Only Old Men Are Going to Battle

Captain Aleksei "Maestro" Titarenko (Leonid Bykov) leads a Soviet fighter squadron called the "Singing Group," a talented flyer who must now break in a batch of green young cadets before they meet the Luftwaffe. Bykov, who also directs, gives the unit its songs and its jokes in black and white. Pilots from different corners of the country, Maestro and Viktor "Smuglyanka" Shchedronov (Serhiy Pidhornyi) among them, have become brothers to each other.