Willi Wissemann, an impetuous Bavarian officer, joins the German Air Service in early 1916 to escape the drudgery and hardships of trench warfare. He is sent to the Front after a brief stint in flying school and begins his career as a recon-bomber pilot, excelling at the seemingly menial tasks of aerial bombardment and photographic reconnaissance.

But Wissemann soon realizes that flying single-seat fighting scouts is his true destiny. When the German High Command reorganizes the Air Service into specialized "hunting-squadrons" in the late summer of 1916 and re-equips them with their latest scout, the Albatros D.II -the air war takes on a fiercer and more deadly course. Finally, after many months of pestering the Army High Command, Willi Wissemann gets his chance to take command of a Jasta - a fighter squadron.

Once he arrives at the airfield in the Champagne sector, Wissemann realizes he has his work cut out for him. He must reorganize an insubordinate bunch of misfits, misanthropes, castoffs and drunks, into a real fighting-squadron flying the latest fighter, the Albatros DIII. Then, during the height of the French spring offensive of 1917, Wissemann is asked to fly a special mission to Paris, transporting a Secret Service agent. What happens next will have a profound effect on his life, his career, and his outlook on the war, changing him forever, scarring his soul for eternity.