Slip and Sach mistakenly enlist in the Air Force where Sach is mistakenly assigned to the WACs.
Slip and Sach go to the local Air Force base to find out why their friend, Air Force enlisted man Dave Mareno, is in the stockade and charged with treason. Mistaking a recruiting office for a visitors office, they inadvertently enlist in the Air Force. Not only is their friend not a traitor, he is being used as bait to expose a spy ring. In helping their friend, the boys wind up almost gumming up the works.—[email protected]
During a storm in New York City, Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones pretends he is an aviator while aboard a mounted children's airplane ride in his friend Louie's sweets shop. When Sach's best friend, Slip Mahoney, makes fun of him, Sach proudly displays his paperwork for a flying school correspondence course. As they talk, former neighbor Dave Moreno, now a captain with the U.S. Air Force, arrives for a visit. Dave reveals that he works as a researcher on a secret rocket project.
The next day, Sach, Slip and their friends Chuck and Butch (best known as The Bowery Boys) read that Dave has been arrested as a spy by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for selling military secrets. Believing absolutely in Dave's innocence, Sach and Slip try to visit him at the Allen Air Force base and unwittingly complete recruitment papers. Despite numerous lengthy tests (which they fail spectacularly), Sach and Slip do not comprehend their error until they are inducted into the Air Force. The commanding officer, Col. Davenport, assigns them to ground crew school.
When Sach is mistakenly assigned to sleep in the barracks of the Women's Air Force (filled with man-hungry WACs), female Sgt. Anderson attempts to have him reassigned. Sach must stay, however, as the officer who signed his orders is unavailable. Sach is given sleeping quarters in the laundry room, which he disrupts due to his clumsiness and must then spend the night re-washing the laundry.
Slip, meanwhile, runs afoul of his barracks sergeant, Brodsky, who is accidentally knocked out by a fire extinguisher because of Slip's antics.
The next day, Slip and Sach attempt to visit Dave but are refused entry because they do not have a pass. They go to the Post Exchange store and are surprised to see Louie, Chuck and Butch, who have come to visit. When waitress Dorene Thompson overhears their conversation about Dave, she privately convinces Sach to bring her news of him as he is her friend.
That night, Slip causes pandemonium in the women's barracks when caught sneaking in to find Sach. When Sach douses the lights, the two slip away and climb a ladder up to Dave's quarters to free their friend; however, Dave refuses to attempt an escape, and Sach and Slip are arrested by military police.
Unknown to them, Dave is released and secretly meets with Davenport and FBI agents, with whom he is working undercover to expose a spy network. Dave agrees to continue to work to foil the spies, and Davenport agrees to release the unsuspecting Slip and Sach as well.
Dorene, who works with the spies, learns that Dave is out of prison and orders her cohorts to contact him at a public air show at the base. That day, Sach and Slip mistake two men tailing Dave for thugs. They assault the men and lock them away in the supply barracks, unaware that they are actually FBI agents following Dave for his own safety. The boys then follow Dave themselves, and when he is kidnapped by Dorene and her cohorts, they send Butch, Chuck and Louie to get help.
Sach, who received his airman's certificate while in jail, convinces Slip to join him aboard a plane in order to follow the spies. Both are unaware that the plane is radio-controlled for a feature in an air show attack simulation. After the plane takes off, it is shot at by Air Force fighter planes as part of a demonstration. A terrified Sach consults his flight manual, but each chapter is titled "How to Face Death in the Air." He finally locates operating instructions and gains control of the plane, much to the surprise of the radio operator on the ground.
Sach manages to land safely in a field, which, by extraordinary coincidence, is near the very farmhouse where Dave is being tortured to reveal military secrets. Sach and Slip burst in and assault the spies, whom they subdue after a lengthy fight. When Dorene attempts to hold them at gunpoint, Sach pulls a rug out from underneath her and she, too, is taken hostage. Davenport, alerted by Chuck and Butch, arrives shortly afterward to find that Slip has injected the spies with truth serum that the spies intended for Dave. The spies are arrested following their confessions, and Davenport congratulates Sach on his excellent flying skills. Sach, accidentally sitting on the truth serum syringe, admits his flying skills were nothing but dumb luck and that Slip is nothing but an egotistical, ignorant maniac.
