I, too, first saw it in theaters as a kid. To a kid: the most exciting thing about a (duh!) musical is the action! In one scene, while the pilots are trying to get off the isolated island on which they crashed, one is nearly swallowed by a flesh-eating plant that looked more like a giant artichoke. Cool! Then their ingenuity (didn't know what the word meant when I was a kid) came up as they captured a Japanese plane that had landed there. To turn the "Zero" red ball of the Japanese flag into an Army Air Corps U.S. star, they used plant dies to paint it on the wings. Unfortunately, as they flew near a U.S. flattop, a sudden tropical rain came up and washed away the "star" pattern, leaving the original "Zero". The ship began to fire at them !!!