The event caps the Memorial Day weekend ahead of the 76th anniversary of "D-Day" (the June 6, 1944 Normandy landing that brought VE Day nearly a year later.)

Below are the May 25 scheduled flyover times (caveat: times always subject to change) and planned route. After taking off near San Bernardino, the planes expect to reach the locations below at the times below:

• Newport Beach: 12:25 p.m.

• Long Beach VA Hospital: 12:32 p.m.

• Queen Mary: 12:35 p.m.

• USS Iowa 12:37 p.m.

[Scroll down for further.]

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In our view, events like this merit more than simply watching old planes fly over iconic locations. Those planes flew because of momentous events that deserve recalling.

After VE Day (whose 75th anniversary just passed without much recognition), WWII raged on in the Pacific until imperial Japan surrendered after two August atomic bombs. The surrender ceremony (aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay) occurred nearly exactly six years to the day from when Nazi Germany invaded Poland invited by previous appeasement, igniting WWII in Europe. A little over two years later on Dec. 7, 1941, imperial Japan (which had already attacked others) attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. and our country found itself in a fight for its survival.

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We wonder how many LBUSD or CSULB students today, if any, are required to read William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which opens by quoting George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Those who survived the years when those planes first flew, and those who didn't, would likely recommend it.

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