The president of an electronics company, Alan Nichols (Andrew Duggan), and his two vice presidents, Robert Cannon (Jack Kelly) and Fred Vitale (Ray Danton), are required at Cape Canaveral to oversee the test launching of a missile which their company developed. But before they are able to board the plane to take them there one of their suitcases is switched for one containing a bomb. Cannon opens his luggage when the men are in mid air and discovers the bomb, and his colleague Vitale manages to disarm it. The FBI is called in to determine whether this is a case of attempting to murder Cannon, whose suitcase contained the bomb, or an attempt to sabotage the airplane.
The investigation soon proves that electronics project engineer Petersen made and planted the bomb in the suitcase. Petersen's motivation for doing this is that his son was fired by CEO Nichols, and when failing to blow up the plane he instead tries to blow up Nichols yacht, with the wife and her lover on it. The task for the FBI is to stop this endeavour.[2]
The working title of the film was Headquarters F.B.I. with screenwriter and producer Stanley Niss having a novelization of the screenplay published under that title.[4] Niss, a former police reporter,[5] had written episodes for the radio shows Gangbusters and Counterspy and episodes of several Warner Bros. Television shows. Niss also visited the set to smooth difficulties between Ray Danton and director Leslie H. Martinson.[6]
^Magers, Boyd & Fitzgerald, Michael G. Western Women: Interviews with 50 Leading Ladies of Movies and Television p.18, 2004, McFarland
^McCarty, Clifford (1996). "A Max Steiner Filmography". In D'Arc, James; Gillespie, John N. (eds.). The Max Steiner Collection. Provo, Utah: Special Collections and Manuscripts, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
