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"Ships With Wings" starts out admirably - with an excellent title and introductory sequence featuring sharp studies of aircraft and ships of the Fleet Air Arm. The movie proper also begins well, with snappy, witty English banter and the glimmer of what appear to be some complex characters. And then, before you know it, it all falls apart into what others have appropriately referred to as a 'comic book.' That's really the only way to describe it.

I kind of like this film nevertheless, so my 4/10 rating may be a bit harsh, but I said to myself "if 5 is average, surely this film must rate below average." And, it does.

Noteworthy are the aircraft used in this film as, on balance, they are some of the worst military aircraft to have flown. Specifically, the Blackburn Skua and (especially) the Breda 88 Lince routinely feature on lists of the "world's worst aircraft". However, the Lince at least looked the part of a decent aircraft, so it is understandable that it would have been cast as a fearsome enemy. It is worthwhile to read the wikipedia article on the Lince to see just how useless it was.

"Ships with Wings reminded me of three other war films. Three years earlier, John Clements in "The Four Feathers" had played another disgraced British officer who redeemed himself, and "Casablanca" also portrayed Italian officers as ineffective popinjays.

Most strikingly, though, just as "Air Force" depicts an instant United States naval victory days after Peal Harbor, SWW portrays a mass sinking of German ships by the Royal Navy at a time when Axis forces were sweeping across the Eastern Mediterranean. Such fictitious achievements may have been designed to raise morale, but I wonder how contemporary cinema-goers reacted to the preposterous antics shown in the last part of SWW, which today look risible. Another reviewer has described them as "comic-book".

To avoid "spoiling", I won't list all the half-dozen improbable actions, though I do wonder why there was no attempt by the carrier's crew to deal with the burning aircraft that had crashed on its deck.

The film did start well, with some good scenes of the launching of HMS Ark Royal and of aircraft of the early 1940s.

As always with films of this period, there are some interesting names to look out for among the cast.

Supposedly set in the thirties, this glossy nonsense glorifying the Fleet Air Arm was made by Ealing before they soon afterwards hit their stride and realised that gung ho heroics were not exactly their thing.

The general unreality of the piece is indicated by the credit in the titles for the fashion houses that supplied the dresses; and although the final bombing raid is done with obvious models at least it provides the pleasure of seeing John Laurie in the cockpit of one of the planes.

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Ships With Wings made in 1941 tells the story of the British flagship aircraft carrier the Ark Royal in battle in the Mediterranean theater. The first thing to compliment in this film is the judicious use of editing real battle newsreel footage into the film, integrating it with the plot of the film. I doubt very much if Ark Royal was being used for location shooting, the Royal Navy kept her quite busy in those years.

Three pilots take the lead here, John Clements, Michael Wilding, and Michael Rennie. Of the group Clements is an easy going, but reckless type. Some dereliction of duty gets him washed out of the Royal Navy's pilots.

But when war comes, Clements who is now working for a spitball Greek Airliner in the Mediterranean gets hold of German plans and flies to Allied territory to bring the world. The former Three Musketeers are united and Clements lends a helpful hand to the others at a critical moment in battle.

Ships With Wings is a nice rousing tribute to the men who served on Great Britain's Naval Air Arm and on the Ark Royal in particular. And this review is dedicated to everyone who ever served on that most gallant ship of the British Royal Navy. You folks kept us all free.

Yes, this is British wartime propaganda. Yes, the story-line often seems cartoonish. Yes, some of the special effects seem as though they're out of a 1930s serial. While all those points are granted, "Ships With Wings, does score on featuring a lot of well-known British film and stage personalities of the period, along with some others; including Michael Wilding (Elizabeth Taylor's first husband) and Michael Rennie(The Day the Earth Stood Still) who would become well-known later on. However, "Ships with Wings" scores the most points for its' inclusion of many scenes of air operations on board the Royal Navy's famous aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, with Blackburn Skua dive bombers, Fairey Fulmar fighters and Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers. HMS Ark Royal had actually been sunk by the time this film was released in 1942, but not before the Fleet Air Arm's Swordfish torpedo bombers, the immortal "String-Bags", had crippled the Italian fleet at Taranto. Look also for historic scenes of the real "Force H" operating in the Mediterranean, showing HMS Ark Royal accompanied by the Battleship HMS Bahram and battle-cruiser HMS Renown.

Rate this one an "8"; not for it's story, acting or special effects, but for it's value as an historic curio of the times in which it was produced.