Eyes of the Navy (1940)

With the war already firmly established in Europe (to which this film doesn’t really refer), this is one of the earliest examples I’ve seen of the American nation starting to realise that it, too, might be facing a threat and so it had better start preparing. The purpose of this rather dry feature is to attract flyers. A young farmer is watching the planes overhead with his dad (Charles Middleton at his less merciless!) when he decides that he has the wits to pass the exams and take to the skies. The training regime is set out before us - a combination of theory, exams, air hours and pretty claustrophobic looking simulators. Once they secure their wings, they must learn more on the job with air-to-air combat practice and most important, that of landing on a tossing and turning aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. The narration is a bit flatly descriptive and there is something of the factory production line to the presentation. I always thought these worked better if we had a character to focus on - an actor or a real kid, and we have neither here. Still, it was bound to strike a chord with many a young American man with little to hope for on the ground, and is perfectly watchable as a recruitment film. Did Walt Disney direct it? The version I saw looked like it had had it’s “directed by” slide at the start removed!