Twelve O'Clock High
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Template:This article is about Template:Infobox Film Twelve O'Clock High is a 1949 film about the United States Army Air Forces crews who flew daylight bombing missions against Germany and occupied France during World War II. It stars Gregory Peck as Brigadier General Frank Savage, Gary Merrill as Colonel Keith Davenport, Millard Mitchell as General Patrick Pritchard, Dean Jagger as Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Harvey Stovall, Hugh Marlowe as LtCol. Ben Gately, and Robert Arthur as Sgt. McIllhenny.
After a brief prologue set in the present, the bulk of the story takes place in late 1942 and early 1943. General Savage is assigned to take over temporary command of the 918th Bomb Group, which has suffered heavy losses and is having serious morale problems. Driving the men relentlessly, he restores their fighting spirit and transforms them into an effective combat unit, but ultimately succumbs to the psychological strain of command and must himself be relieved.
In Twelve O’Clock High, a Toby Jug normally sat on the mantle in the Officer's Club facing the wall. Turning the Toby Jug to face the room was a way to alert crew members in the Club of an upcoming mission. Based in fact, the "turning of the Toby", or similar codes were utilised by the RAF in WW1 and adopted by many groups of the 8th Air Force in WW2. For more details of the Toby Jug visit http://www.twelveoclockhigh.biz
The movie was adapted by Sy Bartlett, Henry King (uncredited) and Beirne Lay Jr. from the 1948 novel by Bartlett and Lay. It was directed by King. Paul Mantz, Hollywood's leading stunt pilot, was paid a then-unprecedented sum to crash-land a B-17 bomber for one early scene. The movie won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Dean Jagger) and Best Sound, Recording. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Gregory Peck) and Best Picture.
Twelve O'Clock High is widely regarded as the best dramatic film ever made about U. S. bomber crews in World War II. Made with the full cooperation of the (by then) United States Air Force, it made extensive use of actual combat footage. Screenwriters Bartlett and Lay drew on their own wartime experiences with Army Air Force bomber units; Savage is modeled on Colonel Frank A. Armstrong, Pritchard on General Ira Eaker, the fictional 918th Bomb Group on the actual 306th Bombardment Group, Heavy, and the climactic raid on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. The film's most significant deviation from history comes in its climax: the psychological breakdown of General Savage was not based on any real-life event but was intended to portray the effects of intense stress experienced by many airmen. 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 turn away from the optimistic, morale-boosting style of wartime films and toward a gritty realism that dealt directly with the human costs of war.
This film is widely used in both the military and civilian worlds to teach the principles of leadership. It has also been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Twelve O'Clock High later became a television series of the same name that premiered on the ABC network in 1964 and ran for three seasons. Robert Lansing (actor) played General Savage. Much of the combat footage from the movie was used in the television series. The B-17 bomber shown in one such sequence was that of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Webb, who earned one of his eight Distinguished Flying Cross awards in the action depicted.
Frank Tallman, Mantz' partner in Tallmantz Aviation, wrote in his autobiography that it was he, not Mantz, who had flown the crash stunt. He said that, while many B-17s had been landed by one pilot, as far as he knew this flight was the only time that a B-17 ever took off with only one pilot, and nobody was sure that it could be done.
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Savage's methods
Reaching the base, Gen. Savage finds it in some disarray, starting with the guard who waves his car through without identifying its occupants. True to his name, he deals with everyone harshly. An enlisted man out of uniform is demoted to Private on the spot. The Group second-in-command, Lt. Col. Gately, is absent despite being nominally in command till Savage arrives. Gen. Savage sends the MP's to arrest him. He closes down the officers club, part of a plan to unify the men in their dislike of their new commander.
When Lt. Col. Gately is brought in, Savage calls him a coward for not flying on missions. When Gately threatens to bring charges of abuse, Savage calls his bluff by putting in a call to General Pritchard, and also defying Gately to explain his conduct to his father, a well-regarded lieutenant general.
For a final humiliation, Savage removes Gately from his command position and in charge of only a bomber, on which he is to paint the name "Leper Colony". That plane will get the worst crewmen in the Group. As the story progresses, Savage uses the Leper Colony to humiliate any flyer who fails to measure up.
The group "stands down", and enters intensive re-training. Savage knows that the B-17 is designed for defense from fighters based on tight formation flying, so every part of the sky is covered by guns. Endlessly they practise this.
During this time, all of the pilots put in for transfer. Savage has recruited the Adjutant, Maj. Stovall, to delay their applications, but it is a race against time. They resume flying missions, and Savage continues to insist on adherence to his orders, using the Leper Colony as leverage.
There comes a point where missions are flown almost without loss. Savage leads them himself, at one point faking radio trouble to ignore a recall for bad weather, so that his Group is the only one to hit the target on that mission.
Morale improves, and when an Inspector General arrives to find out what is happening, all the men stand up for Savage and withdraw their transfer requests. Finally, Savage learns that Gately is in hospital, having flown several missions with a spinal injury that left him in acute pain.
As the war moves into Germany, the missions are longer and riskier. Many of Savage's best men are killed. The exhaustion, isolation and guilt combine to disable Savage so he has to remain behind, and he spends the entire duration in a fugue state, sitting staring at something only he can see, until the planes return.
True-life counterparts of characters
Colonel Frank A. Armstrong, Jr.--- General Savage was created as a composite of several group commanders whom the authors knew well, including Colonel (later General) Curtis LeMay, Colonel (later brigadier general) Frederick W. Castle, and Colonel John K. Gerhart. The latter two officers had also been sent down by General Eaker from his staff to relieve the commanders of two B-17 groups whose first month in combat had resulted in higher than normal losses. However the primary inspiration for Savage was Frank A. Armstrong, who commanded the 306th Bomb Group on which the 918th was modeled. The name "Savage" was inspired by Armstrong's Cherokee Native American heritage. Armstrong, Castle, and screen-writer Beirne Lay had been three of the six officers accompanying General Eaker to England in February, 1942 to set up the headquarters for the 8th Air Force's Bomber Command, and Armstrong had worked closely with Sy Bartlett at 8th Air Force headquarters.
Major General Ira C. Eaker --- The character of Major General Pat Pritchard was modeled on that of the VIII Bomber Command's first commander, Maj.Gen. Ira C. Eaker. He had been picked by the commander of the Army Air Force's, General Henry Arnold, to build from scratch a strategic bombing force in England. He took Armstrong from a headquarters job in Washington D.C. to be the senior member of his neophyte staff and eventually made him one of his top combat leaders.
Colonel Charles B. Overacker --- The character of Colonel Keith Davenport was based on the first commander of the 306th Bomb Group, Col. Charles B. Overacker, nicknamed "Chip." Of all the personalities portrayed in Twelve O'Clock High, that of Colonel Davenport most closely parallels his true-life counterpart. The early scene in which Davenport confronts Savage about a mission order was a close recreation of an actual event, as was his relief. Unlike the film, however, Overacker imprudently criticized Eaker in an official analysis and was sent back to the United States, where he spent the remainder of the war as commander of the Proving Ground Command's electronic test center at Eglin Field, Florida.
Flight Officer John C. Morgan --- Lt. Jesse Bishop, who crash-landed the B-17 wheels up at the beginning of the film and was nominated for the Medal of Honor, had his true life counterpart in F/O John C. Morgan. The events as described in the after-mission interrogation were taken directly from Morgan's Medal of Honor citation awarded for a mission he flew July 26, 1943 while with the 92nd Bomb group. Like Bishop, Morgan was later shot down. On his 25th and final mission Morgan was shot down over Berlin on March 6, 1944 and made a prisoner-of-war.
Sergeant Donald Bevan --- The character of Sgt. McIllhenny was drawn from a member of the 306th Bomb Group, Sgt. Donald Bevan, 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), even though in actuality he had been invited to fly missions. Like McIllhenny he proved to be a "born gunner." Ironically Bevan, who flew 17 missions, was shot down on April 17, 1943 and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner of war in Stalag 17B, a German POW camp in Austria. There, along with a fellow POW, Edmund Trzcinski, Bevan outlined the script for a hit broadway play later made into a Hollywood film, Stalag 17.
Major Paul Tibbets --- During pre-production for Twelve O'Clock High, author Sy Bartlett petitioned the Air Force to have Colonel Paul Tibbets assigned as technical advisor for the film. Not only had Tibbets and Armstrong flown B-17's together in England, but Bartlett also revealed that Tibbets, by then well-known as the pilot of B-29 "Enola Gay", had inspired the novel's "tough-guy" character, Major Joe Cobb. Tibbets was initially approved for technical advisor but the job was eventually given to another colonel. The part of Cobb was played by character actor John Kellogg, who won it over a dozen more well-known Hollywood actors.
External link
Reference
Duffin, Alan T., and Matheis, Paul. The 12 O'Clock High Logbook (2005), ISBN 1-59393-033-X