This week’s pick salutes the valiant fliers of United States Army Air Corp in the 1949 release of director Henry King’s 12 O’Clock High. The film stars Gregory Peck (Brig. Gen. Frank Savage), Hugh Marlowe (Lt. Col. Ben Gately), Gary Merrill (Col. Keith Davenport), Millard Mitchell ( Maj. Gen. Pritchard), Dean Jagger (Maj. Harvey Stovall), and John Kellogg (Maj. Cobb).
12 O’Clock High was one of the first post World War II studio projects that was made on a grand scale and depicts the hardships of America’s earliest campaigns of daylight precision bombing against German held targets in Europe. The film opens in London in 1949 where Maj. Stovall (Jagger) discovers a toby jug in the window of a London antiques shop. He asks the shop keeper the price and demands that he must have it.
Stovall then proceeds by train and by bicycle to the fictional town of Archbury, England where the 918th Heavy Bombardment Group’s base of operations was. The camera pans off and the scene flashes back to the fall of 1942 when the USAAF first came to England to assist the British in bombing campaigns.
The 918th HBG has suffered major casualties as they begin to meet heavy German opposition over Fortress Europe. The group commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Merrill) has become too emotionally attached to his men and is affected by the losses the group has suffered. Maj. Gen. Patrick Pritchard (Mitchell) believes that Col. Davenport should be relieved of his command and that a new CO take his place and turn the 918th into an effective fighting force. Gen. Pritchard believes that Gen. Savage is the man for the job.
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