(This post is edited and updated from a post that originally appeared in May 2022)

The ABC Television series 12 O’Clock High was produced and televised for the 1964-65, 1965-1966, and part of the 1966-1967 seasons. It was produced by Quinn Martin Productions for Twentieth Century-Fox, and was based on the very successful 1949 film of the same name. That film was, of course, based on excellent and noted novel, also of the same name, written by Bernie Lay, Jr. and Sy Bartlett and first published in 1948.

Twentieth Century-Fox as a film studio was in pretty bad financial condition in the early 1960s, and one of the perceived remedies seen by its executives was to take some older but successful Twentieth Century-Fox motion pictures and turn them into equally successful television series. Efforts by the studio and production company to adapt 12 O’Clock High to a TV series started in the fall of 1963 and got the green light from ABC television for inclusion in the 1964-65 season, with the first episode to premier in September 1964.

Details behind the TV series, as well as the original book and motion picture can be found in the authoritative Allan T. Duffin and Paul Matheis book The 12 O’Clock High Logbook. For the purposes of what I write here, we’ll concentrate on the filming done for the series at Chino Airport.

Chino Airport: Home of the 918th Bomb Group

Today, Chino Airport is better known as a warbird mecca and home of several well-known air museums and warbird restoration shops. Its World War II role was as the Cal-Aero civil training field for military pilots. After the war, it was used briefly as an RFC boneyard but, afterwards, it turned into an sleepy little underused air field nestled in among large dairy farms in the rural landscape located between Ontario and Santa Ana…with little but a low range of hills to the southwest and a bunch of dairy cows and piles of, well, cow stuff, to remark upon. The imposing San Gabriel mountains lay 20 miles to the north, with a prominent Mount Baldy standing out on clear Southern California days.

QM Productions searched all the airports within a two-hour range of the Twentieth Century-Fox studios for a suitable location and found Chino to be the best available. Chino Airport was isolated, quiet, had a smattering of surviving World War II-era buildings, and could be made to resemble an Eighth Air Force bomber base with just a little Hollywood magic. So, Chino Airport became the exterior set location for the TV series, complementing the interior sets built at the Fox Western Avenue Studios in Los Angeles. Studio set dressers descended upon the airport in the spring of 1964 to create the home of the fictional 918th Bomb Group and its commanding officer, General Frank Savage.

The airport’s original administration area was reconfigured on the exterior to become the 918th Bomb Group Operations Building, with an adjacent building becoming the base hospital. Other buildings were modified as needed. False-front Quonset huts were built to become the exteriors for briefings and an officer’s club. Tents, a guard shack, signage, and other small features were added to complete the transformation. Clever positioning of background props and fencing hid well the imposing mountain range located to the north of the airport, something that would have spoiled the English flat-land feeling. Usually, the Chino area is beset by times of fog, smog, or overcast skies, so hiding the mountain range was only necessary on those sunny California clear days.

Operational Scenes

On the airfield itself, an unused taxiway was co-opted and a parking revetment built. An AAF-style control tower, not actually operational, was added for the otherwise uncontrolled airport, the normal air traffic being an occasional Cessna or Piper interspersed with crop dusters and air tankers.

The Piccadilly Lily

The 918th Bomb Group needed a B-17 inventory, and for this was found The Air Museum’s B-17G, 44-83684. This B-17 was the last operational USAF Fortress, operating as DB-17P drone controller up until its last mission in August 1959. A month later, the Defense Department and The Air Museum worked out a loan agreement that brought 44-83684 into the museum’s collection, based at nearby Ontario International Airport. The B-17 was used in a TV feature or two in the following years, but gained a starring role in the new TV series in May 1964 when filming began at Chino.

44-83684 was refitted with a top turret and ball turret, with guns added to the other positions. A chin turret was not installed, this being a depiction of the air war over Europe in 1943. A dark grey over light grey AAF combat paint scheme was added, the dark grey paint substituting adequately for olive drab for the black and white TV series. Early Air Corps markings were added, and the civil registration of N3713G carried on the tail was modified to become 3713 for the airplane’s serial number in the filmed scenes.

44-83684 never actually flew for the series…it was evidently not technically airworthy at the time and there was no need anyway. It was used for operational scenes on the set, in the background and used to taxi around for departure and arrival scenes. It usually carried the name of the group commander’s ( Gen. Frank Savage or, later, Col. Joe Gallagher) B-17, the Piccadilly Lilly. To flesh out the group, though, it was marked and remarked as a dozen or more airplanes through the course of the series filming.

Studio Mockup: B-17G 44-83387

On the studio soundstage, the group’s B-17s were represented by a studio mockup, the majority of which contained the elements of the same real B-17G, 44-83387, that was used as a Twentieth Century-Fox studio prop for the 1949 film version of 12 O’Clock High. It was a sliced and diced B-17 fuselage that consisted of six sections: the cockpit and top turret, the nose section; the bomb-bay; the radio compartment, the aft fuselage with waist guns, and the tail gun compartment. The sections were mounted a dozen feet above the ground and could be clamped together as needed for various scenes. Skin was removable for camera access. Guns were installed in various positions and blanks were fired for the operational scenes. Duffin and Mathies report that 350,000 surplus USAF blanks were fired in the first season from the studio mockup. For 32 episodes, that over 10,000 rounds an episode…seems like possible overkill.

A Second B-17 on the Chino Set: 44-83316

As the series was gearing up for production in late 1963 or early 1964, there was a surplus USAF VB-17G, 44-83316, in storage at nearby Norton AFB. It had been set aside with a number of other surplus USAF aircraft for a planned museum. Plans changed, and suddenly the VB-17G became available. Paul Mantz, the famed Hollywood pilot and partner at Tallmantz Aviation at nearby Orange County Airport, had been promised a USAF B-17 for his movie collection, and Mantz and the Norton AFB commander had agreed to have the B-17 set aside for Tallmantz.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the chain, QM Productions was working to get its hands on 44-83316 to support the TV production. (More on the history of this aircraft can be found on the posting.) Tallmantz came to Norton and removed the fabric-covered control surfaces to be recovered, with the intention of flying the B-17 out a few weeks later. When they returned, they found that the cockpit had been gutted by studio workers, reportedly to complete the studio mockup for the TV series filming. Fuming, Mantz demanded some answers and a sheepish USAF admitted to letting the studio have access to the airplane. Rendered non-airworthy by the studio, Tallmantz washed its hands on the airplane and looked elsewhere for a USAF B-17. Subsequently, 44-83316 lost its wings, the wings reportedly going quietly to an air tanker outfit. The fuselage hulk was later trucked out to Chino and mounted on a stand that approximated a parked B-17. It was painted and marked as an AAF B-17 and used as set dressing, seen far away in the background of shots usually with the control tower blocking the view of the missing wings. It also appeared in several episodes as a crashed B-17 and was lit on fire numerous times in the course of the filming.

Combat Scenes

The series production relied primarily upon the USAF film stock of combat footage for the combat scenes. Fighter attacks, airplanes being shot down, flak-ridden bomb runs, and takeoff and landing scenes mostly came for USAF film vaults. Much footage from the wartime Memphis Belle documentary showed up. Some scenes were used from the original 1949 movie with the famous Paul Mantz belly landing used more than once.

Filming in Progress

The first episode began filming in May1964, with the premiere episode airing on Friday, September 18, 1964, at 9:30 p.m. on the coasts. Thirty-two episodes were produced for the first season, with the production completing season one filming in March 1965. The second season had a major rework, with Gen. Frank Savage (actor Robert Lansing) being killed off in the first episode, and Col. Joe Gallagher (actor Paul Burke) taking command of the 918th Bomb Group. Twenty-nine episodes were shot for Season Two, broadcast between September 13, 1965, and April 4, 1966. Season Three was abbreviated, as the series was cancelled part way through. For the last season, the show was shot in color, with a total of only seventeen episodes that were broadcast from September 9, 1966, to January 13, 1967. The show was ultimately cancelled due to low ratings.

For each of the seasons the filming was accomplished between May and March of the succeeding year, with the last season cut short. Usually, on one or two days of each week, the crew and cast were bussed from Los Angeles out to Chino for the exterior filming. Thus, the airport was busy with the filming for a good part of each year. In the third year, a mini-airfield set was built at the studio to reduce the transportation and location costs as much as possible, though the scenes shot at the makeshift airfield set were obvious and lowered the quality of the episodes.

End of the Line

The last episode of the series, Episode #78 (entitled The Hunters and the Killers) was probably completed in early November 1966. ABC television advised QM Productions that the series was cancelled on November 2, so it is doubtful there was any question that the series indeed had come to its end at this point. No record is available about how long or who actually dismantled the set but within a few years it was back to a under-used sleepy little airport surrounded by dairy cows and open land.

Today, the Chino airport is still there but it is now surrounded by a growing number of large warehouses and busy, truck-ladened streets. There is a smattering of sub-divisions scattered about but the dairy farms are a disappearing commodity. There are still a few around, but the writing is on their wall; they won’t be there long. The airport itself is mix of busy corporate jets, warbirds, air museums, restoration shops, derelict general aviation Cessnas and Pipers, and Flo’s Cafe…a frequent hangout for local pilots and a diminishing crowd of local dairy farmers.

And, if you know where to look, the remnants of the 918th Bomb Group.

Want a bit more information? Check out this dedicated page to the 12 O’Clock High TV Series. Or check out the history of the series and the B-17 used in the series in Final Cut: The Post-War Flying Fortress and Survivors, available right here on this website!