The 1930 version is better. Interestingly, it was actually started several years earlier, after "Wings", and a lot of the flying sequences were done earlier. There's a moment in the movie where you see a silver airplane and if you're an airplane nerd for WW1, you know it's a Hanriot, and what only a few people know is that the guy flying it is the great French WW1 ace, Charles Nungesser. He had come to Hollywood to make his fortune but hadn't, and considered himself lucky to get hired to do this flying which gave him enough money to take the train to New York and a ship to LeHavre and he never came back.