Plot
Roy (James Hall) and Monte Rutledge (Ben Lyon) are very different British brothers studying at Oxford together at the onset of World War I. Mild-mannered Roy is in love with and idealizes the apparently demure, but wayward, Helen (Jean Harlow). Monte, on the other hand, is a free-wheeling womanizer who can't refuse any woman's advances. A German student by the name of Karl (John Darrow) is best friends to both. After the outbreak of World War I, Karl is recruited into the German Air Force and the two British brothers enlist in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC); Roy, enthusiastically, from a sense of duty and Monte doing so only to get a kiss from a girl at the recruiting station. After their training, Roy finally introduces Monte to Helen, who seduces Monte.
Meanwhile, Karl is serving aboard a Zeppelin airship that is flying over London for an attack from high above the clouds. Karl is the bombardier-observer as he is lowered below the clouds in a spy basket, but because of his love for England he directs the Zeppelin over a pond on a farm and bombs that instead. Before his superiors find out, four RFC fighters are summoned, including Roy and Monte, to shoot down the Zeppelin. Unbeknownst to them, the airship commander (Carl von Haartman) decides to sacrifice Karl by cutting the cable that secures his pod in order to obtain more altitude and speed to escape the English aviators. The sacrifice is in vain, as are the suicides of fellow German crewman who lighten the ship in a harrowing decision, by obediently leaping to their deaths "for Kaiser and fatherland". German machine gunners manage to shoot down two aircraft plus Roy and Monte's aircraft, which has a deeply unsettling effect on the latter. After his machine guns jammed on him, the last British pilot aloft steers his fighter into the dirigible, killing all aboard in a blazing fireball.
Later, in France, Monte is branded a coward for faking illness to avoid combat. Under pressure to prove that he is not a coward, Monte volunteers for a dangerous mission the next morning which will attempt to destroy a vital enemy weapons depot with a captured German bomber, and allow a British brigade a better chance in their attack the next afternoon. If shot down and captured, it is likely that Monte will face a German firing squad as a spy. Roy quickly volunteers to fly the German bomber.
Later that night, hours before the raid, Roy discovers Helen in a nightclub in the arms of another officer. When he tries to bring her home, she turns on him aggressively, revealing that she never loved him, that she is, in fact, not the young innocent he believed her to be. Roy is devastated and joins Monte in pursuit of other women. Later, Monte decides not to carry out the mission and stay with a pair of wild girls; however, Roy drags Monte back to the airfield.
The raid on the German munitions dump is successful. However, they were spotted by a German fighter squadron. Monte defends the bomber with a machine gun until British fighters arrive, and dogfight ensues. Even though the British dominate the combat, the brothers are shot down and captured. Given the option of a firing squad or treason, Monte's cowardice prevails; he succumbs to pressure and decides to betray the British attack in order to save his life.
Roy acts in order to protect thousands of British troops who would be harmed by Monte's betrayal. Roy convinces Monte that he can affect the betrayal more smoothly, and then tricks the German officer into giving him a pistol to kill Monte as a condition of the betrayal. The general (Lucien Prival) gives Roy a gun with just one bullet and has him escorted back to his cell. Roy shoots Monte, then cradles his dying brother. In an emotional scene, Monte tells Roy that he did the right thing because British soldiers' lives will be saved. The German general arrives in time to witness the scene as Monte dies. Roy says that he will tell the Germans nothing. Realizing that he has been tricked, the general has Roy executed.
On returning to his office, the German hears the sounds of a massive bombardment. A British attack on the German front lines has successfully begun.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)