The Dawn Patrol is a 1938 American war film, a remake of the
pre-Code 1930 film of the same name. Both were based on the short story "The Flight Commander" by
John Monk Saunders, an American writer said to have been haunted by his inability to get into combat as a flyer with the
U.S. Air Service. The book of short stories,
War Patrol by A.S. Long published in the 1930s also bears a striking resemblance in plot and characters to the Flynn/Niven version of the film, although it is never credited as a source.