On April 21, 2015, an AC-130J, assigned to the 413th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, departed controlled flight over water about 41 nautical miles south of the Air Force base. Even before the crew boarded the aircraft, missed red flags, procedural gaps, incomplete predictive data and documentation anomalies raised the stakes of an already rigorous test plan. Once on board and in the midst of executing an aggressive test maneuver, the collective oversights set the stage for an extraordinary in-flight emergency. Further complicated by insufficient instrumentation and human factors, the crew worked as a team to save their own lives, but the aircraft was not so fortunate. The cost of damages totaled $115,600,000, including the total loss of the aircraft.