Dick Dastardly and Muttley, the villains from Wacky Races, are now flying aces and members of the Vulture Squadron, a crew of aviators on a mission to stop a homing pigeon named Yankee Doodle Pigeon from delivering messages to the other side.
Each story features variations on the same plot elements: the Vulture Squadron tries to trap Yankee Doodle Pigeon using one or more planes equipped with Klunk’s latest contraptions, but one or more of the Squadron messes up and the plane(s) either crash, collide or explode (or all of the above). While they are falling out of the wreckage, Dick Dastardly calls for help, which Muttley either offers or refuses depending on whether Dastardly agrees to give him a medal. Even when Muttley does agree to fly Dastardly out of trouble, Dastardly seldom has a soft landing. At some point the General calls Dastardly on the phone to demand results, and while Dastardly assures him that they will soon capture the pigeon, the General usually disbelieves him and bellows to Dastardly through the phone and extends his hand from it to either whack Dastardly on the head or grab his mustache. By the end of every story, Yankee Doodle Pigeon escapes while the Vulture Squadron are often left in backfiring predicaments. In a contemporary comic books/comic digest series of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines Dastardly and Muttley failed to stop “Yankee Doodle Pigeon” except once-when accidentally knocking out and capturing Yankee Doodle Pigeon with falling ice cubes-Dastardly and Muttley find to their surprise that the messenger pigeon message bag contains nothing but–moths!