The Dawn Patrol

At a Royal Flying Corps field in France, young pilots drink all night because they may not live through the dawn. Howard Hawks’s 1930 World War I drama follows ace Dick Courtney (Richard Barthelmess) and his closest friend Scott (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) as they rage against the commander who keeps sending untrained replacements into the sky — until Courtney himself is given the job and learns what it costs to give the order. Based on a story by John Monk Saunders and shot with real flying sequences, the film is less about glory than about the grim professionalism of men who toast the dead and take off again at first light. An early Hawks talkie and an Oscar winner for Best Story, The Dawn Patrol is one of the toughest, most unsentimental aviation pictures of the early sound era.