Jim Orloff is 100 years old, a retired World War II U.S. Navy commander and fighter pilot, and on Veterans Day he did something most people a third his age wouldn't attempt: he took the controls of an airplane mid-flight over Palm Beach County.
Orloff took off from North Palm Beach County Airport alongside his daughter, according to WPTV. Once airborne, he took control of the plane himself, a moment that echoed decades back to his days flying for the Navy.
Flying Over Thousands of Miles of Water, Decades Apart
The flight stirred up old memories for the centenarian veteran, who flew as a fighter pilot during World War II. “I've flown over thousands and thousands of miles of water. All I ever saw was water, clouds and rain, thunder and lightning,” Orloff recalled, per the station's report.
This time, the skies were calmer, and the mission was simply to let a 100-year-old aviator feel the stick in his hands once more. The flight was organized by retired U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Phil Perry and Aamro Aviation, the same report notes.
A County With Deep Military Flight Roots
Orloff's Veterans Day flight landed in a county with a long history of training military aviators. During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps, forerunner of today's Air Force, established Air Transport Command at Morrison Field in 1940, according to education.pbchistory.org. More than 45,000 pilots either trained or flew out of West Palm Beach during the war, the historical account states.
Morrison Field was deactivated in June 1947 and returned to Palm Beach County, only to be called back into service a few years later. From 1951 to 1953, the airport served as Morrison Air Force Base, where 23,000 airmen trained during the Korean War, per the same historical record.
For Orloff, who once logged his own miles over open ocean during World War II, the Veterans Day flight offered a full-circle moment: a century of life, a lifetime of service, and one more turn at the controls above the county where so many pilots before him once learned to fly.
