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The Dawn Patrol
1930 · Film · 108 min
Directed by Howard Hawks
World War I ace Dick Courtney derides the leadership of his superior officer, but he soon is promoted to squadron commander and learns harsh lessons about sending subordinates to their deaths.
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That was the theory. The fittest were selected for combat, and as they got ground into hamburger the less selective the drafting went.
For a similar example, initially WW1 pilots were selected from the nobility. Once those got massacred, the various Air Forces had to abandon that idea, and allow commoners in. The subtext of the movie "The Blue Max" was about that transition.
(The life expectancy of a British WW1 RAF pilot was 6 weeks. There's also a movie about that, "The Dawn Patrol".)
This also happened to the officers, which ended the notion of officers being restricted to nobility.