Ships with Wings (1941)

After an ill-disciplined mishap while serving with the Royal Navy “Lt. Stacey” (John Clements) is unceremoniously discharged and finds himself engaged as a commercial pilot in Greece. This is all happening just as the Nazis have invaded that country and with pressure mounting on the Allied fleets in the Mediterranean it falls to the sceptical “Adm. Weatherby” (Leslie Banks) to utilise his hitherto unproven Fleet Air Arm to demonstrate just how effective carrier-based air power can be in attacking and defeating heavily armed artillery positions or bombers. The enemy is no pushover, however, and has long planned this invasion - having placed some devious fifth columnists into positions that will only make the British force’s position even more difficult. With the battle lines now drawn, can this squadron of fliers thwart the plans of their ruthless enemy before they sink HMS “Ark Royal” and leave the sea routes from Gibraltar to Alexandria vulnerable? This feature was made early in the Second World War and it is a bit overdramatised at times, with some pretty thick dialogue, and a Leslie Banks whom I thought was never the most relaxed in front of the camera. That said, though, the sentiment did remind me a little bit of John Clements’s other famous role in the “Four Feathers” (1939) as it depicts a team split and then regrouped to save the day in perilous circumstances. There is a fine supporting cast, including Basil Sydney as the visionary “Capt. Fairfax”, Michael’s Wilding and Rennie as his fellow airmen but I did struggle to get my head around Edward Chapman as a Greek air traffic controller and Cecil Parker in the role of a German Air Marshal just didn’t quite work. There’s some aerial action now and again, but most of the airborne photography appears to be against a green screen, and fairly obviously too. It’s not a bad film, and at the time probably served it’s purpose, but it’s largely devoid of that stoic British sense of humour or personality that prevailed more often in Ealing productions, and is a film it’s easy to forget.