by another German pilot. Scott becomes squadron commander and reads orders to his new replacements. Cast Richard Barthelmess as Dick Courtney Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Douglas Scott Neil Hamilton as Major Brand Frank McHugh as Flaherty Clyde Cook as Bott James Finlayson as Field Sergeant Gardner James as Ralph Hollister William Janney as Gordon Scott Edmund Breon as Lieutenant Phipps Production Casting Although Ronald Colman was originally to be cast as the lead actor in The Dawn Patrol, Barthelmess was offered by the studio. Paramount Publix Corp. also loaned Actor Neil Hamilton and writer Seton I. Miller for the film. Filming Principal photography began in February 1930, with exteriors shot at the Metropolitan Airport in Van Nuys, Newhall, and Sherwood Forrest in Southern California. In the midst of production, the studio was sued by Howard Hughes, through the Caddo Company and the Gainsborough Corporation. The suit alleged that The Dawn Patrol plagiarized his Hell's Angels (1930) production, also in production. The lawsuit resulted in The Dawn Patrol being rushed through post-production in order to be in theaters before Hughes' competing film. In late 1930, Warner Bros., owners of First National Pictures, won the suit. Another contentious issue later arose when both Howard Hawks and John Monk Saunders claimed ownership of the original idea behind the film. Hawks claimed he based the film on his own recollections while Saunders insisted that the screenplay was derived from the interviews of other veterans of World War I. In a deposition, Saunders said it was based on stories from pilots known by himself (during his time as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford) and by writer Irvin S. Cobb. Aircraft Hawks attempted to create a realistic atmosphere, and assembled a variety of contemporary aircraft in a film squadron to shoot the flying scenes for The Dawn Patrol. He primarily used rebuilt Nieuport 28s as the aircraft for the British squadron, and Travel Air 4000s (reconfigured for films and popularly known as "Wichita Fokkers") for German fighters. Neither was truly representative of the 1915 era that was portrayed. Other aircraft in his small fleet included Standard J-1s for shots of entire squadrons, some of which were blown up in explosions, and Waterman–Boeing C biplanes for German aircraft destroyed in crashes. The scene in which Scott takes off with Courtney clinging to the wing switches to a shot of a Travel Air 4U Speedwing fitted with a