Twelve O'Clock High is a 1949 American war film directed by Henry King and based on the novel of the same name by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, Jr.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two: Dean Jagger for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Thomas T. Moulton for Best Sound Recording.

[3] In 1998, Twelve O'Clock High was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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.

When the Inspector General arrives to investigate the pilots' transfer requests, Savage packs his belongings, expecting to be relieved of command and possibly court-martialed.

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.

Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Harvey Stovall, who is a former World War I U.S. Army Air Service pilot who has returned to active duty as a nonflying adjutant, was modeled on William Howard Stovall, a World War I flying ace who returned to active duty as a major in the USAAF the week following Pearl Harbor, and served as the nonflying deputy chief of staff for personnel for the 8th Air Force in England for his World War I comrades, Brigadier General Frank O'Driscoll Hunter and General Carl Spaatz.

[7] The description of Bishop's fight to control the bomber after his pilot was hit in the head by fragments of a 20 mm cannon shell is taken almost verbatim from Morgan's Medal of Honor citation.

Sergeant McIllhenny was drawn from a member of the 306th Bomb Group, Sgt Donald Bevan,[7] a qualified gunner who was assigned ground jobs, including part-time driver for the commander of his squadron.

[7][Note 1] Tibbets was initially approved as the film's technical advisor in February 1949, but was replaced shortly after by Colonel John H. de Russy, a former operations officer for the 305th Bomb Group.

Darryl Zanuck was apparently convinced to pay this high price when he heard that William Wyler was interested in purchasing it for Paramount.

[10] A good deal of the production was filmed on Eglin Air Force Base and its associated auxiliary fields near Fort Walton, Florida.

At the Eighth Air Force headquarters, Bartlett had worked closely with Colonel Armstrong, who was the primary model for the character General Savage.

[12] Veterans of the heavy bomber campaign frequently cite Twelve O'Clock High as the only Hollywood film that accurately captured their combat experiences.

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.

[17] Locations for creating the bomber airfield at the fictional RAF Archbury were scouted by director Henry King, flying his own Beech Bonanza[18] some 16,000 miles in February and March 1949.

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.

When the crew arrived at Cairns, it was also considered as "ideal for shots of Harvey Stovall reminiscing about his World War II service", since the field was somewhat overgrown.

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.

[34] Twelve O'Clock High won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Dean Jagger and Best Sound Recording.

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.

At the end of the first season, Lansing was replaced by Paul Burke, who played Colonel Joseph Anson "Joe" Gallagher, a character loosely based on Ben Gately from the novel.

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.