While trying to get sponsors for this series, the producers approached the Volkswagen executives and showed them the pilot show which featured actual bombing footage from the war. During the film, one of the executives recognized the plant that was being bombed as the Volkswagen plant which had made cars for the German Army at the time. He commented, "There goes our plant", and the executives then and there decided not to sponsor the show.
While most of the airborne footage in the series was wartime combat footage, much of it from the documentary "Memphis Belle" directed by William Wyler, the former DB-17P 44-83584 (N3713G) at Edward T. Maloney's Air Museum at Ontario, California, was brought the short distance to the former Cal-Aero Field at Chino where the 918th Bomb Group flightline sets were and used for taxiing, crew loading and unloading sequences, and as a backdrop for other filming.
TV Guide said that the firing of Robert Lansing in 1964 generated the most letters they had received since the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
In real life, colonel is the highest authorized rank for a group commander. A brigadier general like Frank Savage would not actually be made the group commander as it would be a demotion. In actuality, Savage would be attached to the 918th Bomb Group as an observer or an additional aircrew, and a field grade officer like Lt Col Ben Gately or Maj Joe Cobb would be made the group commander, with Savage constantly leaning over his shoulder and breathing down his neck.
This is never recognized or addressed as an anomaly in the original 1949 film Un homme de fer (1949), and only mentioned once in the 1965 TV series 12 O'Clock High (1964), in the series premiere episode Golden Boy Had Nine Black Sheep (1964) in which Joe Gallagher (essentially the Gately character from the movie but only a captain at the start of the series) insubordinately taunts General Savage for having a colonel's job; no further mention and no explanation of the situation is ever given.
This is never recognized or addressed as an anomaly in the original 1949 film Un homme de fer (1949), and only mentioned once in the 1965 TV series 12 O'Clock High (1964), in the series premiere episode Golden Boy Had Nine Black Sheep (1964) in which Joe Gallagher (essentially the Gately character from the movie but only a captain at the start of the series) insubordinately taunts General Savage for having a colonel's job; no further mention and no explanation of the situation is ever given.
According to a TV Guide article from May 15-21, 1965, page 24, Robert Lansing was replaced because the show was moving from 10 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The Wikipedia article on Lansing states Paul Burke looked younger than Lansing, though Lansing was younger than Burke.