Pearl harbour

The movie begins on a Tennessee farm in the late 1920s as two kids, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, play in a pretend fighter plane they made, pretending to be shooting down German planes. As they are playing, Rafe's dad is out dusting the fields in his old cropduster. When he lands and goes into his tractor, the two boys sneak into his plane and keep the pretend fight going. They accidentally start the plane and "fly" it down the runway, almost crashing it until it finally stops. Danny's father, who still suffers the effects of fighting in World War One, (William Fichtner) comes out and starts screaming at them and smacking Danny. Rafe grabs a board and whacks him to stop the beating, protecting his best friend and calling Danny's father a "dirty German". This snaps him out of his funk, and he tells Danny "I fought the Germans in France. I fought 'em in the trenches and I hope to God no one has to see the things that I saw."

Years later, Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett), both in their early twenties and First Lieutenants in the U.S. Army, are at a U.S. Army Air Corps training field commanded by Major Jimmy Doolittle (Alec Baldwin). Rafe is very cocky as he and Danny do a particularly dangerous stunt (a game of chicken) that almost kills them (and more importantly to the brass, almost damages the planes) but impresses the pilots on ground but makes the commanding officer unhappy. They are called into Doolittle's office where they are reprimanded, but Doolittle is actually quite impressed with Rafe as he reminds him of himself when he was young. Later, Doolittle tells Rafe that he has been accepted to go to Britain and join Eagle Squadron, a squadron of volunteer American pilots serving with the Royal Air Force in the fight against the Germans.