Naive Stanley Windrush looks for a career in a family business. Much to his dismay, he finds work at a munitions factory where he has to start from the bottom, while both the management and the labor union use him as a tool in their fight for power.

David Wilton, John Aynesworth, and Smith are among a group of cadets hoping to become pilots in the Royal Air Force. David, however, has poor height perception and cannot master his landings. Therefore he is sent to navigator's school, but finds it hard to concentrate on his new job due to despondency over losing his chance to be "something important," a pilot. His friends and teachers join in an effort to show David the vast importance of the navigator, something he learns for himself over the target city of Berlin.

Stanley Windrush has to interrupt his university education when he is called up towards the end of the war. He quickly proves himself not to be officer material, but befriends wily Private Percival Cox who knows exactly how all the scams work in the confused world of the British Army. And Stanley's brigadier War Office uncle seems to be up to something more than a bit shady too - and they are both soon working for him, behind the enemy lines.