A young western North Carolina hillbilly preacher follows a heart-felt conviction that he must become a fighter pilot in World War I. To fight and kill is against his every, deeply held belief, but no amount of prayerful questioning produces any other answer.
He goes through Army Air Service training and on to France, convinced his God has a reason. He finds that reason in the war-torn skies over France. His best friend is a millionaire politician from Boston. This is a man who has convinced himself into flight training and the cockpit of a French made pursuit aircraft over the Western Front, in a ruthless drive for his own secret ambition - to use a highly publicized war record in a successful run to be President of the United States.
Their adversary is a German ace, a seasoned veteran of the war on the ground and in the air.
This is a man who, though deeply patriotic is, by the climactic year of 1918, thoroughly disillusioned and driven only by a bitter hatred of his enemies because of the death of a Belgian girl he loved. She had died in his arms after a British bombing of his airfield
The story follows through training and fighting in the air in the rickety, underpowered aircraft of World War I. Great attention is given to the aircraft handling, gunnery and maneuvers in the dogfights that made the life expectancy of a fighter pilot over the Western Front less than a month. The overall story of the war, aircraft, engines, guns and equipment is historically accurate.
The flight characteristics of the aircraft is detailed by the author who trained in and flew aircraft "not much changed" from those depicted.