The film, a romantic action-war picture, was rewritten by scriptwriters Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton from a story by John Monk Saunders to accommodate Bow, Paramount's biggest star at the time.

Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3,500 infantrymen on a battlefield made for the production on location.

Although the cast and crew had much spare time during the filming because of weather delays, shooting conditions were intense, and Wellman frequently conflicted with the military officers brought in to supervise the picture.

[8]Jack Powell and David Armstrong are rivals in the same small American town, both vying for the attentions of pretty Sylvia Lewis.

By a tragic stroke of bad luck, Jack spots the enemy aircraft and, bent on avenging his friend, begins an attack.

It was rewritten to accommodate Clara Bow, as she was Paramount's biggest star, but she wasn't happy about her part: "Wings is...a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie".

[14] Wellman was able to attract War Department support and involvement in the project, and displayed considerable prowess and confidence in dealing with planes and pilots onscreen, knowing "exactly what he wanted", bringing with it a "no-nonsense attitude" according to military film historian Lawrence H.

[12] Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB-3s standing in for American-flown SPADs and Curtiss P-1 Hawks painted in German livery.

Developing the techniques needed for filming closeups of the pilots in the air and capturing the speed and motion of the planes onscreen took time, and little usable footage was produced in the first two months.

The Air Corps sent six planes and pilots from the 1st Pursuit Group stationed at Selfridge Field near Detroit, including then-2nd Lt. Elmer J. Rogers Jr. and 2d Lt. Clarence S. "Bill" Irvine who became Wellman's adviser.

Irvine was responsible for engineering an airborne camera system to provide close-ups and for the planning of the dogfights, and when one of the pilots broke his neck, performed in one of the battle scenes himself.

[17] Because the aerial battles required ideal weather to shoot, the production team had to wait on one occasion for 18 consecutive days for proper conditions in San Antonio.

[19] Wellman frequently conflicted with the military officers brought in to supervise the picture, especially the infantry commander whom he considered to have "two monumental hatreds: fliers and movie people".

"[16] Although Wellman paid much attention to technical details in shooting, he used cars and clothing of the year during the filming, forgetting to use those of World War I.

Although Wellman was generating spectacular aerial footage and making Hollywood film history, Paramount expressed concerns with the cost of production and expanding budget.

[13] The cast and crew had a lot of time on their hands between shooting sequences, and according to director Wellman, "San Antonio became the Armageddon of a magnificent sexual Donnybrook".

[12] He stated that Clara Bow openly flirted with the male cast members and several of the pilots which was reciprocated, despite having become engaged to Victor Fleming the day after arriving in San Antonio on September 16, 1926.

[25] In the scene in which Rogers becomes drunk, the intoxication displayed on screen was genuine, as although 22 years of age, he had never tasted liquor before, and quickly became inebriated from drinking champagne.

[27][28] While there is no general consensus about which film achieves this LGBT milestone, D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916), Cecil B. DeMille's Manslaughter (1922), and Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) have also been suggested.

[20] The critical response was equally enthusiastic and the film was widely praised for its realism and technical prowess, despite a superficial plot, "an aviation picnic" as Gene Brown called it.

[35] One critic observed: "The exceptional quality of Wings lies in its appeal as a spectacle and as a picture of at least some of the actualities of flying under wartime conditions.

[35] Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times praised the cinematography of the flying scenes and the direction and acting of the entire cast in his review dated August 13, 1927.

The website's critics consensus reads, "Subsequent war epics may have borrowed heavily from the original Best Picture winner, but they've all lacked Clara Bow's luminous screen presence and William Wellman's deft direction.

They recreated stock film, reprinted the picture and had a retrospective inviting the director and stars Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers.

The brochure was available for a small period of years but is reprinted in a book narrated by Richard Arlen, published by Judy Watson, titled Wings and other Recollections of Early Hollywood ISBN 1507552386 and LCCN 2015-900786.

[42] In retrospect, film scholar Scott Eyman in his 1997 book The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930 highlights both the diverse structure and adapted aspects of Wings in that transitional period in American cinematography: Ironically, a mass-market silent spectacular like William Wellman's Wings effortlessly showcases far more visual variety than mainstream American films have offered since: it displays shifts from brutal realism to nonrealistic techniques associated with Soviet avant-garde or impressionistic French cinema – double exposures, subjective point-of-view shots, trick effects, symbolic illustrations on the titles, and so on.

[43]In 1997, Wings was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[47] The film was the focus of an episode of the television series Petticoat Junction that originally aired November 9, 1968, the show's sixth season.

They appear on stage beneath stills taken from the film and later in the ceremony, star in a musical with Ball and Burnett, as two World War I pilots.

[51] The first restored version was released on Laserdisc in the US in 1985, was one of the earliest discs with digital sound, and featured an organ score by Gaylord Carter.