I read up on the real Captain McConnell and after watching the movie, I wanna read some more. No, it isn't because he was such an interesting guy, but it's because I found the entire first portion of the film ridiculous and impossible to believe. No soldier could have been THIS bad without spending significant time in Leavenworth, the way he meets his wife is stupid and it all seemed like one cliché after another strung together to make an eye-rolling film! It's sad, as Joseph McConnell was a true war hero...and this part of the film makes him seem like a horse's butt! What follows is his career as a bomber navigator on B-24s*, his entry into pilot's school after the war and his becoming the world's most successful jet pilot ace during the Korean War.
Apart from seeming unreal, most of the rest of the film is pretty much by the numbers...not terrible but also not all that involving or good. It's interesting that they chose June Allyson to play the wife, as she would soon go on to playing a VERY similar role in the air film "Strategic Air Command". Otherwise, a film that just should have been better...much better.
*The film used some very grainy stock footage. The worst of it was McConnell's B-24 bomber....in the film it was a B-17...a very, very different looking plane. It wouldn't taken much effort to use the right footage...just a desire to at least get SOME of the film right! Fortunately, the Korean War sequences were better with the use of actual Soviet MiG-15 footage as well as American F-84s doubling as the MiGs (since none were available to the film crew, this was about as close looking as they'd be able get to the enemy planes).
