This 1942 Warner Bros. propaganda film, directed by B. Reeves Eason, gives viewers a look at a reenactment of the training of U.S. Army Air Forces cadets. The film opens with Lt. General Henry H. Arnold climbing out of a plane at an airfield. He looks over a group of graduating cadets at the start of the wings-awarding ceremony. Arnold speaks to the graduates about their roles in the current climate (01:52). The graduates stand at attention, surrounded by what appear to be Vultee BT-13 Valiant planes (03:51). Arnold pins wings on the aviation cadets. The film then cuts to shots of the cadets prior to attending the academy (telling their stories): a young boy plays with a model airplane in a garage (04:24); a young man crunches budget numbers at the kitchen table, then is shown sitting on the front porch with his young wife; 06:40 a college student greets his family on a campus (06:40); another young man picks violets for his sweetheart (07:50), then he is shown kissing her goodbye at a train station. The new cadets get off a bus at the academy and walk onto the airfield (08:55). A Commanding Officer speaks to the new cadets. Cadets sit in a classroom and learn about aerodynamics. Several cadets are shown the instruments in a mock cockpit. Cadets fly bi-planes (likely Stearman Model 75s, also known as the PT-13 Kaydet) with their flight instructors. A training plane lands and totters on its landing gear. The film features several shots of young pilots in the cockpits of planes and writing in their flight record books. The cadets move onto bigger planes as they march to a squadron of BT-13 Valiants (12:20). Dozens of the planes’ engines fire up, and the planes are shown flying through the air. Footage shows the planes doing aerobatics and flying in formation. A cadet fires a machine gun from the cockpit of grounded plane during target practice (13:30). General Arnold salutes the new graduates. Footage shows a Lockheed P-38 Lightning taking on the ground (14:25), followed by Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses flying in the sky. There is a panning shot of an air base on the West Coast (14:48). Air raid sirens sound and men run to their battle stations, some readying anti-aircraft guns. B-17s land on an airstrip (16:06). Several air crewmen climb out of one of the bombers and walk into an office to speak with a colonel. The B-17 crews board the bombers and taxi out onto runway to take off. The ships are shown flying through the sky. There are several brief shots of the homes of the pilots, including the front of a Quinn Hotel (18:24), several people exiting a church, kids playing in a front yard, a farmer tilling the soil, and well-dressed people on a city street looking up at the sky as the bombers pass overhead. P-38 Lightnings fly in formation, and the film concludes with a shot of other planes flying in formation off into the sunset.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com