This is a character change because Louie starts getting depressed over the deaths of his friends and scared of what might happen to him
This is a Whoa That's Important! because though Louie and Phil know that many people have died and met with accidents, they still decide to accept this challenge of flying into a storm.
This is a Whoa that's Important! because there were no funerals so the funerals they held were drinking the alcohol from the dead or lost ones foot locker.
There was an immense amount of people who died in a plane crash during World War II and the chances of crashing in the 40 missions of a pilot was around 50%
When a soldier would get stranded in the ocean, thy would get a life raft and life vest but due to the limited food, many did not survive. When search planes arrived, it was very hard to find the people in very less time resulting in little or almost no chance of being found.
Almost all of the soldiers were worried more about being imprisoned by the Japanese at their POW camps where thousands of prisoners were killed a day rather than worrying about dying in their plane.