Spies of the Air

The second of three pilot shorts that eventually became the 1989 movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.

At the dawn of the Space Race, seven test pilots set out to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings momentous challenges.

Jim is a test pilot. His wife Ann and best friend Gunner try their best to keep him sober. But the life of a test pilot is anything but safe.

Test pilot Tuck Pendleton volunteers to test a special vessel for a miniaturization experiment. Accidentally injected into a neurotic hypochondriac, Jack Putter, Tuck must convince Jack to find his ex-girlfriend, Lydia Maxwell, to help him extract Tuck and his ship and re-enlarge them before his oxygen runs out.

The first pilot to leave Earth's atmosphere lands, then vanishes; but something with a craving for blood prowls the countryside...

In England, an eccentric police inspector, an earnest test pilot and a spunky female reporter team up to solve the mystery of a series of test aircraft which have disappeared without a trace while over the ocean on their maiden flights; unaware, as they are, that a spy ring has been shooting the planes down with a ray machine hidden aboard a salvage vessel which is on hand to haul the downed aircraft aboard, crews and all.

Joe Kovak is a test pilot for military-aircraft designer Sam Bentley, who thinks of Joe as a son. A competing plane company is seeking the same Army contract as Bentley, and offers a $500 bonus to their publicity woman Marge Stevens if she can entice Joe into quitting Bentley to join their company. When Joe takes repeated unnecessary risks in the air, Bentley fires him and Joe goes to work for the competitor. He almost loses his life when the inferior plane he is testing fails to function at a high altitude, a fault that the designer had anticipated but had let get by because of his greed in getting the contract.

In 1960, a pilot testing an experimental rocket powered aircraft accidentally flies into the future and finds himself in a sealed city whose people suspect he is a spy from outside their walls, but who want to keep him to procreate with the ruler's daughter because the majority of the inhabitants are sterile.

X-15 is a 1961 movie that tells a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket plane, the men who flew it and the women who loved them.

To avoid the life-threatening dangers of manned space exploration, Professor Nordstrom creates highly advanced form of artificial intelligence capable of piloting a starship to other worlds. In order to transmit alien data, the extraordinary robot is infused with a powerful telepathic device that enables it to instantly read and even feel emotions. Danger strikes when a sinister band of covert agents kidnaps Gadge, the professor's 10-year-old grandson. But Gadge has a powerful ally. For he has developed a psychic, emotional bond with his grandfather's robot. And now Gadge's captors must suffer the wrath of his protective friend. They must face a mechanical monstrosity bent on a killing rampage of revenge and destruction.

The efforts of test pilot John Mitchell to make a better life for his wife Mary and their two children seem doomed to failure and he blames himself. At the Conway Aero-Manufacturing Company of Wolverhampton, Mitchell is to take the company's new rocket-propulsion transport plane up for tests, fully loaded and carrying two important passengers - Ministry official Crabtree and buyer's representative Ashmore. Mitchell learns from his boss, Reg Conway, that if Ashmore does not recommend the plane, the company will be out of business and Mitchell out of a job, since the plane is not even insured as the firm's entire capital is tied up in the plane. Aloft, an engine catches fire and the passengers and other crew bail out, but Mitchell refuses to obey orders to jettison the plane in the Irish Sea.

A draftswoman, the sister of an aging, alcoholic pilot, secretly uses her brother's ideas to solve design problems for an experimental military plane in an attempt to save the company and salvage her brother's reputation.

The story concentrated on a group of test pilots, busily experimenting with a revolutionary all-plastic airplane. Ace flyboy Brad Farrell (Richard Arlen) is determined to prove the practicality of the new aircraft, designed by Professor Blake (Thomas Ross), father of Brad's sweetheart Carol (Jean Parker). Back on solid ground, Brad must vie for Carol's attentions with his own brother, engineer Doug Farrell (Don Castle).

Joe McConnell was sure that he was meant to be a pilot, but was stuck as a restless army private. It seemed that his ambition was blocked at every step.

A test pilot and his weather observer develop a "robot" control so airplanes can be flown without pilots, but enemy agents get wind of it and try to steal it or destroy it.