This film is enjoyable mainly as a historical artifact for aviation buffs. It depicts an era of naval aviation neglected in mainline Hollywood features- the mid-1950s after the Korean War but before the advent of supersonic naval jets. Almost all flying sequences were apparently assembled from stock footage of aircraft such as Grumman F9F-6 Cougars and McDonnell F2H Banshees flying from early post-WWII straight-deck US Navy carriers. We also see North American FJ-3 Furies, an F2H-2P Banshee, an FH-1 Phantom, and Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopters.
Unfortunately, the movie offers little else to recommend it. The dialog is stilted, the script contains numerous red herrings, the plot is sometimes hard to follow, and the main characters are clichéd. The lead actors generally do a decent job of working with what little they were given, and the director does a better job of keeping the plot moving than in other 50s B-movie groaners, but this often doesn't amount to much. Almost all of the character interaction occurs in a handful of rooms on an aircraft carrier where background noise and enlisted personnel are remarkably absent, probably due to budget limitations. The extensive stock footage is not used very skillfully; some shots are blatantly repeated several times in rapid succession, and aviation buffs will spot numerous continuity errors as the characters "land" a different type of aircraft than they were "flying" in the previous scene. It doesn't appear that many flying sequences were shot specifically for this movie.
This movie is not stiflingly boring like "The Starfighters", but it's no "Bridges at Toko-Ri" or "Strategic Air Command"- not even close.
