Wing and a Prayer

An aircraft carrier is sent on a decoy mission in the Pacific. Its orders are plain: it will not engage and will not show itself. The aim is to lull the Japanese side and mislead it before the battle of Midway. The crew carries the weight of not being allowed to fight, and the order makes for unease on board. The film tells a situation in which courage is tested by not fighting rather than by fighting. Shot in 1944 while the war was going on, its date sets the tone. The hardest part of the mission is that the ship must not give itself away, and the crew lives that again at every encounter. The daily work on the flight deck takes up a good part of the account. Don Ameche, Dana Andrews and Charles Bickford appear in Henry Hathaway’s ninety seven minute American film, completed in 1944.