The Dawn Patrol is a 1938 American war film, a remake of the pre-Code 1930 film of the same title. Both were based on the short story "The Flight Commander" by 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.

The film, directed by Edmund Goulding, stars Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven as Royal Flying Corps fighter pilots in World War I. Of the several films that Flynn and Rathbone appeared in together, it is the only one in which their characters are on the same side. Although sparring, as in their other roles, their characters are fast friends and comrades in danger.

The Dawn Patrol's story romanticizes many aspects of the World War I aviation experience that have since become clichés: white scarves, hard-drinking fatalism by doomed pilots, chivalry in the air between combatants, the short life expectancy of new pilots, and the legend of the "Red Baron". However, The Dawn Patrol also has a deeper and more timeless theme in the severe emotional scars suffered by military commander who must constantly order men to their deaths (not a single woman appears in the film). This theme underlies every scene in The Dawn Patrol.

REAR COVER

rrol Flynn and David Niven take to the skies in this thrilling aerial action yarn as World War I British flyboys who, whether quaffing down beers or gunning down their German foes, unite in devil-may-care gallantry and in disdain for their commander (Basil Rathbone). But war's realities will soon tarnish their bonhomie and change their disdain to understanding. They will also become commanders, forced each dawn to send young poorly trained recruits in patched-up aircraft to certain death. Its superior pacing, performances and style, combined with amazing dogfights above and a haunting indictment of war's futility below, make The Dawn Patrol a soaring classic of guts and glory.