voiceover narrator (uncredited) Production The script was based on a true story about a flight on February 3, 1943, although its copilot was not killed as in the film. In his autobiography Fate Is the Hunter, on which the film of the same name is very loosely based, writer Ernest K. Gann related the true story and his role as one of the search pilots while serving with Air Transport Command at Presque Isle Airfield, Maine. Gann had been scheduled to fly the mission that ran into trouble, but was bumped from the flight by a more senior pilot. The rights to the story were originally bought in January 1950 by Robert Stillman Productions, and Gann planned to write the screenplay with Seton I. Miller. Frank Rosenberg was scheduled to produce the film, which would star Richard Widmark. When Stillman dropped the film, the rights were picked up in December 1952 by Wayne-Fellows Productions, the partnership of John Wayne and Robert Fellows, as their third of seven eventual productions, including the following year's Gann story The High and the Mighty, also starring Wayne. The two films shared many of the same production staff and crew members, including director William Wellman. Wellman had been a pilot with the Lafayette Flying Corps during World War I, where he earned the nickname Wild Bill, and with the United States Army Air Service after the war. He was a veteran aviation film director whose Wings won the first Academy Award (1927–1928). Wellman provides the voiceover narration that begins the film, and his two sons Tim and Mike, who were eleven and five at the time, play Andy Devine's sons. The women in the film, Ann Doran, Dawn Bender and Phyllis Winger, appear only in brief flashbacks and in a telephone conversation. The lack of a romantic interest was noted by critics, who considered the film a more authentic and gritty drama as compared to the usual Hollywood war pictures. Wellman had an adversarial relationship with actors and was known to prefer to work with men; many of his films are set in predominantly male worlds. The role played by Wayne in Island in the Sky goes against type, as he does not display the machismo for which he was often criticized. His portrayal of the downed aircraft's captain had been noted as believable and realistic. A strong ensemble cast of mainly studio B-actors contained