Winning Your Wings

Winning Your Wings is a 1942 Allied propaganda film of World War II produced by Warner Bros. Studios for the US Army Air Forces, starring James Stewart. It was aimed at young men who were thinking about joining the Air Force. Members of the production crew would later form the core of the First Motion Picture Unit. The film opens with a plane landing on a tarmac and a pilot in full flight gear getting out and walking toward the camera. Once he comes near enough the audience realizes that the pilot is Stewart and he begins his narration: "I want to talk to you all today about one of my favorite subjects, the Army Air Forces." "First, are there any questions?" Then begins a series of vignettes in which young men in different social positions ask about being in the air force, such as a college student, a high school student, and a 26-year-old worker with a family. Stewart assures each that they can join the air force and still be able to keep their various educational, occupational and family commitments. Then the film takes the audience through the average mustering in process, about the medical exams, the cadet training and learning how to fly. The short recruitment film appeared in movie theaters nationwide beginning in late May, 1942, and was very successful, resulting in 150,000 new recruits. Due to racial segregation policies of the U.S. Army Air Forces, there are no African Americans depicted in the film, although, at the time of the film's creation, the first black aviators had already begun serving in the military, mainly the Tuskegee Airmen program.