Dive Bomber (film)

Dive Bomber a.k.a Beyond the Blue Sky is a 1941 American aviation film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray. The film is notable for both its Technicolor photography of preWorld War II United States Navy aircraft and as a historical document of the U.S. in 1941, including the aircraft carrier USSEnterprise, one of the best known World War II U.S. warships.

During prewar operations from an aircraft carrier off Hawaii, the VB3 dive bombing squadron bearing the High Hat emblem of Bombing Squadron Four arrives in a wingover approach to Honolulu one of its pilots blacks out during the high speed dive and crashes. At the base hospital in Honolulu, Lt. Cmdr. Joe Blake Fred MacMurray is concerned that Lt. Swede Larson Louis Jean Heydt will not survive. U.S. Navy doctor Lt. Doug Lee Errol Flynn convinces the Senior Surgeon Moroni Olsen to operate but the pilot dies on the operating table. After Blake blames Lee for rushing the surgery, the doctor decides to become a flight surgeon and winds up being trained at the U.S. Naval Air Station in San Diego by a number of instructors, including his nemesis, Blake. A subplot involving the romantic adventures of Blake, Lee and a group of mechanics, introduces divorcee Linda Fisher Alexis Smith as a love interest for the two rivals, Blake and Lee.On completion of his flight training, Lee is posted as an assistant to a senior flight surgeon, Cdr. Lance Rogers Ralph Bellamy, who is working to find a solution for altitude sickness that affects pilots in dive bombers. Lee flies with Blake as his pilot in a cameraequipped aircraft and observes Blake blacking out. He experiments with a pneumatic belt that will keep blood above the heart and successfully flight tests it himself, although he disobeys regulations in flying by himself. Even though he has qualified as a pilot, Lee is still not trusted, considered a grandstand player and a vulture, always there when someone crashes. His judgment over pilots ability to fly is further resented when he grounds a pilot, Lt. Tim Griffin Regis Toomey, who is suffering from chronic fatigue. In anger, Griffin quits the navy and joins the Royal Air Force in Canada but visits his old squadron when he is ferrying a new fighter from the Los Angeles factory. On his return flight, Griffin suffers from fatigue and dies attempting to land at an emergency field, co

Source: Wikipedia