>> Funding for this program provided by... ♪ ♪ Additional support provided by... ♪ ♪ Support for this program was also made possible by... ♪ [ Ship horn blows ] [ Cheering ] >> After almost four years swept up in World War Two, America's youth was finally home from Europe and the Pacific in the mid 1940s.

[ Car horns honking ] Millions would finish up their education either in high school or college.

The G.I.

Bill would educate a new generation for free at universities across the United States.

[ Steam whistle blowing ] Millions more would return to jobs in factories or on the farm.

Returning veterans also eyed professions such as lawyer or doctor.

Some relished working quietly as plumbers or driving their own cab.

Those who returned from World War Two brought home with them new skills and a determination that would change their lives and America.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Jack Taylor was one of 16 million Americans who joined the service to fight for his country.

Jack and his family -- Father Mel, a Marine Corps veteran of World War One, Mom Dorothy, and brother Paul -- had endured the Great Depression in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1920s and '30s.

♪ During this trying time in history for the United States, Mel Taylor was a stockbroker -- of all careers.

The Great Depression hardened kids like Jack Taylor for what was to come later in the 1940s in far off places most Americans never knew existed.

>> Money was tight, and we were careful about money.

>> At an early age, Jack Taylor loved anything mechanical, especially if it had four wheels.

>> I just liked automobiles.

My father used to take me to the automobile show when they had -- back in the '30s, and I just have always liked cars.

I don't know what it was.

>> In his teenage years, it was athletics for Jack -- football and other physical sports where being strong in body and mind proved to be an advantage.

>> He was a wrestler, and he thought he was pretty good, and he was, you know, trim.

He was, you know, well-built.

High school and college and all that, that really -- the academic part of that really didn't interest him very much.

No, right from the beginning, Jack Taylor didn't like school much.

Jack always seemed to be focused on other things -- a bit of a dreamer.

Jack Taylor had bigger plans outside of the classroom.

♪ At the time, however, he didn't realize those plans involved being in the thick of the fight in World War Two.

Taylor, like other veterans, never spoke about his wartime experiences until his son Andy made a chance find in the family home.

>> I first discovered, if you will, what Jack had done in World War Two.

It was -- I was up in the attic, and I was like 10 years old, and I found his Navy dress blue.

I found his cloth helmet with the oxygen mask on it.

And I said, "Wow, what -- what is this?"

I think in the beginning, I had to ask him, and -- and I started reading more about it, and -- and I was putting two and two together.

I said, you know, "Where did you go?

What did you do?"

♪ >> Before Jack Taylor's World War Two story ever began to reveal itself to Andy in the Taylors' attic, there were his pre-war days back in St. Louis following high school.

First, Jack enrolled at Westminster College, then transferred to nearby Washington University.

However, classroom academics wasn't for Jack Taylor.

>> I always struggled with school.

I didn't like school.

It was a burden for me.

I hated Monday mornings and Sunday evenings because I knew -- Sunday evenings I knew I didn't do my homework the way I should and Monday morning I knew they were going to call on me and I wouldn't have it.

And I just -- School was a problem for me.

>> He was losing interest in school, to put it politely.

♪ >> Jack Taylor said goodbye to Washington University in the spring of 1941.

There was already a war raging in Europe and Japanese threats in the Pacific.

Everything changed when Japan attacked the United States' Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Roughly two months after that, Jack Taylor officially joined up.

Jack, that lover of anything mechanical, thought he would like to fly an airplane.

>> So, instead of being drafted, shortly after Pearl Harbor, I went and enlisted.

I tried to enlist in the Army Air Force, but they turned me down 'cause I had hay fever, which I thought was a little strange.

Friend of mine suggested that I try the Navy.

So I went down, applied to the Navy, and took my examination, and I guess a mental test or whatever.

And they said, "We'll take you."

So they swore me in that day, which was in March of 1942.

Subconsciously, I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

I think everybody wants to be a fighter pilot.

It's looked upon as the more glamorous side of the flying business.

But they said they'd call me when they needed me.

>> While Jack waited for the call from the Navy, he went to work at home.

>> And during that year, I worked for my -- actually my grandfather, and he got me a job in the machine shop, and that's what happened.

♪ >> Jack had been dating a pretty girl named Mary Ann MacCarthy at the time, but soon war would take precedence over romance.

In 1942, Jack's flight training began in his hometown of St. Louis.

>> And they called me almost exactly a year later.

I was called into the service in December a year after Pearl Harbor.

>> A fighter pilot had to be mentally strong.

They had a number of tests to pass before they even got in flight training.

And once even in flight training, they weren't guaranteed to be pilots.

They had to pass those kind of conditions and rigors.

>> They gave me a training program where we went to some kind of a hall here in St. Louis, about 35 or 40 of us, and live there and took ground courses there and then climb in a bus.

And they took us out to Kratz Field, and we flew Piper Cubs.

♪ You flew around in a Piper Cub for a few hours.

They said, "Go get it."

And you went out, hopped in, and soloed after six or seven hours of flying like that.

>> 69 flight hours were expected for the basic training and then another 28 for intermediate training.

>> Jack Taylor found out he absolutely loved flying airplanes.

He knew he would.

A desk in a classroom didn't have an engine.

♪ Jack learned the best by doing.

♪ He excelled at math, science and other academic disciplines when he put them to use in flight training.

>> Then after I completed that training, I went to... Corpus Christi and finally got my wings at Corpus Christi in December of '43.

Then came home on leave.

And then I was assigned to what was called Operational Training, where they -- at Vero Beach and they trained you in an operational-type plane -- the kind of plane you were going to fly.

>> Meet the Hellcat -- the F6F single engine semi low wing combat airplane equipped for use on Navy aircraft carriers or as a land-based fighter.

Use of the safety shoulder straps is mandatory in this airplane at all times.

The outer wing panels are swung forward to join the wing stubs.

>> Jack Taylor would eventually be given control of an airplane that proved to be one of America's top fighters in World War Two -- the Grumman F6F Hellcat.

♪ >> Well, the Hellcat was just a real effective aircraft because it was produced, one, in such great numbers and it was flown by highly experienced pilots.

But what made it really effective was it could pretty much counter most anything the Japanese Zero could do.

It had tremendous speed.

It had tremendous ability to climb.

It had great protection for the pilot.

It had the ability to not only perform in air-to-air combat, but also was highly effective in air-to-ground combat.

♪ >> A marvelous airplane.

It had good stall characteristics, which was wonderful when you're operating around the carrier.

It had six .50 caliber machine guns.

It could take hits and survive.

[ Rapid gunfire ] Unlike the Japanese planes.

If you hit them, generally they didn't have self-sealing tanks.

They just...bang!

[ Plane whirring ] Whereas a Hellcat could take a lot of abuse and still come home.

♪ ♪ >> So, by the time aviators got into the combat theater in the Hellcat, they knew the cockpit.

They had done blindfolded cockpit -- cockpit checks, which means that they would actually sit in the cockpit and not be able to see and they would be quizzed on where certain things were.

So it was a -- it felt like home for F6F Hellcat pilots.

>> And it was... a wonderful airplane, particularly if you were a fighter pilot and you wanted to survive the war.

The Americans set up a wonderful training background to replace pilots who were lost in combat.

For example, when I enlisted in March of '42, they didn't call me until December of '42 because they had other pilots they had signed up and they were waiting to go into training.

So when I went out to combat, I think I probably had 500 hours of training.

>> Alright.

And where did you get this?

>> Naval Institute.

>> Oh.

>> There were two model Hellcats, the F6F-3 and the F6F-5.

And model 5 over the model 3 had rocket racks to shoot more things on the ground, had a more horsepower in the engine.

My father flew both.

And fortunately for my father, the Hellcat had come along and also better tactics had come along.

So his opportunity to survive was better in the Hellcat.

And he would talk about the Hellcat that had, you know, could take a lot of damage and still come home.

And I was very glad that the Hellcat was that safe 'cause I'm here today.

[ Airplanes whirring ] ♪ >> The Hellcat had a tremendous capacity for speed, nearly 400 miles per hour, and it also had tremendous firepower... [ Rapid gunfire ] ...in its .50 caliber machine guns...and offered more than -- more than the enemy could take as far as the amount of firepower that could be put into a target in air-to-air combat.

♪ >> Pilots who flew the Hellcat felt it was the plane that could keep them safe, especially in dogfights with the legendary symbol of Japanese air power, the Mitsubishi Zero.

>> It was a rugged plane.

It maybe wasn't quite as maneuverable as the Zero, but it could -- it could stay with it.

>> Well, I was so happy with the plane, I said if the F6F could cook, I'd marry it.

♪ ♪ >> Back in Vero Beach, Florida, Jack Taylor's operational flight training was nearly complete.

>> In May of '44, I was sent to Barbers Point in Hawaii, where we continued our training in anticipation of going out with the fleet.

And then when one of the fleet carriers, the ones that have been in combat and lost airplanes, they would call back and say, "We need airplanes."

And you would take an airplane from this jeep carrier to the combat carrier.

And I flew over and was assigned and ended up on the Essex.

>> The first in the U.S. Navy's great new fleet of aircraft carriers is ready well ahead of schedule.

Completed in 15 months, she is sponsored by the wife of the assistant secretary of Navy for Air.

[ Cheering ] >> The aircraft carrier USS Essex, CV-9, was commissioned in late 1942 and moved into the Pacific in 1943.

At 820 feet long, the carrier was home to 2,600 sailors and airmen and over 100 airplanes.

Jack Taylor officially came aboard the Essex in June of 1944.

He was assigned to Air Group 15, also known as the Fabled 15.

The squadron was commanded by one of the American Navy's all-time leading aces, Captain David McCampbell, who would be awarded the Medal of Honor with 34 kills in the Pacific.

♪ ♪ >> The danger in being an aircraft pilot on a carrier in the Pacific War came from a lot of angles.

First of all, you had to be competent enough to be able to fly an airplane off a pitching deck of an aircraft carrier and at the same time, be able to land that plane later on the same pitching deck.

The kind of talent that was needed was one of competence in controlling the plane.

You had to be in top condition.

You had to have perfect eyesight, and you had to have a lot of guts.

>> Life on a carrier was terrific.

I had a state room.

Even the crew, there was always plenty of food.

They had a -- like a soda fountain where you could go down when you were off duty and get what was called a gedunk, which was ice cream.

But if you were on a carrier, you were clean, you could take showers.

You -- And life on a carrier was particularly attractive for officers.

>> On the Essex, Jack Taylor found himself part of an elite team with two goals -- fly missions and stay alive.

He would serve as McCampbell's wingman on a couple of occasions.

Jack Taylor was close with the men he flew with, like brothers.

Jack Taylor had received comprehensive training with the Hellcat fighter.

However, now on the USS Essex in the Pacific in 1944, it was the real deal.

Jack was about to be thrown into the Pacific War meat grinder.

>> Normally, they tried to replace the squadrons every three months.

They felt that after three months, the squadrons start losing their excitement over the combat and what it takes.

>> Hellcats on the USS Essex were expected to do many things.

Strafing missions... [ Rapid gunfire ] ...air-to-air combat... [ Airplanes whirring ] ...and bombing targets on the ground were their main jobs.

[ Airplanes whirring, explosions ] ♪ Jack Taylor and the new Hellcat pilots of Air Group 15 had yet to face the famed Japanese Zero fighter plane in combat.

That would soon change.

Who would have the advantage?

>> Comparing the Japanese Zero and the F6F Hellcat in their air-to-air capability, the Hellcat bettered the Zero in -- in most every way as far as its speed, its ability to climb, firepower, protection for the pilot.

But what made the Zero a little more effective than the Hellcat was its maneuverability.

The Zero was very lightweight, and it had been designed to be a very highly maneuverable aircraft, particularly at slow speed.

So the Hellcat still had a disadvantage against the Zero in that regard, but what more than made up for any disadvantage that the Hellcat had, which as I said, was very few, were the experienced pilots that flew the Hellcat.

♪ >> The Hellcat was a plane that -- It was big.

It carried a lot of armaments on it.

It could outrun a Japanese Zero.

And not only that, but pour fire into them that would disintegrate that plane if they made serious contact.

>> The USS Essex had already seen its share of action in the Pacific prior to Jack Taylor's arrival.

But now, in mid 1944, as the Allies got even closer to Japan, things were heating up.

Taylor was involved in some early search-and-destroy missions over Guam, Saipan and Tinian that June.

But those were just appetizers ahead of the main course.

General Douglas MacArthur was set to make his triumphant return to the Philippines in October of 1944.

Air power was called on to support preparations for the eventual landings in that part of the Pacific.

Jack Taylor was about to experience his first real taste of air-to-air combat in his Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter.

♪ >> The Battle of Leyte Gulf took place between October 23rd and the 26th in 1944.

It was the greatest naval battle in history.

The amount of ships that were used by the United States and Australian Navy against the Japanese was almost 4 to 1.

We outgunned them with battleships and cruisers.

The Japanese were defending the Philippines.

This was the last bastion of ground that they had of that magnitude, as Japan would be the next target of the American and Australian Navy.

Already Japan was being bombarded by B-29s and the end of the war was in place, and this battle would certify that.

♪ >> Generally when we went out on a strike -- they were called strikes -- there were basically two different kind of strikes for a fighter pilot.

We had fighter sweeps where when we were attacking an island, we would go in early the first morning where we were going to strike that island and try to clear out all the airplanes that were there.

We would -- If there were any airplanes in the air, we'd try to shoot 'em down.

And then we go down and strafe their airfields and try to damage each of the planes on the ground so they couldn't jump on up and attack us.

Then after the final sweeps, we generally went in with strikes, and the strike was made up of fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes.

And generally, you would go in with maybe 16 fighters, 12 or 14 dive bombers, 8 or 10 torpedo bombers, and that would be the strike force.

So you're talking about, what, 40 planes?

And so you'd go in and you'd strike the island.

[ Rapid gunfire ] ♪ Made sure there were no airplanes in the air, and you would go down and you would bomb and strafe.

If there was a harbor and there were ships in the harbor, you would try to strafe and bomb them, or you would try to bomb the warehouses and damage their ability to fight back if we were going to send a landing force.

So we went around and just attacked all the islands to suppress their supply lines and suppress their personnel, if we could, and all that sort of thing.

That was a highly active time in the Pacific, the fall of 1944, because, number one, we had -- we were really winning the war at that time.

An average flight would last, oh, I would say two to three hours by the time you flew out, did the attack, and flew back and landed on the carrier.

♪ >> Jack took off late in the day.

They asked for volunteers because landing a night on a carrier in World War Two was not a good thing, and so they asked for volunteers.

Anyway, Jack ended up flying with McCampbell, the leading Navy war ace of all time.

He said, "So one of our guys in formation called Rebel 99, which was McCampbell, who was leading the attack, 'This is Rebel 74.

My engine is running rough.

Permission to return to the carrier?'"

And McCampbell came back and said, "Rebel 74, this is Rebel 99.

All of our engines are running rough.

Do not return to the carrier.

Stay in formation."

>> Jack Taylor had two children after World War Two -- Andy, born in 1947, and Jo Ann in 1950.

Not long ago, both met at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum on Ford Island in Hawaii.

They got an up close look at one of the planes that tried to kill their father during those early missions in the Pacific in World War Two -- the iconic Japanese Zero.

>> Putting aside the fact that it was out trying to shoot our father down, this is really a beautiful aircraft.

I mean, lethal and beautiful.

>> Totally underestimated by us how -- how amazing a plane it was.

>> But that's when Jack was trying to shoot these guys down.

They'd try and put at least one round through the wing because that would be the end of it.

>> So the fuel was in the wing?

>> Yes.

Yes.

Primarily in the wings.

And they didn't have much armor around the pilots.

Like, the Hellcat had really good armor around the pilots.

So if you got shot, you had a much better survivability than if you were flying something like this, as beautiful as it is.

>> Inexperienced pilots in the Pacific often found themselves prone to poor decisions -- small errors that could get them killed.

>> He told us his first -- his first time up with his team, he made a bad mistake and ended up with the Japanese plane right behind him that actually shot his plane.

And that was really scary, and it made him just more determined than ever not to make that mistake again.

And I think he got very focused and really learned from that.

♪ >> On October 12, 1944, Jack Taylor was sent on a fighter sweep over the island of central Formosa, now Taiwan.

♪ At 20,000 feet, Taylor and his squadron was attacked by several Japanese planes.

Seeing another Hellcat being followed, Jack Taylor swooped in and shot down his first Japanese plane of the war.

His second kill would come only moments later.

[ Rapid gunfire ] ♪ Taylor avoided a direct hit at one point during the dogfight... and was able to escape with just a small graze from a Japanese bullet.

It was unnerving.

It was up close.

It was personal.

Jack could see his enemy in the cockpit of their own plane.

Jack Taylor was now a veteran combat fighter pilot.

>> Later, he would talk about some of the details of that.

He talked also not just about victories, but also about how scared he was his first couple of times out and how he and a Japanese adversarial airplane came right at each other.

And he said, "I don't know why the other guy didn't fire, but I didn't either.

And we crossed, our canopies were just absolutely super close."

And he said, "That was really scary, and that taught me to be a better pilot, to not get myself in those situations."

And then another time, they had a very long-range cruise, and they were flying over.

They were -- They were pretty high up.

And there was a destroyer, a Japanese destroyer, which was beached, which they didn't pay much attention to.

♪ [ Rapid gunfire ] ♪ Next thing Jack notices, there's a hole in his wing from the destroyer.

And fortunately, the Hellcat, the beautiful Hellcat, had self-sealing tanks.

So it did not become critical for him.

That's -- That's pretty hair-raising.

>> On October 24, 1944, the aircraft carrier USS Essex found itself supporting General Douglas MacArthur's famed return to the Philippines.

During the invasion, which began four days earlier, Jack Taylor and his fellow Hellcat pilots of Air Group 15 were in support of a torpedo squadron attacking one of Japan's largest and most formidable battleships, the Musashi.

>> And he did talk about the Musashi, going almost vertical down on the Musashi, the various colors of antiaircraft shells that blew up...scaring the hell out of him.

[ Rapid gunfire ] The deck of the Musashi took up his entire canopy as he's going down and pulls out at the last minute with his wingman who was leading the way.

He scared the hell out of him.

And they pulled away, and Jack said, "My God, I'm glad I got out of that."

And the wingman says, "Okay, Jack, let's go around and do it again."

>> Two passes on one of the world's most formidable battleships was considered suicide.

Somehow, Jack Taylor survived, his nerves severely tested.

>> That was probably the most scared I ever was when I made the strafing dive on the Musashi, which was one of the two biggest battleships in the world at that time.

♪ >> As Jack and his wingman kept the anti-aircraft guns busy, Essex's torpedo planes and dive bombers finished off the Musashi, sending the pride of the Japanese fleet to the bottom of the ocean.

♪ >> Obviously we won the battle and we maintained our position on Leyte Gulf and went on towards the Philippines.

That's history.

But it was -- That was...

Historians say that was the biggest naval battle ever was when you think about the number of ships, the number of men, the number of losses and so forth and so on.

That day, people say, "What do you remember about the war?"

And I remember that battle October 24th of 1944.

♪ ♪ >> Jack was very good at trusting his instincts, and maybe that's what made him a good fighter pilot.

He would not overthink things, you know, logically.

He would not put the pluses and minuses on a yellow pad of paper.

But he would think about something, and it was more about how he felt about it, what his intuition was.

>> Yeah, I'm lucky because I had a couple situations where I saw people that were right alongside me just crash because of irrational antiaircraft fire.

Instead of hitting me, it hit them.

So, whose fault is that?

You know?

I mean, what control did I have over that?

None.

But they -- they didn't hit me.

Which I'm glad it didn't happen.

I was -- I talked to somebody, and they asked me about the people that were my buddies that were killed.

And I said it was like they had gone to make a trip downtown when they went off on a flight and some of them didn't come back.

And you didn't think about... You just -- You didn't dwell on it.

Now, some of the people in the squadron did dwell on it and got very depressed, but...

The squadron lost -- the original squadron -- I was a replacement pilot -- lost 50% of their pilots during the time they were at combat and out to sea.

They lost about 30% after I joined them as a replacement pilot.

[ Gunshot fires ] ♪ >> How brave they were.

They were incredibly brave and selfless.

♪ >> They were landing planes coming back from a strike, and a couple of the planes were damaged.

One of them landed, and the wheels hit and then he bounced sideways.

The tail of the plane was over here.

The nose is over there, and the guy is sitting like this.

So they went over and got him out, and they just pushed the rest of the plane over the side.

♪ >> The Essex, my ship, had to go back to Ulithi, which was a rear harbor, to rearm, take on heavy armament and some maintenance to be done.

The commanders thought that, "Hey, we don't want to lose the fighter pilots," so they took about -- I guess there were 12 of us fighter pilots -- off of the Essex and sent us over to the Enterprise to beef up their fighter squadron while the Essex is back off station.

So that's how I ended up on the Enterprise, and I was there for about two weeks flying with the squadron on the Enterprise.

>> Despite his short stint on the famed carrier, the name Enterprise would come to define Jack Taylor's legacy following World War Two.

[ Cheering ] >> The USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1938.

The "Big E" wound up with 20 battle stars to her credit in the Pacific War, including Pearl Harbor, Midway, the battle of Santa Cruz Islands, the Guadalcanal campaign, the battle of the Philippine Sea, the battle of Leyte Gulf, and eventually Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

>> He talked a little bit about Enterprise, that it was sort of different.

He was kind of an outsider because, you know, the fighter group, you know, already knew each other and whatever and he was coming from a different carrier.

And there was, you know, the kind of inter-ship rivalry, if you will.

♪ >> And then when the Essex got the repairs and the re-arming and everything and it came back out on the station, we pilots who considered ourself, F-15 squadron pilots, flew back over on the Essex and were very happy to be back.

We missed being on our regular ship.

So that's how I got on the Enterprise.

♪ >> Jack Taylor would get credit for another half kill of a Japanese plane later in November of 1944.

At the beginning of 1945, Jack left the carrier and headed home on leave.

Taylor had 33 combat missions to his credit and two and a half enemy kills.

Jack, a pretty good artist, drew the inside of his Hellcat cockpit while back in St. Louis.

It was spot on.

>> I had a slightly artistic bent, I think, but I never did -- I never developed it, so... ♪ >> In 1945, Jack Taylor and Mary Ann MacCarthy tied the knot.

♪ >> The unconditional surrender of Japan finally has been received officially here by the United States government.

>> When World War Two officially ended on August 14, 1945, Jack found himself in California, where he was now stationed with his new bride.

>> There were people driving up and down the streets honking their horn.

I mean, it was bedlam.

Everybody was so happy.

The war was over and we can go back to living our normal lives.

>> And American soldiers and sailors couldn't get home soon enough.

There were families waiting.

And the greatest military machine in history... >> Facing danger and their own mortality daily during World War Two had changed a lot of boys into more serious, responsible and mature men.

>> I think anybody that's in the service feels they're doing the right thing.

They're protecting the country, number one.

And then after they're in, they're protecting their buddy.

And I think the driving force in combat is you want to -- you don't want to be a chicken and you want to protect your buddy.

And the best way to do that is by putting up a good fight.

I learned in the Navy, number one, that I could do what the Navy wanted me to do.

And I did it, I think, reasonably well.

And got out of the Navy, I said, "You know something?

You can do just about whatever you want."

And I decided that I was gonna get my act together.

♪ >> Jack Taylor headed back to St. Louis in September of 1945 with Mary Ann.

>> I think the Navy changed me from being a callow youth into a confident person.

♪ And the Navy convinced me that I can do things that I never thought about being able to do, and I could do them with competence.

But the Navy gave me a sense of, well, come on, you can do just about anything you want, Jack.

Why don't you go do something?

>> I think Jack had not defined himself at the time he joined after Pearl Harbor.

And I think the Navy helped really define him.

He discovered what kind of person he was.

I think he discovered what was important -- things like teamwork, mission, fun, and -- because they did have fun -- and he came out of the Navy a very different person.

And I think it made him more successful in life in all regards.

>> I think it was routine and responsibility and responsibility to others.

And that's a big deal.

You know, you had to get up and you had to do your job and other people were depending on you.

And I think that was a really big deal with him.

He was a very routine guy.

He -- And very precise about how he wanted things.

And he learned all that in the Navy.

♪ >> As was the case with millions of veterans, the question of what to do after the war was front and center for Jack Taylor as he returned home.

One thing he did was stay in the Navy Reserves for two more years.

Because of his love for anything mechanical, especially anything with an engine, Jack Taylor decided, why not get into the car business in St. Louis?

He had loved cars since he was a kid.

He took a job at a local dealership, Lindburg Cadillac.

Jack was 26 years old and knew nothing about selling automobiles.

>> I sold used cars in the beginning, and then I became sales manager of that.

>> After several years in the automobile sales business, Jack Taylor, former fighter pilot whose life had turned around thanks to his time in World War Two, began dreaming again.

He thought to himself, why buying a car when it was less costly and more convenient to just rent an automobile when you needed it?

In 1957, this idea was still somewhat innovative for the car industry.

>> No one has realized this more clearly than the men who managed the airports.

They're finding ways to meet the problem.

>> The concept was certainly out there, but Jack Taylor was thinking his hometown could be a bigger player in the burgeoning business of rental cars.

>> Business flying is on the increase.

So, too, are the airports providing this Courtesy service.

>> There was a company in Chicago that was leasing cars and bringing them to St. Louis.

Was no down payment basically.

You paid so much a month.

At the end of a period of time, you turned the car back and got a new one, and it just looked like it had potential.

You could deal with any car.

You didn't need a dealership.

You didn't have parts, you didn't have all that stuff.

And it just looked like an opportunity.

♪ >> Jack Taylor left his job as a car salesman and invested $25,000 into his new vision for a car rental business.

He called his new company, Executive Leasing.

He set up his first office in this Cadillac dealership in Clayton, Missouri -- a suburb of St. Louis.

>> We started in the basement, and I referred to it as "the lower level," never "the basement."

>> And I remember saying, "Jack, how did you go and borrow $25,000 on the house you just built and take a huge pay cut, leave a secure job, and start a new company with one employee and virtually no cars and no customers?"

And he said, "You know, I just wanted to be my own boss."

And he said, "You know, after flying off aircraft carriers, that whole thing didn't sound very risky to me.

>> He had a map on the wall of St. Louis, and he had pins for where he had leased cars.

And at that time, I think there were seven pins.

And he -- we would go into work with him sometimes, and he wouldn't answer the phone because he wanted people to think he was busy.

[ Chuckles ] So I think he was really determined and -- and he knew it was a risk, but I think it was one he was willing to take.

>> Executive Leasing prospered, especially during the 1960s.

Andy Taylor began his immersion into the business when he got his license at 16 years old.

Jo Ann Taylor also worked for the company before getting married.

One thing Jack Taylor was determined to do was to encourage his family to get involved in his postwar dream -- to be his wingmen, if you will, on this incredible new mission.

He wanted to surround himself with those he could trust, but more importantly, those he loved.

♪ Sort of like the pilots who made up his old air group 15 on the USS Essex.

>> Back then in the car business, people didn't think so much of people in the car business.

So Executive was sort of a nice way to sort of elevate yourself and elevate the company.

>> Staff was added, and with success, more offices began to open in St. Louis.

Daily rentals of cars were $5 a day and $0.05 a mile.

Executive Leasing would eventually expand out of St. Louis.

First stop, Atlanta, Georgia.

But there was a problem.

>> There was a company already in Atlanta by the name of Executive.

So he had to come up with another name.

And he said, "Well, Essex is not really an appealing name.

Maybe it might be in England."

>> It was then that Jack Taylor's mind flashed back to the brief time on World War Two's most famous and decorated ship, the Big E -- that mighty symbol of America getting the job done.

♪ >> But Enterprise -- Enterprise Rent-A-Car just sounded better.

Dad hired a student from Washington University to design the E, the logo that we're famous for.

I think he paid the kid $500.

We keep waiting for him to pop up and demand some more money.

>> Enterprise certainly is a really terrific name because it is sort of like the American way of doing business.

It's -- It's upbeat, it's adventurous, it's aspiring.

And so that was how he came up with the name Enterprise.

>> And he liked the E. He thought it looked like a road.

And -- And so it just -- that's what it was determined to be.

>> Don Ross joined Jack Taylor's company in the early 1960s.

Don saw a combat-tested World War Two veteran with a vision that would alter an entire industry.

>> The generation that fought in World War Two and really created a lot of what we have today in the country, it was amazing, you know, the things that they did and the risks that they took and then what they brought home and continued to establish when they, no longer in the military, but got into whether it was the public life or private sector.

It's incredible, the stories.

You know, Jack is one of those stories for sure, but there are hundreds, thousands like that as well that were all men and women that were part of that World War Two effort.

♪ >> Andy Taylor eventually rose through the ranks to take over his father's company as its president and, eventually, CEO in the early 1990s.

He's now chairman.

>> My father always would say if we got to be making maybe a million bucks a year or something like that -- I don't remember exactly what the number was -- he'd say, "I would consider that a massive success."

>> Our success has been in -- started in little pieces.

We were almost successful from -- from the beginning.

And so the business just succeeded early on in much little smaller pieces.

And, you know, I never envisioned that it would get to the size that it did now.

♪ >> Diane Everman knows the story of Jack Taylor better than just about everyone.

Diane is the chief archivist and historian at Enterprise Holdings.

The archives are full of memories and stories of Jack Taylor, especially from World War Two.

>> And I think that the most amazing thing is how many things he kept, flight logs he kept, who was flying on mission.

He kept photographs.

I will tell you, one of the ones that I think is the most unusual is a dollar bill that the flight crew signed, but also the fact that he kept it and it meant so much to him over all those years.

And I remember when he handed it to me, I thought, okay, it's a dollar bill.

But then when you look at it, you see it's stamped Hawaii and there's all these guys signatures on it and everything and it obviously meant a lot to him.

>> Diane's office is located deep inside corporate headquarters in St. Louis.

Rows and rows of Jack Taylor's World War Two journey are stored here, as well as the history of the company itself from the early days of Executive Leasing through today.

What was most important to Jack Taylor, however, was to preserve and document his time in the military -- events, buddies, and relationships that altered the course of his life and gave him the skills, confidence and leadership to build one of the world's most recognizable corporations.

Jack Taylor had taken Enterprise to the top echelon of the booming rental car business.

By 1990, there were 760 offices nationally.

Global locations were soon to come.

The company had gone from owning 6,000 cars to over 100,000 automobiles.

♪ Around this time, Jack Taylor reconnected with where it all began -- his experience in World War Two.

The Taylor family took their patriarch to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, where an exact replica of Jack Taylor's Grumman F6F Hellcat is on display.

>> Mr. Taylor, would you stand up, please?

[ Applause ] Come on here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

>> The airplane that was the foundation of a changed life -- a powerful instrument of war which taught a young Jack Taylor the benefits of risk, dedication, sacrifice, teamwork, selflessness and determination.

All the skills he would eventually use postwar to build one of the world's most successful companies.

>> While he was in Air Group 15, he flew that aircraft, the F6F Hellcat.

>> I mean, he looked at it and he just smiled.

He couldn't -- It was a great smile, but he didn't really want to talk at that point.

He kind of wanted to stand back and kind of get lost in his own thoughts.

♪ And I think that's where he might have been replaying some of his adventures, if you will, maybe terror when he was serving in 1944 and flying those -- those planes for real.

♪ >> And as we're walking through, I said, "Dad, how does this make you feel?"

And he said, "Lucky."

And I said, "How does -- How does this make you feel lucky?"

And he said, "Because I was on a carrier.

I had a bed, I had food, I had a bathroom."

And he goes, "So I wasn't crawling through the mud watching my friend die."

He said, "When a plane didn't come back, we knew that person was gone.

And we were very sad, but we didn't see the suffering."

>> Carolyn Kindle Betz, Jo Ann's daughter, is president of Enterprise's charitable foundation.

>> And most families probably don't get to have an experience like that and the fact we were all together.

And, again, going back to him telling the stories, and I just remember him shaking his head, being like, "I can't believe they actually let me fly one of these," you know?

And being late 70s and looking back when, you know, you're 20, 21, it was very interesting to kind of just hear, again, a whole different side of him in the stories.

He still was pointing out instruments to all of us.

And it was a definitely a very moving experience, but it was also an exciting experience because kind of, again, we got to see just another chapter in the life of Jack in the Navy.

>> Christine Taylor eventually succeeded her father, Andy, as president and CEO.

>> The realization that the war and being in the Navy was so impactful to him was probably before I got into high school.

And at family dinners and, you know, some of the things that he had learned from being in the military, in the Navy, those are what trickled down.

That trickled down through my father, but started with Jack.

♪ ♪ >> Many veterans would say World War Two defined them.

They grew up fast.

Many brought back to America mementos they would keep forever.

For those who served on the USS Enterprise, what could be more cherished than this American flag that flew over the carrier during some of World War Two's most famous battles in the Pacific?

A piece of history now securely kept at the company that keeps the aircraft carrier's name alive globally.

If only it could talk.

If so, its frayed stars and stripes would conjure up memories of patriotic and brave young Hellcat pilots such as Jack Taylor flying off into the unknown in the Pacific.

♪ Young men who would remember those days for the rest of their lives.

Jack Taylor was one of millions of World War Two veterans who came home from the war and got on with their lives.

All who survived were fortunate.

They brought home lifelong lessons from their time in Europe or the Pacific -- a blueprint of how to get things done and appreciate each day.

One generation who saved the world -- millions of individual stories from when the future of the world hung in the balance.

♪ Jack Taylor, like other veterans, understood the real heroes of World War Two are buried in cemeteries across the world or missing in action across vast oceans.

The survivors would honor their memory by striving to accomplish great things, such as following their dreams and living a worthwhile life.

Does it get any simpler than that?

Jo Ann Taylor Kindle is chairperson of the company's charitable foundation.

>> Well, we carried on through the company.

And all these younger people that we hire, they're going to hear the story of Dad and his military experience.

He always credited the Navy for his success in life.

Always.

>> I came to work every day with the attitude "I'm going to enjoy life today and this is going to be a good day and people that work with me are going to be terrific people and my customers are all going to think we're wonderful."

>> And as one veteran who took the lessons of World War Two and achieved greatness, perhaps somewhere in the back of Jack Taylor's mind, he did so in honor of those who never got the same opportunity to leave their own legacy.

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