Robert Mitchum lobbied for the lead role. However, the real Col. Dean Hess wouldn't hear of a former jailbird portraying him. He personally approved Rock Hudson instead, not realizing that Hudson was gay.
The gold flying helmet with the United Nations emblem that Rock Hudson wears was Dean Hess' real helmet. It was a Navy-issue helmet that Hess scrounged from a Navy pilot who crash-landed at their airfield in Korea (since the Navy pilot was going to be issued a new helmet as a result of the crash-landing). The helmet is now on display at the US Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH.
This was the feature playing at the movie theater in Where Is Everybody? (1959), the first episode of The Twilight Zone (1959).
Lt. Maples accidentally strafes a truckload of civilian refugees that happened to be near a convoy of North Korean troop trucks. In the real-life incident, it was a fishing junk full of civilian refugees who were near an amphibious assault being made by North Korean landing craft.
Director Douglas Sirk broke his ankle while shooting a scene in March of 1956.Assistant directors John Sherwood and Marshall Green shot some of the Arizona footage. In May of 1956. Sirk was back on the set, working from a wheelchair.