The Dawn Patrol 1938

     The setting of this film is in France of 1915 during WWI.  The 39^th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps is under the command of Major Brand.  The airmen go up to face the enemy in bullet-riddled “crates.”  The casualty rate is very high.  Major Brand can’t seem to make the officers at headquarters understand what is happening?  There is air ace Captain Courtney and he is a thorn in Brand’s side.  Everyone is doing all they can but they can’t see things getting any better?  New pilots with very few hours of experience are arriving to replace the veterans lost in the air.

      The aerial footage is very interesting and also the mindset on the ground.  It's very tough for the pilots to see or learn that their comrades were shot down.  The planes are so flimsy that they can't withstand very much destruction.  If the plane nosedives and hits the ground, there isn't much chance for the pilot to walk away.  3* (This movie is OK)

103 min, War directed by Edmund Goulding with Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, David Niven, Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper, Barry Fitzgerald, Carl Esmond, Peter Willes, Morton Lowry, Michael Brooke, James Burke, Stuart Hall.

Note:  Imdb 7.6 out of 10, 83% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, TCM Leonard Maltin 3.5* out of 4* averages user rating 4.85* out of 5*, Amazon 4.6* out of 5* with 122 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Calabasas, California.  I didn’t realize this was filmed in California when I was watching?  The planes were mostly Nieuports and the production had 17 vintage WWI aircraft!!  The flying was just as hazardous as in WWI.  Stunt flyers crashed 15 out of 17 planes!!  One of the Nieuports is on display at the Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama.  The name Von Ricter on one of the planes is a reference to Manfred von Rictofen, the iconic WWI German ace flyer.  He was nicknamed The Red Baron by his friends and enemies.  A lot of the aerial footage came from Warner Bros. 1930 film version of The Dawn Patrol.  There was a real No. 509 Squadron in the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War.  It was formed in 1916 and deployed to France in 1917.  They flew R.E.8s and it was a two-seater bombing reconnaissance aircraft.