be done. " The footage was used again in the 1962 film The War Lover. Locations for creating the bomber airfield at the fictional RAF Archbury were scouted by director Henry King, flying his own Beech Bonanza some 16,000 miles in February and March 1949. King visited Eglin AFB on March 8, 1949, and found an ideal location for principal photography several miles north of the main base at its Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field No. 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. The film's technical advisor, Colonel John de Russy, was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, at the time, and suggested Ozark Army Air Field near Daleville, Alabama (now known as Cairns Army Airfield, adjacent to Fort Rucker). King chose Cairns as the location for filming B-17 takeoffs and landings, including the B-17 belly landing sequence, since the light-colored runways at Eglin did not match wartime runways in England, which had been black to make them less visible to enemy aircraft. 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. The opening and closing scenes of the derelict RAF Archbury, referencing themes in the film, have a very similar approach to the opening scenes of the derelict fictional RAF Halfpenny Field in the earlier 1945 film The Way to the Stars. Additional background photography was shot at RAF Barford St John, a satellite station of RAF Croughton in Oxfordshire, England. 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. Other locations around Eglin AFB and Fort Walton also served as secondary locations for filming. The crew used 12 B-17s for filming, which were pulled from QB-17 drones used at Eglin and other B-17s from depot locations in Alabama and New Mexico. Since some of the aircraft had been used in the 1946 Bikini atomic experiments and absorbed high levels of radioactivity, they could only be used for shooting for limited periods. Twelve O'Clock High was in production from late April to early July 1949. Although originally planned to be shot in Technicolor, it was instead shot in black and