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"Wing and a Prayer" is a decent WW II film made in 1944. It stars Don Ameche, Dana Andrews, William Eythe, Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Bickford, Harry Morgan, and Richard Jaeckel (so young it's unbelievable). It's directed by Henry Hathaway.

The story concerns Naval decisions made during World War II before the Battle of Midway. It's not complete -- because of the time that it was made, info was still classified. We had broken the Japanese code and knew what was going to happen at Midway. This particular film is about a carrier, probably in real life, The Enterprise, that was supposed to make the Japanese think the Navy was spread all over the place so that they wouldn't anticipate the forces at Midway. When they were seeing carriers in different spots, they were in fact seeing only this carrier. The crew was told not under any circumstances to engage with the Japanese, which caused fatalities and problems when pilots could not defend themselves.

The crew was in the dark, of course, and had no understanding of this policy, so they were angry and frustrated.

Don Ameche plays a very stern flight commander, Bingo Harper, a man without a sense of humor, who seems detached from his men. Andrews plays lieutenant commander Edward Moulton, and William Eythe plays Hallam "Oscar" Scott, a film star who carries his Academy Award with him for luck.

This is a 20th Century Fox film, and Andrews and Eythe were two actors who came up during World War II and were groomed by Fox to take over for its absent actors. Eythe bore a resemblance to Tyrone Power and was being groomed for stardom. The role he plays here is undoubtedly based on Power, who was indeed a movie star-pilot with an unusual first name. And he had kissed Betty Grable, just like Hallam. Unlike Dana Andrews, Eythe probably would never have made first ranks - he is rough around the edges, awkward physically, and he just didn't have star quality. He was given some excellent roles, but after Zanuck found out he was gay and pretty openly the lover of actor Lon McAllister, he got rid of him. Eythe found work in television and on the stage but died at the age of 38 of hepatitis.

All in all, a pretty good movie, though the characters aren't very well developed, particularly Andrews' role. The minor characters have more back story.

Henry Hathaway made many of the best Hollywood films, particularly in the genre of hard action, especially at war. This is one of them, still in the beginning of his age of greatness but an important prelude to what was to follow. The main star here is not Dana Andrews but Don Ameche, who plays a totally different role from his usual repertoire, but he does it more than well. Cedric Hardwicke is an unnamed admiral of only one scene in the beginning, and among the others is Charles Bickford, reliable and indomitable as usual, as the captain, with clenched teeth. The story is the build-up to the battle of Midway half a year after Pearl Harbour, which changed the course of the war to American advantage. The six months before the battle was a perpetual humiliation, the Americans constantly avoiding confrontations with the Japanese for strategic reasons, and the marines getting rather frustrated about it. When finally everything is ready for the battle, it is an immense release, and the humiliation of running the gauntlet turns to triumph. As usual in Hathaway's films, much attention and importance is attached to the human side of the drama, and many of the sailors make great individual performances with stories of their own. Some get grounded, some commit unpardonable goofs, there is some intimate music as well, and some run into martyrdom. In brief, it's an excellent almost documentary panorama of the drama leading up to Midway, and it's well worth while following every stage of it - with many U-turns on the way. But Don Ameche makes the greatest impression, although far from sympathetic and almost hated but profoundly reasonable all the way.

I'm intrigued by war movies, especially war movies within a country at war. This also happens to be my country, and in fact -- though I will never know the details -- my dad was in this action. This has the required swelling of patriotic fervor at the end, and does so with a minimum of racist demonization.

Its about the one really risky time in the war. There was never any doubt that the Germans (and Italians) would lose in Europe once the US entered the war; the only question was the cost. But in the Pacific, the situation was truly dire between Pearl Harbor and this battle. After this battle, it was a war of factories.

But before, it was touch and go. Everyone in the States would have known the pivotal role of the event and would have their stories about tactics and bravery.

There are three notable things about this movie.

The first is that it is nearly all wrong in terms of the history. The reason for this is that the US had broken the code (JN-25). This was not something that could be announced; the US knew the details of the Japanese plans and were able to stage an ambush. But that hardly explains the other, gratuitous historical inaccuracies. One can only think that no one cared what the actual tactics were as long as communal dedication was apparent.

A second rather shocking thing is that all the combat footage is genuine. These are real warriors in the real place, with less than half of the movie (obviously overlain) produced as a fiction. Looking at these men and operations deepens the experience, knowing how rare it is to see this before Vietnam.

But the most interesting to me is one character. He's pretty much the central character of the fiction: a torpedo plane pilot. Now picture this; you have a real story of national import around which history does swing. You have actual footage which in other, later, contexts with narration stands strong. You have all this and you want to insert Hollywood; what do you do?

Well, you insert a character who is a Hollywood actor, someone who has left Hollywood and enlisted but who still carries his Oscar on combat missions! Its yet another example of this phenomenon I call the narrative fold. Pretty cool.

Oh, the fictional parts are bad in nearly all respects, excepting one scene. An airman has been killed and his buddy is packing his effects for transport back to his girl. Going through things to place in a suitcase, he finds an empty tube of toothpaste and tosses it in the trash. Then he reconsiders -- a very poignant moment -- and pulls it out of the trash to send to the woman. Its one thing that works. All the rest would wait to be decoded.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Three months after the greatest disaster in the american history with the surprise military strike of Pear Harbor by the imperial Japanese navy air service, December the 7th, 1941, the American HQ set up a desperate strategy based on a simulation of disarray within the American navy so that the Japanese confidence goes up artificially and incites them not to deviate from their supposed plan of campaign: to take ownership of Pearl Harbor, this objective implying beforehand a passage through Midway where the American navy is firmly waiting for the Japanese navy.

The film focuses on an aircraft carrier unexpectedly playing the role of a bait and we witness the daily life of these airmen forced to behave cowardly every time they meet a Japanese zero. The atmosphere is typical of old war movies: ultra-patriotic, childish and cheesy, pretty close to a propaganda film, in a certain manner. We globally remember the team spirit, the heroism of the airmen, the dignity of the entire crew and the excellent cinematography given the technical means of the time.

The movie itself is entertaining and rather predictable at times. Kind of like the movie mill war stories of that era. The roll played by Don Ameche was not a Don Ameche roll. Ameche is better known for his humor, IE: The Bickersons and Cocoon. The roll of a sad, by the book Navy officer must have been a stretch for him, but he did it in perfection. He became a dark shadow in scenes where he just walks through and always alone. The lonely man, hardly cracking a smile. Everyone hating him, tough to the point, lonely, misunderstood and doing the job he was appointed to do. It makes you wonder how many men had to be this way during any war.

Ameche should have won an Acadamy Award for his role in this movie.