World War II is raging when virtually an entire squadron of new fighter planes depart Tarawa for a seven hundred mile flight south. It's supposed to be a routine trip, but only Lt. Jack Page, a member of the Marine Corps Reserves, makes it to his destination. Twenty-two other pilots are missing, and it's up to Major Rum Collins to find out what went wrong.
With so many messages rocketing across the Pacific, it is hard to track down any of the pilots. Collins wonders where they are, why no emergency radio signals were detected and if it's possible that the Japanese somehow took the pilots as prisoners.
While Collins and his close circle of fellow Marines know that they are investigating one of the worst disasters in aviation history, they keep the story under wraps. The investigation is labeled top secret, and everyone waits for the truth to be discovered in "Sea Eagle Down."