’12 O’Clock High’: A fine movie forgotten
One thing I really like about CNAS is that people there actually do things together, and learn from each other. You’d think other think tanks would do this, but in my experience, not really. At CNAS we have a weekly meeting where we discuss, among other things, recent events. We also have some terrific staff ...
One thing I really like about CNAS is that people there actually do things together, and learn from each other. You'd think other think tanks would do this, but in my experience, not really.
One thing I really like about CNAS is that people there actually do things together, and learn from each other. You’d think other think tanks would do this, but in my experience, not really.
At CNAS we have a weekly meeting where we discuss, among other things, recent events. We also have some terrific staff rides. And last night, we tried something new for us: A movie night. A bunch of us watched Twelve O’Clock High, the 1949 film starring Gregory Peck. It offers an interesting take on leadership — how do you balance taking care of your people with executing your mission? Which comes first? Can a human being really “spend the lives” of other people and remain sane?
I’m not going to quote from the discussion, because I haven’t asked the permission of other participants. But my thought as I watched the movie, which I last watched about 40 years ago, is that it is a kind of creation myth for the Air Force — “this is where we came from.” The bomber-centric Air Force it portrays certainly is not today’s service, but was the Air Force of the 1950s. Back then, the Air Force’s budget was twice that of the Army’s, the Air Force was expanding and building bases around the world, and the Strategic Air Command the star of the U.S. military establishment. So while the movie is obviously about World War II, it also is a kind of curtainraiser for the early Cold War, when bombers stood front and center.
For you youngsters, I think the film had a kind of Mad Men vibe — except that the people in this film really are going nuts for a good reason.
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