Suicide Fleet

Who's that girl waving a semaphore message of "I Love You" to a destroyer as it departs New York for World War I? It's Sally, the Coney Island saltwater-taffy girl. Each of the sailors - especially pals and romantic rivals Baltimore Clark, Dutch Herman and Skeets O'Reilly - hopes the message is for him. But rivalries end where warfare begins. The pals are soon assigned to the crew of a merchant ship posing as a German communications boat. The mission: rendezvous with U-boat captains and learn their plan of attack. Bill Boyd, Robert Armstrong and James Gleason play the three friends. And who's that girl? It's captivating 20-year-old Ginger Rogers, two years before she and Fred Astaire would go Flying down to Rio.

Coney island vendors Baltimore Clark (Bill Boyd), Dutch Herman (Robert Armstrong) and Skeets O'Reilly (James Gleason) spend their off-hours (and some of their on-hours) carrying on a friendly rivalry for the affections of the pert Sally (Ginger Rogers). But when America enters WW1, our three heroes leave Sally behind and join the Navy. Before long, Baltimore, Dutch and Skeets find themselves smack in the middle of an ongoing conflict between the German U-boat fleet and a shadowy "mystery" ship. Naturally, the boys are crewmen on the aforementioned mystery vessel, which is used as a decoy to bring the enemy out into the open. Despite this tense situation, the film spends a goodly amount of time showing the three protagonists cheerfully cheating on Sally with fetching foreign damsels in other ports of call.