Back in the 1950s, much of the very best entertainment wasn't coming from Hollywood but was being broadcast LIVE from New York! Yes, the best writers and directors were being created and fostered on television and "Bomber's Moon" is a great example of these brilliant creative forces. The multi-award winning writer, Rod Serling, wrote this script and John Frankenheimer, one of the best directors of suspense ("The Manchurian Candidate") are paired in this WWII drama- -and that alone is more than enough reason to watch this film. This begs the question--where can you find this show? Well, fortunately a kinescope version of the live broadcast was saved and is floating about on YouTube. The combination of the kinescope and YouTube mean the quality of the print ain't great--but be thankful as most of these wonderful old live teleplays simply no longer exist.
This show is about a Colonel who is in the group commander of a bombing group in Europe during WWII. Colonel Culver (Bob Cummings) is a real hard character. He has no sympathy for anyone and his only driving passion is destroying the Germans. When one of the pilots in the group has aborted one mission too many, Culver hates the man and denounced him as a coward. How much further can this guy drive himself and others until he cracks?
While this is a very good installment of "Playhouse 90", it does have one big problem. Hollywood had already made two exceptionally good movies with similar themes: "Flight Command" and "12 O'Clock High". Both (particularly the latter film) are brilliant and no teleplay could surpass the films in writing and quality. "Bomber's Moon" has some excellent moments (such as when Cummings' character berates a man he sees as a coward in front of the bomber crews) and is a very good character study. It also, unfortunately, overuses stock footage and isn't the most original teleplay I have seen-- though it is a quality production nevertheless and is quite compelling. And, Cummings did a great job playing this very interesting character.
By the way, the crews are attacking Rhinegard. I did a Google search and found no such place.