The Dawn Patrol is a 1930 American pre-Code World War I film starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It was directed by Howard Hawks, a former World War I flight instructor, who even flew in the film as a German pilot in an uncredited role. The Dawn Patrol won the Academy Award for Best Story for John Monk Saunders, an American writer said to have been haunted by his inability to get into combat as a flyer with the U.S. Air Service. It was subsequently remade in 1938 with the same title, and the original was then renamed Flight Commander and released later as part of the Warner Bros. film catalog.

Plot

During World War I, the pilots of an RFC squadron deal with the stress of combat primarily through nightly bouts of heavy drinking. The two aces of the squadron's "A Flight", Courtney and Scott, have come to hate the commanding officer, Brand, blaming him for sending new recruits directly into combat in inferior aircraft.

Awards