Twelve O’Clock High war movie

Twelve O’Clock High (1949, United States)

Categories: military base movies aircraft movies

Twelve O’Clock High

Director: Henry King

Czas: 128 minut

Laguages: English

war movies infoAdam 'Frey' Barczynski
2019-02-02 / 2019-02-04

During World War 2 the American 918th Bomb Group gains reputation of having a bad luck - heavy casualties among the crews and none of their targets are reached. New commander does not believe in bad luck...

During World War 2 American Air Force takes over the daylight bomb missions over Germany while RAF continues to operate during the night. But daylight bombings are far more dangerous and soon the crews of B-17s are learning exactly how dangerous - many of the crew members don’t make it back to the base or are heavily injured. This cuts down the morale among the crews, especially in 918th Bomb Group that operates from Archbury in Southern England. The 918th gained the reputation of being ’hard luck group’ - the losses are heavy and most of their targets are not reached by the bombers. Brigadier General Frank Savage does not believe in luck and takes over command of the group. While he arrive to Archbury he sees lack of discipline everywhere - dead officers are not yet replaced, the alive ones drink their trauma away in the officers mess. Savage decides to bring back discipline and heavy training in order to rebuild the unit morale and prepare them better for their future missions. The reaction of the crews is predictable - they all put requests to be transferred to another unit.

Classic war movie, one of the first that showed the real losses of American crews taking part in bombing missions over Germany during World War 2. While their bombers were called Flying Fortress they were as vulnerable to the enemy fire as any other crews and their attacks were as risky and lacked precision as any other units of Allied forces. Unfortunately Twelve O’Clock High is more of a character drama rather than action movie, so we see a lot of the discussions and tensions in the background of the bombing operations, but more or less nothing from actual missions. Still, with Gregory Peck playing the main character, it is a war movie worth to see.

Our rating

5.6

Film value

6 / 10

Realism factor

4 / 5

Adventure factor

2 / 5

Historical accuracy

2 / 5

2019-02-02

Twelve O’Clock High full movie

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