Air Force is a 1943 American World War II aviation film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Garfield, John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, and Harry Carey. The film was distributed by Warner Bros. and produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner. Made in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, it was one of the first of the US patriotic films, sometimes referred to as wartime propaganda. The film's storyline revolves around an actual incident that occurred on December 7, 1941. An aircrew ferries an unarmed 1940 series Boeing B-17C Flying Fortress heavy bomber, named the Mary-Ann, across the Pacific to the United States Army Air Corps base at Hickam Field. They fly right into the middle of the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of America's major involvement in the Second World War. An uncredited William Faulkner wrote the emotional deathbed scene for Ridgely, who played the commander and pilot of the Mary-Ann. Plot On December 6, 1941, at Hamilton Field, near San Francisco, the crew of the Mary-Ann, a U.S. Army Air Corps B-17C, are ordered across the Pacific to Hawaii, one of a flight of nine Flying Fortress bombers. Master Sergeant Robbie White, the Mary-Anns crew chief, is a long-time veteran, whose son Danny is an officer and pursuit (fighter) pilot. The navigator, Lieutenant Monk Hauser Jr., is the son of a hero of the World War I Lafayette Escadrille. The pilot is Michael "Irish" Quincannon Sr., the co-pilot is Bill Williams, and the bombardier is Tom McMartin. Sergeant Joe Winocki is a disgruntled gunner who, as an aviation cadet in 1938, washed out of flight school after he caused a mid-air collision in which another cadet was killed. Quincannon was the flight instructor who requested a board of inquiry into the accident. With the United States still neutral, the Mary-Ann and the other B-17s fly, fully equipped except for ammunition, to Hickam Field. They arrive on December 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In its aftermath, the tired crew is ordered, with little rest, to fly first to Wake Island, and finally to Clark Field in the Philippines, both also still under Japanese attack. En route, the crew listens to President Franklin D. Roosevelt ask Congress for a declaration of war. They take along two passengers: fighter pilot Lieutenant Thomas "Tex" Rader and a small dog,