Ace in the Hole 1942

At a U.S. Army Air Corps base, Mel Blanc voices Woody Woodpecker as he dreams of lifting one of the aircraft into the sky. His boundless enthusiasm for flight lands him in hot water with a strict sergeant who is tired of his antics and imitation of a pilot. The sergeant finally ejects Woody from the barracks and into the pilots’ quarters, setting up the comic misadventures that follow.

In the quarters, Woody discovers a clothes tree and a flying suit, and he eagerly digs into a textbook titled How to Fly a Plane From the Ground Up. As he fumbles with the zipper, a chain of clumsy mishaps unfolds: he knocks over a box of flares, one flare lands right in the collar of the flying suit, and the whole scene spirals into chaos. While trying to zip the suit, Woody accidentally pulls the pin from a flare, blasting himself into the air. The suit swells, bursts, and he floats down by parachute into the cockpit of the aircraft (the PU-2). The sergeant orders him out, but Woody blindly pulls a lever, and the plane rockets off so fast that it leaves behind all paint and insignia, a comic stripping away of every mark of normality.

The sergeant, not to be outdone in perseverance, lassos the aircraft, and the jolt yanks him out of his uniform. He climbs up to the cockpit through a bottom hatch, and as Woody opens it, bombs rain down, landing in the sergeant’s union suit underwear in a ridiculous, cartoonish mishap. The result is disaster for the sergeant, who ends up bandaged in a wheelchair with a shotgun resting on his knee, while Woody remains unharmed and somehow ends the escapade by clipping every horse in the Army, leaving the scene with a final, lighthearted punchline.