12 O'Clock High is a superb film - the beginning sequence always sets my hair on end. likewise Tunes of Glory is my favourite (non) war film, the closing scene makes the room extraordinarily dusty .
It's that moment where Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger) is standing, with his memories, on the deserted, derelict runway of "Archbury" in 1948. The camera pans to the grass/wheat which is gently waving in the breeze, then is flattened by the propwash of an unseen B-17, as the aero engine sound swells, and we are taken back to 1942 and the crippled planes of the 918th are returning from a raid, firing their "wounded on board" flares.
At this point the first genuinely historical incident is referenced when several wounded are lifted out into ambulances, and the medics comment that they can see the brain of the pilot through his opened skull. They also recover the severed arm of the flight engineer/top turret gunner. This is a clear reference to the action of 28 July 1943 when Flight Officer John C Morgan (co-pilot) was awarded the Medal of Honor. Names, dates and locations are changed in the film, but the opened skull, the TTE's severed arm, the co-pilot struggling with the crazed, dying pilot, all this is a representation of one of the best known incidents of the bomber offensive.
In reality,
Ruthie II, the plane Morgan brought home, belonged to the 92nd Bomb Group based at Alconbury, though on the day in question, with fuel gauges reading zero, he landed at Foulsham.