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"King Nine Will Not Return" is the season two premiere episode, and 37th overall, of theAmerican television anthology seriesThe Twilight Zone. It originally aired on September 30, 1960 onCBS.

This was the first episode whereRod Serling appeared on camera at the beginning, rather than introducing the episode in a voice-over narration.

Opening narration

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This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead, and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning, she took off fromTunisia to bomb the southern tip ofItaly. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in the wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day.

Plot

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It's World War II, and theKing Nine, aB-25 Mitchell bomber, has crashed in the desert. Captain James Embry finds himself stranded, alone except for the wreckage and the mystery of what happened to his crew, all of whom have disappeared. The movement of the plane in the wind and his visions of the missing men serve to heighten Embry's disorientation.

While searching for his crew, Embry finds the grave of one of his men, and recognizes in the sky NavyF9F Cougar jets, which are impossible for 1943. He is bewildered as to how he knows about jet aircraft and becomes increasingly distressed. Embry collapses in the sand, and it is revealed that he is apparently hospitalized and suffering hallucinations, 17 years after the crash.

Confident that Embry will recover, two doctors discuss their speculation that his suffering has been triggered by a newspaper headline. The paper has reported the desert discovery of the long-lostKing Nine, which had not returned to base from a wartime mission in 1943. Having come down with a fever just before he was to board the ill-fated flight, Embry had been replaced on the mission by another captain. Seeing the headline has triggeredsurvivor guilt, the intensity of which has caused him to imagine himself at the crash site.

The doctors assure Embry he has returned to the site only in his mind. However, when a nurse handling his clothes accidentally turns one of his shoes on its side, sand spills out.

Closing narration

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Enigma buried in the sand, a question mark with broken wings that lies in silent grace as a marker in a desert shrine. Odd how the real consorts with the shadows, how the present fuses with the past. How does it happen? The question is on file in the silent desert, and the answer? The answer is waiting for us in - The Twilight Zone.

Cast

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Bob Cummings as Captain James Embry
Gene Lyons as Psychiatrist
Paul Lambert as Doctor
Jenna McMahon as Nurse

Production notes

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This was the first episode to feature the familiarMarius ConstantTwilight Zone theme. The score by Fred Steiner was later used in otherTwilight Zone episodes.

The episode was based on the discovery of theB-24 Liberator bomberLady Be Good and her crew's remains, which had crash-landed at night, deep in the Libyan desert after running out of fuel, while returning from aWorld War II bombing mission overNaples,Italy. In the episode, the marker of agrave of a member of the crew ofKing Nine is dated "5 April 1943," the day on which theLady Be Good was lost.Lady Be Good had been found in 1958, and the bodies of eight of the nine-man crew were discovered between February and August 1960 – the eighth crewman being found just a few weeks before "King Nine Will Not Return" aired.

The bomber aircraft used in this episode was aNorth American Aviation B-25C-10NA 42-32354, which still exists in storage with Aero Trader,Borrego Springs, California.^[1]

Cummings played a number of pilots during his career.^[2]

Short story adaptation

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"King Nine Will Not Return" was adapted into short story form byWalter B. Gibson in the 1963 collectionRod Serling's Twilight Zone as "Return From Oblivion". Despite the different title, it follows the plot of the television version precisely, with no significant changes.

References

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^"B-25 Mitchell/42-32354". Warbirds Resource Group. RetrievedOctober 23, 2017.
^Vagg, Stephen (October 29, 2024)."Movie Star Cold Streaks: Robert Cummings".Filmink. RetrievedOctober 29, 2024.

External links

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"King Nine Will Not Return" atIMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959)episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"