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The actual development of the atomic bomb was documented in films like The Beginning or the End and in Fat Man and Little Boy. Above and Beyond concentrates on the pilot of the B-29 that actually did the deed.

Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker play Colonel and Mrs. Paul Tibbetts who's marriage was put under an incredible strain due to the security surrounding his assignment. Taylor was between his marriages to Barbara Stanwyck and Ursula Thiess and was involved with Parker at the time Above and Beyond was being filmed. Probably that helped a lot during the romantic interludes in the film.

Because this film sticks to the personal story of the Tibbetts marriage and avoids all the debate about the use of the atomic bomb, it still holds up well for today's audience.

In the supporting cast I would have to single out James Whitmore who plays the security head at Wendover field where Tibbetts is training the potential crew for the mission as the most outstanding. He's virtually the only one Taylor can bare his stoic soul to with the assignment he has.

Even with the debate over Hiroshima still raging I would still recommend viewing this film.

Taking off in the early morning hours of August 6, 1945 on the giant B-29 air base in Tinian in the Mariana Islands the super-fortress "Enola Gay" is on a secret mission to end the Second World War, and end it with a bang.

Within sight of it's target the two escort bombers along the "Enola Gay" peal off from formation and head home as it flies over the Japanese port city of Hiroshima. At exactly 8:15 AM the Enola Gay drops a uranium based Atomic Bomb that explodes with an blinding air-burst, some 1,600 feet above ground zero, wiping out the city and 100,000 of it's inhabitants in less then a minute. With another Atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later the war in the Pacific as well as WWII ended with the Japanese government surrendering unconditionally to the allies.

The movie "Above and Beyond" reconstructs the development of the Atomic Bomb as well as the means to deliver it, the B-29 bomber. It goes back to 1943 in North Africa where Let.Col. Paul Tibbets, Robert Taylor, is secretly chosen by the top military brass in the Pentagon to be the man to fly the B-29 that's to drop the bomb.

Tibbets a maverick in his dislike of his superiors in sending him and his fellow pilots out on suicide missions against the Germans in Tunisia is just the man that their looking for to perfect the flying of the new giant B-29 bomber. The super-fortress is considered to be a death trap at the time by USAAF pilots but was the only plane capable of carrying a 9,700 pound Atomic device that if dropped and successfully detonated ,on either Germany or Japan, could very well end the war

Back in the states at Wendover AFB in Utah Tibbets is told by his friend and commander of the base Maj. Gen. Vernon C. Brent, Larry Keating, what his mission is to be and to keep it secret not only from his fellow airmen but also his wife Lucey, Eleanor Parker. This causes so much tension between the two that it almost wrecks their marriage. The sweet and lovable Tibbets quickly becomes an unfeeling robot to his wife and two young children overnight. Worst of all is that Tibbets has to keep his feelings, about being the one to drop the bomb, to himself which almost leads him to have a breakdown.

The movie goes on with the Atomic Bomb being perfected at the Los Alamos Manhattan Project army base in New Mexico and with the secret but successful testing of the bomb in the New Mexican desert outside of Alamogordo a town with a name eerily similar to Valley of Armageddon in the Bible, where the last great war is to be fought between Good and Evil, on July 16, 1945. After the successful Atomic Bomb testing Tibbets and his B-29 crew are then flow to the Tinian island B-29 air base to write the final chapter of the Second World War.

Tense filled and extremely accurate movie about the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, were actually shown what the Atomic Bomb looks like and told how it works in the film. Robert Taylor gives one of his best performances as Lt.Col, and later full Col, Paul Tibbets as we see him overcome his fear and what seems guilt in piloting the B-29 super-fortress "Enola Gay",named after his mom Enola Gay Tibbets. Flying some 2,000 miles and six hours to drop a bomb that would eventually kill more people then almost any of the 1,000 plane raids, with the possible exception of the allied 1945 Valentine Day fire bombing of the German city of Dresden, on Japan or Germany during WWII changed Co. Tibbits life forever.

Eleanor Parker as Let.Col Tibbets' pretty and long suffering wife Lucey is extremely effective in her concern for her husband who seemed to have turned into an unfeeling zombie since he was assigned to the secret Wendover AFB. Lucy later realizes, after the announcement of the dropping of the A Bomb and Tibbets being the pilot of the B-29 that dropped it,why her husband acted that way to her and his friends. Tibbets had to keep all that about his secret mission over Japan inside him which ate him up alive.

"Above and Beyond" is unusually even-handed in it's depicting of the devastating Atomic Bombings of Japan. The films unflinching anti-war and anti-nuke message, for as movie made at the hight of the Cold and Korean War back in 1952, seen now has all the impact and effect on it's audience as it did back then.

P.S it should be noted that the ultra-secret 509th Atomic Bomb Group, the only Atomic Bomb unit of any air force on earth at the time, that Col. Tibbets Atomic Bomb fitted B-29 "Enola Gay" was part of made the news again two years later. The very same 509th was involved in the July 1947 "Roswell Incident" where there was a supposedly government cover up of an alien controlled spaceship that crashed in that same desert where the testing of the first Atomic Bomb took place place in the summer of 1945!

Considering that "Above and Beyond" was made during the height of the hysteria now known as McCarthyism, one would have expected a jingoistic flag-waver out of Hollywood. Instead, surprisingly, the screenplay as written allows the Paul Tibbets character (Robert Taylor) the opportunity to register a variety of emotions, in a most realistic and compelling performance.

This is ironic, seeing as the real Tibbets, decades after the event (the bombing of Hiroshima), is to this day unrepentant. Not to criticize his position in any way, because that was a different time and place, and it's Tibbets' view that he had a job to do, and the morality of it all, he has stated, is best debated by others.

But the film is all the more compelling because of the ambivalence written into the Tibbets character, and Taylor's especially fine work. There are uniformly strong performances throughout the cast, notably those of Eleanor Parker (Lucy Tibbets), James Whitmore (the security officer) and Larry Keating (General Brent).

Another surprise: the team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama (screenplay, direction) had been best known for their Bob Hope comedies, when under contract at Paramount. Their first dramatic effort was "Above and Beyond," and they acquitted themselves admirably.

Final note: the musical score by Hugo Friedhofer is immensely satisfying: stirring in an emotional sense, with just a touch of, but not too much of, militaristic flavor.

Dore Schary, a Democrat, had succeeded fervent Republican Louis B. Mayer at MGM in 1951, and had encouraged the production of "Above and Beyond." One wonders if (a) the film would have been made at all on Mayer's watch, and (b) if it had, would it have been more of a cornball, John Wayne-type flag-waver. Thankfully, those questions are moot. "Above and Beyond" is a stirring, finely-crafted film. I would stress again the unusual nature of the protaganist's ambivalence as portrayed in a film made during a very sensitive time in America's history.

Despite my love for aviation films, I somehow never got around to seeing "Above and Beyond" until now. Much of this is because although I like airplane films, I incorrectly assumed that this movie would basically be a by the numbers and very dull documentary about the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Seeing them recreate this somewhat mundane process depressed me and I only got around to seeing it finally because the film starred Robert Taylor--an exceptional actor. Fortunately, my assumptions about the film were mostly wrong--and it was a very good retelling of this true story.

I think the biggest reason I liked "Above and Beyond" is because it does NOT show as much of the technical aspects as I thought it would. Instead, it focused a lot of the film on the personal toll the project took on its commander, Col. Tibbets. Now this is NOT the toll on him after the dropping of the first A-bomb (he actually seemed to have no problems with this from everything I've read--saying that it DID help end the war)--but how the secrecy demands of the project took a major toll on the Colonel's marriage. I had just assumed, incorrectly, that Tibbets was some guy chosen at the last minute to command this mission and that he was already serving in the Pacific. Instead, he was picked long before and headed an unit in Utah that spent many, many months working out the specifics of the bombing. The security for all this surprised me--as I'd just assumed this was only for the Manhattan Project itself.

Interesting, well-written and acted, this is a nice historical piece that is both fascinating and entertaining. I was particularly impressed by the recreation of the atomic bomb drop from the point of view of the crew as it happened--it was well done and believable. The only negative, if there is one, is that the film really doesn't even mention the second bomb dropped a few days later--a bit on an odd omission. I guess being second doesn't hold a lot of interest to most folks.

I knew of Wendover Airbase long before seeing this movie. Although the movie infers that Tibbets picked the field for its isolation (true) it was also where they taught heavy bomber crews during WW2. So the field hardly had to be developed for the special mission of the 509th.

And today it has another famous reason - it is the site of many movie scenes, such as Independence Day and ConAir.

In fact, when I went to visit the site - right on the Utah-Navada border, they were filming ConAir.

Today all one sees as a reminder of its importance are the old concrete foundations of the many wooden buildings - with signs telling you what each building's purpose was.

But to the movie - I know that the main points were factually correct - right down to the flight time a B29 required flying from Saipan or Tinian to Japan - and back.

14 hours.

It seems that the secrecy at this base was as stringent as Los Alamos, where the Bomb was developed.

Besides being an entertaining movie it is educational.