Eighteen year-old Red Hines is training to be a J-3 pilot on a grass airfield when World War II breaks out. He joins his instructor in a civilian observation mission over the shipyards of Beaumont, Texas searching for U-boats known to be plying the Gulf of Mexico. Fate intervenes when he becomes a P-51 Mustang pilot in the Army Air Corps and gets shot down over Germany. His only hope for escape is to locate his estranged paternal grandfather in Axis-held Prussia, and find their way back home to Texas together.