Brigadier General Billy Mitchell taxis in a Boeing Model 15 ( or a Curtis P-1Hawk) airplane, after landing at an airfield. . Battle ships underway at sea. Mitchell organizes 1st provisional Air Brigade for bombing demonstration against battleship target.. Crews and airplanes train and prepare at Langley Field, Virginia. Soldiers load bombs under plane wings. Planes take off to bomb the obsolete U.S. battleship USS Alabama. View from airplane in flight as it drops phosphorus bomb on the Alabama. View from water as bomb strikes with huge explosion. Armorers prepare heavier bombs for the next demonstration. Planes take off and bomb the USS Alabama again. General Mitchell crouched down beside a bomb loaded on an airplane for new tests in 1923. General Pershing, Admiral Shoemaker, Assistant Secretary of War, Davis, and General Patrick on deck of the Ship, USS St. Mihiel (AP-32) to observe the tests. Views of planes dropping bombs on Battleship USS Virginia and the ship rolling over and sinking. Large formations of 1920s era Air Service aircraft in flight.
Scenes captured by newsreel cameramen in Tokyo during fire after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. Population fleeing flames, attempting to save belongings. Wrecked houses along side of street. Policemen and civilians in street.
Various events captured by newsreel cameramen. City of Berkeley, California, burning, in 1923. Furniture on side of road. Some people scramble to save possessions in path of advancing fire. Others watch helplessly. Crowd mills around. View of burning buildings from roof top. Wrecked building. Burning multistory buildings in a city. One collapses. Arctic explorers' ship navigates between icebergs.
Narrator announces the "9th of November in Munich." (It is 1941, early in World War 2.) A gathering of Nazi officials in a church. They are celebrating the anniversary of the Nazi Beer Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923. Next, a large group of Nazi officials are seen conversing in a large hall. Adolf Hitler arrives to the cheers and Nazi salutes of the attendees, as he walks through their midst and spends time greeting and shaking hands with his old comrades from the 1920s. He steps to a podium. Closeup of him at the podium responding to the adulation of the assembly by rendering a bent elbow Nazi salute. The audience is applauding. According to the narrator, Hitler speaks disparagingly about U.S. President Roosevelt and Soviet leader Stalin.
"A Few Quick Facts - Japan". Animated propaganda film shows Japan facing an earthquake disaster in 1923. Animation shows an earthquake in Japan. U.S. aid to Japan shows U.S. warships carrying food, clothing and medical supplies to Japan. Japanese newspapers express gratitude. Japanese citizens waving flags of Japan and America together. Japanese leaders bow in gratitude. Quotation from a newspaper article of the time commenting on the support from America, and that if there is another war, "he who attacks America shall die." Narrator restates that same quote as animation in cartoon shows bombs raining down from the sky and exploding (reference to World War 2 bombing).
Several United States Navy sailors hold live turkey birds and pose with a group of nurses for the camera in Constantinople Turkey. Five sailors stand outside of a building with a nurse. The turkeys flap wings and struggle in their hands. Nurses, officers and sailors sit and pose in front of a building.