The Dawn Patrol

A Royal Flying Corps squadron in 1915 sends its new pilots up each dawn and loses them each dawn, and Courtney, who curses the major who gives the orders, gets the job and gives them himself. Hawks stages the mess-room drinking and the roll call of the dead with the flat, unhurried talk that became his style, and the last mission, taken in another man's place, is the scene. Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. His first sound film, from a John Monk Saunders story that won the Academy Award; the 1938 remake reused its aerial footage. First National, 1930.