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a bombing run over Hanover, Germany, on 28 July 1943. Major Joe Cobb ( John
Kellogg) is based on Major ( later Col.) Paul Tibbets, who later became famous as
the pi lot of the B-29 “Enola Gay,” which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
in 1945 (Tibbets himself served as a technical advisor for this movie). Sgt. McIl-
henny (Robert Arthur) is based on Sgt. Donald Bevan, who was shot down over
Germany in April 1943 and became a prisoner of war (POW). Bevan and fellow
POW, Edmund Trzcinski, later co- wrote the play St a lag 17, which was made into a
hit movie by Billy Wilder in 1953.