A famed war pilot (nicknamed "Tailspin Tommy") is held hostage for his bomb targeting invention.
A pilot invents a revolutionary new bomb-targeting system. However, just before he is to deliver it to the Army Air Corps, he is kidnapped by a criminal gang who want to give the system to a foreign power, and threaten to kill his girlfriend unless he gives them the plans.—[email protected]
In the fall of 1923, in Jefferson County, a group of children page through a Brandy Rand scrapbook that belongs to young Tommy Tomkins. Captain Brandy Rand, now twenty-five-years old, brought down twelve enemy planes during the World War. He is to appear in an aerial acrobatics exhibition at the upcoming county fair. When Brandy flies in for the fair and parachutes out of his plane, he lands in a lake. Tommy rescues him in a rowboat, then shows him his scrapbook. Brandy, touched that Tommy rooted for him all through the war, encourages him to become a flyer himself. Many years later, Tommy, now grown and managing an independent airport, is designing a bombing device that uses radio beams to inform the pilot when he is over a target. Tommy and his partner Skeeter then risk their lives to demonstrate their invention for an Army commander, who is very impressed when they score two direct hits. Also witness to the test is a gang of spies, which has been offered half a million dollars for the device from an enemy country. Among the spies is Brandy, who is now a drunk running contraband. Another spy, Anita, infiltrates Tommy's outfit by asking for flying lessons. Tommy then receives a fake message that he is wanted at Army headquarters and is held up on the road and abducted to the spies's hideout. There, he is interrogated, but refuses to talk. Brandy then enters, drunk, and Tommy is shocked to find the man who inspired him for fifteen years so destroyed. Skeeter and Tommy's girl friend, Betty Lou, are then taken hostage. Tommy is ordered to contact his Shrevepoint headquarters to assure the base he is well, but the Army suspects foul play. Tommy is forced to draw the bombing device while guarded, but breaks out with Skeeter and Betty Lou in a bi-plane. The Army men arrive at the hideout and arrest Anita, while the others flee and pursue Tommy in Brandy's plane. Brandy, however, is determined to help Tommy and, from his own plane, radios him to change his course. Brandy then remembers Tommy's childhood admiration of him and, laughing, crashes his plane into the ocean. After the spies are captured, a squadron of Army planes equipped with the new bombing device flies overhead in connection with a war picture being made at Shrevepoint. Tommy, Betty Lou and Skeeter all laugh at the prospect of "Tailspin Tommy" in the movies.
