| Synopsis | - One morning in late 1941, Guam is attacked by “oriental” dive bombers, and Pearl Harbor is attacked with cannon fire by “enemy” warships. Another “hostile” fleet moves from a Mediterranean port toward North Africa.
Congress directs the Navy to send the entire Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific. Uncle Sam scolds Congress about this idiocy, then he and Buddy Smith travel from Washington DC to Portland Maine in an open outboard motorboat. The town is very quiet until a mob of wharfside thugs attacks them. Uncle Sam punches out a few of them but the rest manage to throw a big fishing net over Sam and Buddy, who are then stashed in the hold of a suspiciously-large, steel-hulled trawler, which then puts to sea. They escape from the net, and are unguarded. Uncle Sam detects a radio transmission coming from the trawler, which confirms his suspicion that these “fishermen” are spies. Then he punches a hole in the hull, and departs, with Buddy riding his shoulders, by sprinting across the surface of the ocean. The bad guys fire a torpedo at them; Uncle Sam surfs to shore on that torpedo, then flips it around and sends it back to the trawler, where it explodes. Then Unc and Buddy go looking for a telephone.
An enemy fleet, with air cover, is moving toward the New England coast, and aboard it, the German-looking officers are laughing it up about how clever their ally is, to have pulled away all the defenses from America’s eastern coast. Uncle Sam and Buddy are on the scene at an Army sound detector station on the Maine coast, when it detects the “alien” attackers, Sam telephones the Secretary of War, who tells him that less than a dozen bombers are available. These, plus some cargo planes, plus some minelayers and destroyers, plus Uncle Sam, all advance and engage the enemy.
A large number of enemy bombers attack Portland. Young Buddy has an idea, and he persuades the members of a private flying club, and the president of a large piano company, to go along with it. A piano-wire cable, towing other cables, could be carried below a pair of ordinary airplanes, to tangle the invaders’ propellors. Five enemy bombers are taken out by this tactic. Buddy directs the counterattack from the cockpit of one of these planes.
Enemy battleships begin shelling Portland. Out in Portland Bay, Uncle Sam encounters the forty-foot-tall ghost of John Paul Jones. Two historic frigates are anchored there, the USS Constitution and USS Constellation. Jones gives Sam an idea, then disappears. Uncle Sam recruits most or all of the town’s fishermen and mariners to load the old warships with drums of oil, then that night to silently sail all the way around the enemy fleet, leaving a trail of oil, then ignite it.
A large number of transport planes attack Boston, dropping German-looking paratroopers. Buddy’s two planes with their tangling cables attack the planes, and destroy all of them. They fly back to Portland, off the coast of which they see nine large warships, “completely helpless” because of the surrounding ring of burning oil. One catches fire, causing its ammunition supply to explode; it sinks. The American bombers come back and bomb the warships some more, until they sail into the harbor and surrender. The townspeople cheer for Uncle Sam who in turn cheers for John Paul Jones.
- Off the coast of India, a British submarine, the HMS Marsden, is torpedoed and destroyed by a Nazi submarine, the U-18. Shortly later a British scout plane arrives and spots the U-boat, running on the surface, but it immediately begins to dive. The scout plane is piloted by Lieutenant Rex King, who is accompanied by his friend Merlin the Magician. The pilot flies in closer, to make positive identification before attacking, and sees swastikas painted on the hydrovanes, even as the enemy craft is diving and about to get away. Lt. King drops a bomb, a near miss, the U-boat gets down deeper and then fires a “dummy torpedo.” This device breaks apart and puts a fake oil slick on the surface, with navy caps and uniform pieces floating around in it.
It’s a frame-up. When a patrol boat brings back the salvaged uniform pieces, they turn out to be Royal Navy gear, and the Marsden is very overdue on reporting in. The patrol boat also leaves a buoy at the site. The senior officer concludes that Lt. King has bombed the Marsden and has him arrested, pending a court-martial.
Days later, the admiralty convenes a hearing. Merlin the Magician is present to vouch for Rex, he saw the same things Rex saw, but he also can’t account for the British uniform pieces, but promises to figure it out.
The next day, a patrol boat brings Merlin to the site of the Marsden’s sinking, in his tuxedo and cape, and he jumps into the ocean, using backwards-talking magic to give himself the ability to breathe. Merlin surveys the sunken wreckage, and in his opinion the damage is too big for Lt. King’s bomb to have done, plus he finds the steering mechanism from a Nazi torpedo. He returns with this evidence, but still can’t account for the floating uniform pieces. So he flies off in search of the Nazi sub, and soon finds it. Merlin dives in again, using magic to turn himself into a huge green whale, then chases and swallows the U-boat, swims to the shore outside the Admiralty’s office, and spits the sub out onto the beach. The enemy crew is captured alive.
Soon Lt. King is exonerated, and the Nazi ruse is explained.
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