In 1943, Capt. Harold "Cal" Calvert (Wendell Corey) is sent on a course at Smoky Hill, Kansas, to learn to fly a new bomber, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. His instructor is his cousin, Major Tom West (Forrest Tucker), an officer who the other pilots think has shirked his duties by claiming engine trouble on the Operation Tidal Wave over the Ploiești oil fields. Cal stands up for Tom when a crewman taunts his cousin in front of Helen (Vera Ralston), a nurse that Tom has been seeing.