Island in the Sky is a 1953 American aviation adventure drama film written by Ernest K. Gann based on his 1944 novel of the same name, directed by William A. Wellman and starring and coproduced by John Wayne.

Pilot John Dooley and the crew of a World War II-era Douglas C-47 Skytrain (the military version of the DC-3) experience icy conditions and are forced to execute an emergency landing on a frozen lake in the uncharted wildlands near the Quebec–Labrador border.

In his autobiography Fate Is the Hunter, on which the film of the same name is very loosely based, writer Ernest K. Gann related the true story and his role as one of the search pilots while serving with Air Transport Command at Presque Isle Airfield, Maine.

The lack of a romantic interest was noted by critics, who considered the film a more authentic and gritty drama as compared to the usual Hollywood war pictures.

A strong ensemble cast of mainly studio B-actors contained a number of future stars, including Fess Parker, James Arness, Darryl Hickman and Mike Connors, all of whom would realize television fame.

Along with Wayne, six actors appeared in both films: Regis Toomey, Paul Fix, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Ann Doran, George Chandler and Michael Wellman (the director's son).

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Howard Thompson wrote: Whenever the action of this erratic and unsurprising Warner presentation is permitted to speak for itself, it vibrates with pictorial and muscular conviction.

But if Mr. Gann is primarily bent, as it appears, on stressing man's perennial displacement by hostile natural elements, the camera stays three jumps ahead of him.

Indeed, the stark, gleaming vastness of the backgrounds minimizes the pretentious camouflaging of a simple, perfectly legitimate story idea, including the characters, some high-flying dialogue and whatever Mr. Gann is actually driving at.