereliction of duty.

In particular there are two wonderful subplots to the film: look for the subtle interplay between Peck and Gary Merrill (the brother officer Peck is forced to replace) with regard to the "filling of someone else's shoes" and an actual pair of flyer's boots that they borrow back and forth between them. Then there is another bit of business between Peck and a recalcitrant executive officer, Hugh O'Brian.

The relationships between Peck and the other officers exposes issues about the choices men must make about each other and about their duty in wartime; and lays bare the emotions involved when they are forced to depend on one another; as well as what happens when they are forced to fail one another. Its simply outstanding. 'Twelve O'Clock High' stands quietly in the ranks of the few really great American films, without any ego or hype.

The airborne sequences are great, making clever use of real-life newsreel footage. Gregory Peck is marvelous as the strong man who eventually begins to crack. His attempt to stifle tears, and his faltering failure to haul himself into the bomber are very moving. The violence of war has ravaged his leadership qualities, and this is symbolised by the back draft of the propellers sweeping away his cap. Our relief when the engines stop is a clever comment on the air crews' battle fatigue.

There are some technical goof's though and some mischaracterizations of how things were.

The initial technical goof is that when the fighters are manoeuvring to attack by flying around the outside of the formation, you hear the sound of the fighters engines. In reality, the noise from inside the B-17's, or any bomber of WWII is so great that no one inside the aeroplane would be able to hear the sound of even the closest flying aeroplane next to them.

During the fighter attacks, several shots of an attacking fighter turn out to be not a Focke Wulf 190, but a Republic P-47. This is obvious because 1. It's not painted but polished aluminium and no German fighter flew in combat without camouflage paint over the aluminium skin. 2. The pilot is in a bubble canopy cockpit. 3. There are four machine guns firing away from the wing. During WWII, only two fighters had four machine guns in each wing, the P-47 Thunderbolt & the Hawker Hurricane.

There is much about the War that those of us too young to have lived through it can never know. I felt after watching "Twelve O'Clock High" that I had a rare insight into the men that were there.

The film opens with a woolen-suited Harvey cycling through peaceful English countryside. The war has been over for some years, and Harvey is revisiting his old airfield. We see the runway, hear an ominous chord in the incidental music, and then the roar of the engines. We have been whisked effortlessly back to 1943, and Harvey is now in uniform. This visual elegance is symptomatic of a well-made, intelligent piece of cinema.

As a final comment, I understand this film has been shown as part of the man management syllabus at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, the Royal Air Forces's premier aircrew training establishment, by the U.S. Navy as an example of leadership styles in its Leadership and Management Training School & the U.S. Air Force's College for Enlisted Professional Military Education also uses this film as an education aid in its Non-commissioned Officer Academies. What better recommendation could there be?

B-17 belly-landing scene as well as other scenes from Twelve O'Clock High can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tieZKOnvVeY

Twelve O'Clock High Trivia:

• Gregory Peck was Oscar-nominated, Dean Jagger won a best supporting actor Oscar.

• Gregory Peck was born in La Jolla, California near San Diego. In the TV-Series Twelve O'Clock High, which ran on U.S. television from 1964 to 1967 the roll of Brig. Gen. Frank Savage was played by Robert Lansing (from 1964 to 1965) who is also a native of the San Diego area. Untypical for a TV-Series based on a film it was actually good! This is one of the great television shows of the sixties that needs to be brought back in re-runs. The show was wisely shot in black and white (colour would have killed it) even though there was colour television in the States by the early 1950's. In Britain we didn't have colour television until 1967 & then only on BBC 2. The show took a minor dive when Robert Lansing left, but it was great entertainment and an example of great television they don't do today.

• Screenwriter and producer Sy Bartlett (who co-wrote the book Twelve O'Clock High & the screen play for the film), born Sacha Baraniev in 1910 in the Ukraine but raised in the U.S. from the age of four. Before coming to Hollywood in the early 1930s, Bartlett worked as a journalist. As a script writer, he worked alone or with others and was responsible for many original scripts and for literary adaptations. He and actor Gregory Peck co-founded Melville Productions in 1956.

• The film industry almost never shoots a film where the story is supposed to be set (unless the story is set in California) & Twelve O'Clock High is no exception. Other than artistic eccentricity I can't see the logic for this. Twelve O'Clock High was filmed mostly in sunny Florida would you believe. The indoor scenes were shot on a sound stage but for some of the outdoor scenes particularly those with the aircraft taking off & landing they had a problem. The English landscape & the Florida landscape don't resemble each other even by the wildest stretch of the imagination so the taking off & landing sequences were filmed in Arkansas in the dead of winter.

• Paul Mantz, Hollywood's leading stunt pilot, was paid a then unprecedented sum of $4,500 to crash-land a B-17 bomber for one early scene, until the 1970s that was the largest amount ever paid to a stuntman for a single stunt.. Mantz died on July 8, 1965, while working on The Flight of the Phoenix. Flying a built-for-the-film plane with skids instead of conventional landing gear, Mantz struck a small hillock while taking off from a desert site in Arizona.The plane nosed over, killing him instantly.

• "Twelve O’Clock High" is patterned after events which actually occurred at the 91st & 306th Bomb Groups in England in 1943 & is widely regarded as the best dramatic film ever made about U. S. bomber crews in World WarII. Made with the full co-operation of the (by then) United States Air Force in 1949, it made extensive use of actual combat footage. Screenwriters Bartlett and Lay drew on their own wartime experiences with Army Air Force bomber units; Brig. Gen. Frank Savage is modeled on Colonel Frank Armstrong, Maj. Gen. Ben Pritchard on General Ira Eaker, and the (fictional) 918th Bomb Group on the (real) 91st & 306th Bomb Groups. The film's most significant deviation from reality comes in its climax: Armstrong, the real-world version of Savage, did not break down and have to be relieved. Veterans of the bomber offensive frequently cite "Twelve O'Clock High" as the only Hollywood film that accurately captured their combat experiences. "Twelve O'Clock High" has also been been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

• The fictional 918th Bomb Group in the film is a composite of the 91st & 306th Bomb Groups. The 306th Bomb Group was activated on 1st March 1942 at Salt Lake City AB, Utah & departed for the United Kingdom on 1st September 1942 via the Gander-Prestwick ferry route & deployed to RAF Thurleigh in Bedfordshire as part of the 40th Combat Wing on 7th September. The 306th BG was the first American Bomb Group to bomb Germany on 27th January 1943. The target, Wilhelmshaven -the group led by Col Frank Armstrong. The group flew the B-17 Flying Fortress and remained at Thurleigh until 1st December 1945. It was the oldest operational bomb group in the 8th AF, stationed in England longer than any other group & the first 8th AF BG to complete 342 missions from the United Kingdom, this was the most of any Eighth Air Force B-17 unit except the 303rd Bomb Group. The 306th lost 171 Fortresses in the process. The 306th Bomb Group flew its 342nd and final mission on 19th April 1945. The unit inactivated on the 25th of December 1946, although the group had virtually ceased to exist as a flying unit in the late summer of that year. The fictional counterparts of Thurleigh and the 306th Bomb Group were "Archbury" and the "918th Bomb Group".The unit was activated again as a Strategic Air Command B-29 group in 1948, and in 1952 became the US Air Forces first B-47 jet bomber wing. When the B-47 was withdrawn it was designated as a B-52 wing, which flew sorties in the Vietnam War.

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