High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Air Force is a 1943 war film directed by Howard Hawks. It starred John Garfield, John Ridgely, Harry Carey, and Gig Young as crew members on a B-17 Flying Fortress named the Mary-Ann. An uncredited William Faulkner wrote the emotional deathbed scene for the pilot of the bomber. Made in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, it was one of the first of the patriotic films of World War II, also characterized as a propaganda film.