Timing is everything. Release a film at the wrong time and it can tank at the box office, release it at the right time and you can have a smash hit on your hands. Which brings me to Don Winslow of the Navy (1941). I can charitably call it an okay serial, certainly not up to the standards of Universal's Flash Gordon epics or Gangbusters (1942). But it was released in late October of 1941, little over a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Such timeliness caused this serial to become a smash with audiences seeking vicarious retribution against our country's enemies.

Naval Commander Don Winslow (Don Terry) and his good friend Lieutenant "Red" Pennington (Walter Sande) are taken off their normal duties to safeguard a naval base being built on the tropical island of Tangita. It's position in the pacific is vital to the Navy's supply chain. Several ships have been sunk in the area.

Unknown to the military is that Tangita has a hidden oil reserve that master spy The Scorpion (Kurt Katch) is using to supply subs in a base he has constructed under the island. His second in command Spencer Merlin (John Litel) uses a played out gold mine as a cover for their sabotage activities.

Don and Red arrive on Tangita where they run into their some time girlfriends Navy nurses Mercedes Colby (Claire Dodd) and Misty (Ann Nagel), who have have been sent to the island for help in constucting the base hospital. The girls introduce the guys to John Blake (Ben Taggert), who is the construction company owner building the base. While in Blake's office, they discuss a ship coming in carrying construction supplies. It's whereabouts are being keep secret to avoid sabotage. Merlin hears this over the microphone he has had hidden in the office.

Aboard the ship in question is Mike Splendor (Wade Botelor) navy troubleshooter on his way to Tangita to look into the sabotage attempts, and Paul Barsac (John Holloand) a spy for The Scorpion. Barsac knocks out the ship's radio man, transmits the ships coordinates, and then destroys the radio.

Don tries to contact the ship so that he can get their coordinates and have his destroyer escort the ship in. They don't answer, and Don tries to raise his destroyer when a Scorpion agent shoots the radio from the window. Don chases him into the jungle but loses him. Retruning to the radio room, Don finds the radio a total loss.

There is only one thing to do. Don and Red jump into their motor launch and head for the destroyer. After leaving the harbor, they spot the supply ship and a human torpedo heading right for it. Red tries to shoot the torpedo with the launch's gun but can't get a bead on it. Don tells Red to jump overboard, he'll follow him. After Red dives over the side, Don sets the launch on a collision course and dives overboard himself right before the launch rams the torpedo destroying both.

Don and Red swim to the supply ship, where they are taken aboard. The radio is repaired by this time and Don radios his destroyer to escort the supply ship to Tangita. Once docked Don has all of the passengers held onboard so he can find out which one is the spy who took out the radio. Don discovers it is Barsac by going over the coded messages the passengers had received during the voyage. He lets them go and has Red follow Barsac. Barsac goes to the Tangita Hotel.

Merlin contacts The Scorpion on a two way TV transmitter. His boss is less than pleased about the turn of events, no destroyed ship and now his most hated enemy, Don Winslow is on the island. He ordes Merlin to have Winslow captured for his naval intelligence secrets.

Merlin and a confederate go the hotel and sneak into Barsac's room. Merlin knows that Barsac is suspected and was followed to the hotel thanks to that hidden microphone. He has Barsac and the henchman change clothes. The henchman leaves the hotel and walks into the jungle. Don who was waiting outside follows. Red and Mike follow him to supply back up if needed.

It turns out to be very needed. Don is lead to a shack where he is captured. But he is quickly rescued by Red and Mike. They return to the hotel where Misty tells them she just saw Barsac leave in a car heading towards the Coast Road. Don borrows Misty's car and heads after him.

Barsac meets Merlin at the top of the hill and says he thinks he was spotted leaving . Merlin says that's no problem, has the car set on fire and sent back down the hill so that it will look like Barsac died in a car wreck. They climb into Merlin's car and head for the mine. As luck would have it Don is coming up the hill at just that moment and collides with the car. Don jumps to safety before both cars go over a cliff and explode at the bottom. Thinking Barsac is dead, Don heads back to town on foot but is soon picked up by Red and Mike who got ahold of another car.

When Don arrives back at his makeshift headquarters in Blake's office, he receives orders to escort a ship in the morning that is carrying gold to Tangita. Don decides to spend the night by going through Barsac's hotel room for clues to the spy ring. Merlin overhears this and contacts The Scorpion. The Scorpion comes up with a brilliant plan to steal the gold and discredit Don in the bargain.

That night to allay any suspicions in case there are Scorpion agents around the hotel, Don and Red call on Mercedes and Misty at their hotel room as if they were going on a date, which they plan to do after Don searches Barsac's room. Don sneaks into the room and starts to search it. He hears someone unlocking the door and hides. Two men sneak in and open Barsac's luggage. Don gets the drop on them and a fight breaks out. Red, hearing the noise, joins in and the henchmen decide to chicken out and run away.

Don takes Barsac's suitcase back to the girls' room and goes through it. He finds a note detailing an attack on a ship some miles from Tangita. Don immediately orders Red to get the destroyer ready to head out to the rescue, much to the surprise of everyone, but Red does it as Don is the ranking officer. Merlin is pleased when he ses the destroyer leave on the false trail he put down and orders Barsac to take the sub to capture the gold ship.

Once out to sea and way from the island. Don orders the destroyer to head for the ship they were ordered to escort. Red and Mike are perlexed until Don explains the note he found was a plant to get him out of the way for the spies real objective, the gold shipment. Turns out Don had searched the suitcase before the henchmen sneaked into the room and there hadn't been a note.

Arriving at the ship Don goes aboard and has the destroyer hang back so they can catch the sabotors. But they are a little too smart for Don, for they had a confederate on board already who got the rest of them on the ship. Acting quickly they capture the crew and imprison them. Don overhears them plan to use the sub to attack the destroyer by using the supply ship as cover.

Don frees himself and attacks the two men on the bridge, knocking them out. Don takes control of the bridge and rams the supply ship into the sub, sinking it. But Barsac doesn't give up so easily. He attacks the destroyer using the ship's deck gun. The destroyer returns fire, demolishing most of the top deck, which collapses on top of Don.

A boarding party from the destroyer arrives and Don is dug out of the rubble unharmed. Barsac wasn't so lucky and is taken to a makeshift prison hospital Don sets up on Tangita. The Scorpion orders Barsac rescued before he can reveal the location of their hidden submarine base.

Some henchmen grab Barsac and Misty, who was attending the spy as his nurse. They take them to a shack where some spies discuss blowing up the smelter plant Blake is going to use as a power plant for the new naval base. After they leave Barsac attacks the henchmen and knocks them out. Removing his bandages, Barsac turns out to be Don in disguise. He tells Misty to warn Red and Mike about the smelter plant, then grabs a car and heads for the plant.

Don discovers the sabotors are planning to set off an explosion at the base of an old furnace chimney, causing it fall on the power plant, destroying it. Don removes the charges from the smoke stack's walls but his pocket knife can't cut through the detonator wires. Don attacks the henchmen and gets knocked out. He falls on the plunger box, setting off the explosives. The moved charges cause the chimney to fall in the opposite direction, toward the shack Don is in. The henchmen run for it.

Red, Mike, and Blake show up and search for Don. Don hears them and bangs out a S.O.S. on a fallen timber with a rock. Red hears it and bangs a morse code reply. They dig Don out of the wreckage, where it turns out he is miraculously unharmed and head back to the office. At this point a stalemate is reached. While Don was being rescued, Barsac was being rescued himself. But Don manages to trump the Scorpion's men when he discovers the mic hidden in a knothole in the floor of the office and disconnects the wires.

As I said at the beginning this is just an okay serial, it's not great but it also isn't bad. There are some good action sequences scattered throughout the twelve chapters but the excitement is dampened by a repetative script, leasurly pace and colorless villains.

Thoughout the serial the same thing keeps happening. Don is tricked, goes into the jungle or out to sea, gets caught, escapes, and then something blows up and falls on top of him, but he manages to crawl out of the wreckage just fine. The only interesting divergence from this formula is in Chapter Six when he is disguised as a native (to match stock footage) and gets attacked by a shark.

This is also the most relaxed serial I've ever seen. Despite the occasional fist fight that breaks out or the bare bones ten second long naval battles that pop up, there is no real sense of urgency in the proceedings. Good guys and bad guys just saunter along to their headquarters, blandly discuss plans, then mosey on over to where they said they were going to go and then discuss things some more until something happens. Part of the problem is an excess of characters. You have six, count 'em, six heroes and just as many major villains (have of which I didn't identify in the plot synopsis like Robbert Barron and Lane Chandler), and all of them have to have lines and some characteizations. Add to this all the minor characters that pop up for just a chapter or two and you've got one top heavy serial, as well as the start of their trend toward emphasising plot over action.

Even the final chapter is a let down. The villains are dispatched before the halfway point, conviently offscreen to boot, and the rest of the chapter is a long wait for the heroes to be recued. While this would have worked fine in a middle chapter, like they did in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940), but put at the end of the serial is like the way my wife felt about the big fight at the end of The Fantastic Four (2005), and I quote "That's it!?!"

The villains are not well served in this serial. They've cast good actors but nobody seems to want to go over the top. John Litel just doen's have any zing in his performance. When things go wrong he is mildly upset. When he is detailing what he is gong to to do the heroes he is mildly menacing. Do you notice the trend here? Kurt Katch is even worse. His entire part in the serial is to appear on a screen and issue either orders or threats. He does both in a bored monotone. Plus it becomes obvious early on that he is disinterestedly reading from his script right on camera as he is constantly looking down and off to the side instead of directly into the lens.

The good guys come off better, though Taggert and Nagel are given little to do but take up space on camera, which is a sad comedown for Nagel who seemed to be on her way up at the studio just two years earlier. Claire Dodd gets to be in on the action, such as it is, by getting caught now and then and having to be rescued.

But the real saving grace of the serial are Terry, Sande, and Botelor. They exhibit a real comradery amongst each other as they trade friendly wisecracks at each others expense as only true male friends can in the manly man world of serials where true emotions are for sissys (strangle a lion? No sweat. Shed a tear? Not even if your life depended on it.) They're so entertaining that you're almost disappointed when an action scene comes around and they have to stop cracking jokes to shoot it out with some henchmen for a few seconds, but once the trouble's dispatched they're back at it, like a serial's incarnation of the Rat Pack.