Brett

So not a very long distance at all, particularly in aircraft.

There's a reason that even with the bombing training, which took about 30 minutes, this is only a two hour and 40 minute exercise.

So this was led by Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, commonly referred to as CC.

He was leading the flight training.

He was 28 years old, but he was an extremely experienced naval aviator.

He had over 2,500 flight hours.

most of which took place during multiple combat tours in the Pacific Theater of World War II, flying these same bombers attacking Japanese ships.

Each of the five planes held three Navy men or Marines, except for one plane, which only had two, because one of them simply didn't feel like flying that day and just took the day off and would survive because of it.

It's funny.

There's always one, right?

Like, it seems like whenever we do these, there's always like- A DLF pass.

A DLF pass, exactly.

The one guy who couldn't go.

And what's interesting about it is there are multiple people who were supposed to be on this flight and decided not to go.

So there are multiple people who could have replaced this guy.

And they're like, eh.

And there was one guy who ended up on this flight because he just loved flying so much that he would just fly on every flight that went out.

He would jump on a plane and go.

So, yeah, not a really rigid thing.

And like you said, not serious.