In 1938, in Los Angeles, the pilot Cliff Secord crashes his plane after being hit in the air in a shoot-out between gangsters and FBI agents in a car chase; completely broken, his best friend and mechanics A. ‘Peevy’ Peabody tries to fix an old plane to raise some money in an exhibition show. However, Cliff finds a package hidden by one of the gangsters with a rocket with belts and they find that the device allows man to fly. Meanwhile, his beloved girlfriend and aspirant actress Jenny Blake succeeds in an audition to make a small part in a movie of the great actor Neville Sinclair that is ranked the third in box-offices. During a flight exhibition, the mechanic Malcolm (Eddie Jones) has an accident, and Cliff uses the rocket to save him, being called Rocketeer by the public. With his picture in the front page of the newspaper, Cliff is chased by the FBI, the gangsters and German spies that abduct Jenny and forces Cliff to rescue her.