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. Second Lieutenant Jesse Bishop (played by Robert Patten), who belly-lands in the B-17 next to the runway at the beginning of the film and was nominated for the Medal of Honor, had his true-life counterpart in Second Lieutenant John C. Morgan. 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. Details may be found in The 12 O'Clock High Logbook. Patten had been a USAAF navigator in World War II, the only member of the cast with aircrew experience. Sergeant 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), though in reality, he had been invited to fly missions. Like McIllhenny, he proved to be a "born gunner". The "tough guy" character Major Joe Cobb was inspired by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who had flown B-17s with Colonel Armstrong. 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. Production According to their files, 20th Century Fox paid $100,000 outright for the rights to the unfinished book, plus up to $100,000 more in escalator and book-club clauses. Darryl Zanuck was apparently convinced to pay this high price when he heard that William Wyler was interested in purchasing it for Paramount. Even then, Zanuck only went through with the deal in October 1947 when he was certain that the United States Air Force would support the production. The film made use of actual combat footage during the battle scenes, including some shot by the Luftwaffe. A good deal of the production was filmed on Eglin Air Force Base and its associated auxiliary fields near Fort Walton, Florida. Source material Screenwriters Bartlett and Lay drew on their own wartime experiences with Eighth Air