A military surgeon teams with a ranking navy flyer to develop a high-altitude suit which will protect pilots from blacking out when they go into a steep dive.
Direction
Curtiz makes test flights feel like religious experiences.
Practical Effects
Real Navy planes, real crashes, real commitment to the bit.
Cinematography
Those aerial sequences still slap harder than most CGI.
Director
Michael Curtiz
Errol Flynn
Douglas S. Lee
Fred MacMurray
Joe Blake
Ralph Bellamy
Lance Rogers
Alexis Smith
Linda Fisher
Robert Armstrong
Art Lyons
Regis Toomey
Tim Griffin
Allen Jenkins
Lucky James
Craig Stevens
John Thomas Anthony III
Herbert Anderson
Chubby Markham
Moroni Olsen
Senior Surgeon at San Diego
Dennie Moore
Mrs. James
Louis Jean Heydt
Swede Larson
Cliff Nazarro
Corps Man
Russell Hicks
Awards Speaker (uncredited)
Howard Hickman
Admiral (uncredited)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Navy provided 1,200 personnel and 20 aircraft for filming, making this one of the most expensive productions of 1941. They got a recruitment ad; Warner Bros got spectacle.
Released months before Pearl Harbor, this is pre-war optimism crystallized—science and brotherhood will save us, no foreign enemy named. The irony stings now.
US
