At just eighteen years of age, and still barely a man, Robin begins his training as a young recruit in the Royal Air Force, with the hope that in time, he'd be the pilot of his own fighter plane. After passing through training with flying colours, he soon finds himself at the helm of a de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito, and on perilous missions over Nazi Germany. In his brief moments of respite, he finds love in the hands of Cathy, who teaches him what it really is to be a man. But then disaster strikes during a mission over Germany, where he gets shot down and captured by the enemy. Interned as a prisoner of war in the infamous Stalag Luft 3, he eventually manages a daring escape and begins his long and precarious journey back to England, in the hope that he can once again return to the air as a fighter-pilot.